
Visionary Advisor
Welcome to Visionary Advisor, the podcast for forward-thinking wealth advisors who recognize that wealth management is evolving rapidly. The strategies that worked five years ago won’t be enough five years from now.
This podcast is for advisors who want to stand out from the competition, win more HNW and UHNW clients, and grow both personally and professionally. Join us as we invite some of the most influential minds in the industry to share the ideas they believe advisors should be exploring and putting into practice.
I'm your host, Alex Kirby, founder of Total Family. Welcome to Visionary Advisor.
Visionary Advisor
Redefining Legacy with Cody Barbo, CEO of Trust & Will
Legacy isn’t just what you leave behind—it’s how you shape lives today.
In this episode of Visionary Advisor, host Alex Kirby, founder and CEO of Total Family, sits down with Cody Barbo, founder and CEO of Trust & Will, to unpack the trends transforming estate planning today. Drawing on fresh research and real-world results—Trust & Will has helped over 200,000 individuals complete estate plans and is trusted by more than 1 million users—Cody shares how generational shifts, technology, and the growing emphasis on values are reshaping how families—and their advisors—approach legacy planning.
From bridging the gap with Gen Z to using tech as a relationship builder (not a replacement), this conversation is packed with insights to help you lead more relevant, human, and lasting estate planning conversations.
Why This Episode Matters for Advisors
- Discover how younger generations are rethinking estate planning—and where advisors fit in
- Learn how technology is making estate planning more accessible without replacing the human touch
- Uncover ways to lead conversations that go beyond assets to include values, lessons, and legacy
- Get practical strategies to engage the next generation before the wealth transfers
Episode Highlights
[5:23] “Advisors need to step out of their comfort zone.”
Cody shares why proactive estate planning is a massive opportunity for advisors to build deeper, long-term relationships with entire families—especially when most wait to react.
[13:35] “Legacy, to me, is how you made people feel.”
A personal reflection from Cody on what legacy really means—and how advisors can help clients define it beyond financial assets.
[17:25] “The big nugget that we are all chasing.”
Cody calls out the advisors who prioritize estate planning as a core part of their value—keeping documents current, initiating conversations, and ensuring plans evolve with life.
[23:58] “Next week turns to next month, and then it’s decades later.”
Procrastination is the #1 obstacle in estate planning. Cody outlines how advisors can help clients overcome inertia by making the process more approachable.
[40:48] “They have the opportunity to build that trust.”
In moments of crisis or transition, advisors have a rare window to show up for families—and leave a lasting impression that spans generations.
Resources
Explore: Trust & Will – Learn more about their platform and annual research
Read: Trust & Will’s 2024 Estate Planning Report
Trust & Will’s 2025 Estate Planning Report
Stay Connected with Visionary Advisor
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Explore more at totalfamily.io | Follow us on LinkedIn | Watch episode clips on YouTube
You want the trust in the human relationship. And I think that that high EQ advisor who can come in and speak confidently about a variety of topics is what helps that kind of younger consumer graduate. I'm in the same boat now, graduating from FinTech to work with a formal advisor.
Alex Kirby:Welcome to Visionary Advisor. I'm your host, Alex Kirby, founder of Total Family. Today, we're talking about the trends shaping estate planning. and how advisors can use these ideas to strengthen client relationships and deliver a better experience. I'm joined by Cody Barbo, founder and CEO of Trust and Will, one of the fastest growing companies in the space. Cody is here to share insights from their estate planning research, covering everything from a family's desire to pass on values to the surprising generational differences advisors need to understand. Here's something to think about. What percent of your clients actually have an estate plan and how many of them are waiting for you to bring it up? This is about turning legacy into one of the most valuable parts of your client experience. Let's jump into this conversation with Cody Barbo and unpack what it means for your practice. Cody Barba, CEO of Trust and Wealth. Welcome to Visionary Advisor. Hey, Alex. Thanks for having me. You know, I have to tell you, so how I first learned about Trust and Wealth, do you know how I did? Did
Cody Barbo:you see me on TV? No,
Alex Kirby:no. Our CTO, who is very, very hard to impress, sent me your site. He said, this company understands it. He actually is a client. And I really can't stress, like, I can count on one hand the number of times that he's done that. And that's how I kind of became aware of Trust and Will. Props to Mike. You know, send him a thank you or whatever. And then you guys started doing these, should I call it an estate planning survey? Or what do you call these reports you're releasing every year?
Cody Barbo:Annual reports that we do for different segments. We have consumer, we have an advisor facing one. It's really, they're It wasn't like an industry de facto report coming from true data of a large estate planning service. And it was like a kind of duct tape version of estate planning reports coming from third parties. They were fine. Like the data validated kind of why we get into this business. But I mean, we've got such scale now with our customer base. They've had over a million people start their estate plans with us. And the sample size for the consumer estate planning report was north of 10,000. And we're getting amongst our ecosystem of 20,000 advisors. We're getting a ton of them who are some are affiliated with TrustMill, some are not, but just to they know who we are. They want to help bring awareness to the importance of this topic to help validate the data and different opportunities we see.
Alex Kirby:That's great. We'll get the advisor report in the show notes. I have like. PTSD from downloading these research reports that are really just marketing items. And when I dug into yours, there were some amazingly useful things. So we're going to be referencing the 2024 report and the 2025 report. Do they come out at a specific time, Cody? We have time.
Cody Barbo:We're like a more mature startup. When we find time in our busy schedules to bring them to life. But yeah, once a year is kind of our target goal. And I think there's some variations of it for different wealths. Yeah. So I'm going to read a couple of stats to you and
Alex Kirby:you just give me your reaction from them. All right. Yeah. 48% of respondents are interested in having a financial advisor help with estate planning. Is that high or low to you? What did you think about that when you guys uncovered that? It felt
Cody Barbo:appropriate. I think advisors are pretty keen on getting clients to think about just the non-financial planning things like estate planning, tax planning, insurance, things that people don't really want to talk about, but it's kind of connected in a way to the financial plan. So that one I align with. And advisors, yeah, they often don't get the support from the parent company to talk confidently about those other subjects.
Alex Kirby:Right. Yeah. 57%. A notable 57% of both Gen Z and millennials express interest in financial advisors for estate planning. That to me was surprising. I
Cody Barbo:think this is like a generational sift where like we've had like a gap in financial education in this country for decades, but you have like such an urgency to like make up for lost time that we didn't have the same opportunities as our parents' generation. So like millennials and Gen Z, the most accessible fintech companies like in our face every day, easy, low fees, but at a certain point are graduating from those fintechs to wanting to work with advisors. They start to hit peak career earnings, buy their first home, start their family. Like you want the trust in the human relationship. And I think that that high EQ advisor who can come in and speak confidently about a variety of topics is what helps that kind of younger consumer graduate. I'm in the same boat now, graduating from fintechs to work with a formal advisor.
Alex Kirby:Yeah. It's like 57%. I hear from so many advisors that they're worried about the younger people. So many of them are struggling to connect with the kids of their clients. And then when I see a stat like that, it says to me that people want help. They don't only want
Cody Barbo:hope, but I think advisors have to really step out of their comfort zone to get to know if it's older clients or like say older Gen X or boomer clients, like to really be thoughtful in knowing the relationship with the children. And if they're going to inherit all the assets, like my mom and I use myself as an example, like my mom and dad. Yeah, me too. Yeah. full estate value splits 50 50 to my brother and goes to two different firms that's not my parents firm and it's it's one of these things that like if only that advisor would have proactively reached out to know that i've gone down this entrepreneurial route that my brother went down the commercial real estate route they're not only getting that inheritance to retain but they're also getting one as the enterprise value i'm building with trusted middle on my personal stock and then my brother is doing you know I mean, we say the inheritance conversation sometimes is a heavy lift. Yeah.
Alex Kirby:and we're trying to get families just to talk in general. I always say like the inheritance is like going into the gym and being like, what's the heaviest weight you have here? I would like to go lift that. And so sometimes that's a hard place for advisors to start. When we're doing values or vision or family communication work with these families, it's a little bit easier for them to start that conversation. But ultimately we're trying to have those inheritance, estate, trust, help them have those conversations. And I always side on the side of like continuity for the family, because in your example, it's like, all right, so now we have three lawyers, three financial advisors. Everyone's doing it their own way. Everyone is sort of out for themselves instead of looking at the collective sort of picture of the family and using a platform like yours where it's all in a form that people can understand.
Cody Barbo:Very consumer friendly. And then like we built the whole platform with the consumer in mind, but it's the same. The same applies to the advisor. If we take the advisor out of their profession and put them in the same role as their clients, they're typically married. They've got kids, they're a homeowner, they're building their own wealth. And if they have a good experience, we trust them. A lot of them have used our consumer product that they can recommend it easily. And it's always just like, might have deep belief that advisors don't have to just choose a trust mall. They can offer a menu of options to the client, but like they have this influence on the client to get them to do this quicker, faster and earlier. Right. Because the majority of households don't have estate plans. You've got advisors represent 36 million households, a majority of wealth in this country. And one of the top things that they're now asking for advisors is legal services, inclusive of estate planning, tax services. Right. And there's not enough providers even in the market. Like there's a half dozen estate planning startups serving advisors today. We're barely cracking like 15% penetration collectively. And that's with hundreds of millions of venture capital raised behind us for some of us. And it's like, until we're at a majority ownership or majority market share, like we've got our work cut out for us for the next five to 10 years. And then you have the actual average age of an advisor at near retirement or near death, even for some folks, they just do this to die. What does that next gen client relationship look like if they're selling their firm or they're putting it into their kids' hands to kind of follow in their footsteps?
Alex Kirby:The ultra high net worth Institute uses this term, the integrated advisor. Yeah. where they're saying like, you don't have to be an expert in family dynamics and trust in the state, but, and by the way, really sophisticated clients are not going to buy that you can be an expert in all these different domains, but you have to know enough to introduce it, to be conversant, to integrate it into the other things that you're bringing to the table. When you've seen advisors do this really well, or advisors cue this up to clients, have success getting clients to do it. What are those advisors doing that separates them from the advisors who are struggling?
Cody Barbo:Yeah, we have a couple of firms that I'll spare their names because we put them in too many case studies, but they've over-indexed that they want 100% of their clients to have estate plans. And some of the clients have complex needs, so they should go through an attorney and they do. But for the clients that fit our strike zone, call it like sub 10 million estate Really, that strike zone is like a couple hundred thousand, a couple million for the clients who serve because we're doing revocable living trust, which is primarily what advisors are recommending to their clients through us versus a will-based plan, which would get a lot more will-based plans for our direct-to-consumer business. But we have one firm that they've gotten hundreds, hundreds of clients to do this with trust and will. And we're like, how do we replicate that with literally every other firm? Because this is an anomaly. Yeah. And they're very thoughtful and intentional. When their clients aren't on the phone call, they're bringing them into the office. They talk to them about their family first. They don't talk to them about the pain of the markets through the tariffs negotiations. They know their kids' names. They know when their kids are graduating. They know if they've got a new job or a big promotion. They really care about the family first. And then because of the change in family dynamics, positive and negatives, it's not just the initial creation of the estate plan, which is important. It's that ongoing maintenance of the estate plan, which so many families neglect. It goes into a binder. It goes into a bookshelf for the rest of their lives. With TrustML and with the advisor tool specifically, it gives them the ability to navigate. Cody had his second kid last year. Let's make sure guardians are updated for Carter. We also noticed, hey, Cody, you've got a backyard project going on, building a pool for the family. Let's see if there's any other ways we could tap into illiquid assets to create liquidity to build out the backyard. They really care about your life and living a positive, healthy, happy life. And yeah, they want to manage your money. But when they start with that, I'm specifically mentioning this one firm, it makes the estate planning conversation much easier because And a lot of times they're showing up with all of the key So that family can start the process or update quicker. the advisor this firm specifically an upper hand and getting their clients to do this and to keep it updated versus it just being like a marketed email like hey i sent you an email about it you should go do it and then like the next quarter it's this like broken record it's same thing so We have advisors in a free tier. There's no cost for any advisor to sign up. And we actually see the higher conversion in our paid tier because the advisors are more bought into the importance of estate planning and legacy planning with their clients. So we see like five to one the times of conversion for an advisor in our paid tier versus our free tier because they're just more bought into it and making it a part of their core experience and their planning and their firm.
Alex Kirby:What do you think, this is kind of like off what we talked about, but what do you think legacy means? Your 2025 is called, I think it's called legacy reimagined. Yeah. Yeah. Or redefining legacy. Yeah. And, you know, so is that just a trust in will?
Cody Barbo:So legacy, Jeff, if you've ever looked up the word in the dictionary, which most people have not, it's actually the money and property you leave behind in your will. That's the dictionary, Merriam-Webster's definition of legacy. But legacy, to me, it's how you made people feel. It's how you treated people. For some people, it's their accomplishments and accolades, whether it's career-related or if they were an athlete or a nonprofit space, if they're a community leader. But when I think of legacy, I'll use family members who've passed, like my grandfather, who was a teacher his whole career, didn't make a lot of money, played college basketball, was a stellar ping pong player and bowling, you know, hit a bowling alley at one point. But like every time I see ping pong, whether it's in a movie TV or at a bar, I think of my grandfather. If I see a bowling alley, I think of my grandfather, Oreo cookies, his love of Oreo cookies. I think of my grandfather. And it's like such a simple way to think about his legacy, but those three little triggers make me so happy. And it brings his full life. back front of mind for me, even though he passed 12, 13 years ago. And I think legacy for myself now as a father and a husband is like, until my last day on this earth, that I treat my family with respect, kindness, was I as present as I could be while still trying to build a career to provide? And for the people that I've encountered along the way, same thing. Did I treat them with respect, kindness, give everybody the benefit of the doubt? And leave a positive impression on them. And it's like, it's so small at a per person level. And I might only meet somebody once ever in my whole lifetime if I said I'm on a flight. But it's like, I can feel good about how I live my life, how I lead my family and lead my organization, knowing that I'm trying to be intentional about that every day. Even if some days I'm tired because my kids didn't sleep or other days. Yeah. maybe too high energy and too extroverted. Um, but that's, that's for me how I think about legacy. So we didn't, we couldn't call the company legacy.com cause that's the largest obituary website. It's like a private website, but we were thinking about that from the very inception. We just got really lucky that trusted mill.com was like available on go daddy and on all the social handles. So that's why we went with it, but it's kind of very obvious we do. And what's our name. So it's given us a little bit of an edge on the brand.
Alex Kirby:Yeah. I mean, I've asked a number of firms if they're tracking how many people complete these. You said like that one firm wants to have 100% of their clients complete a trusted will. So many firms are not doing that. I mean, is that consistent with what you see? Because most firms, when I ask them that question, they're like, we actually don't know that.
Cody Barbo:Yeah, it's really interesting right now. Like I was at the Tiburon Summit last or two weeks ago in Boston. I mean, it's like you have some of the most forward-thinking leaders in the space that are submitting data that Chip puts into this big keynote. They talked about the trillion-dollar RIA, this continued consolidation of RIAs in the market right now. The growth of the big four commanded 50% of all wealth growth in the entire world. It's like the Morgans. You've got Fidelity in there, Schwab's in there, LPL's making just unbelievable acquisitions left and right. So you have a lot of consolidation that's happening for an individual advisor all the way up to the biggest firms and how they think about it at a corporate level. The thing that you should be thinking about is AUM retention through this wealth transfer. You got $124 trillion passing over the next 20 years. Peak of that wealth transfer hits in 2037 or 2038. And at a per family level, like if it's ultra high net worth clients, yeah, a couple hundred thousand, a couple million. But if I ask the question to a CEO of Fifth Third Bank, who I was just on a call with, or to Wells Fargo, they don't know how much they're bleeding to their peers when clients die, when they don't prioritize estate planning. The same goes for big broker dealers and RAs, which is why you see this new generation of companies like Wealth, Vanilla, Luminary, Estate Guru, ourselves, going into this market. We're like, if your clients set up the estate plan and they set up a trust and it's reviewed and revisited often, the advisor has complete visibility. into it, the likelihood that that generational wealth stays with your firm is so sticky and so much higher. And I think that's the big nugget that we're all chasing is like, how can we prove that out with data? It's not just how many clients create an estate plan with trust to mill, but it's how much that AUM through the death of your clients stays within the firm. Cause you went out of your way to be proactive, to always keep it up to date. So there's no rock left unturned where that family passes and you can just basically keep the AUM within the organization. It's
Alex Kirby:really interesting. And it's going to do a ton for, I mean, on the valuation front, if you're bleeding these assets, these valuations are way too high. If you're retaining them and you're picking up assets, and I think for us, we're always telling our clients that you have to play the long game with the rising gen. You can't meet them at their parents' funeral. Right. So if if your client is in their 50s or 60s right now, you have 10 to 25 years to legitimately get to know their kids in a way that and maybe even help them with their kids relationship. Right. Because I saw in your report why people. are avoiding these conversations. And it was family dynamics, uh, makes it difficult. 24%. It's an uncomfortable topic. I think those are like kind of tied together. Um, and then I don't know where to start 21%. So for, for us, like I wanted to get your thoughts on that real quick. There's a guy named David York who wrote a book called entrusted. You probably read. Um, and, and he said that clients aren't on it. Like they know they need a will. They're not uninformed. They're uninspired. And when I think about the work that that we're trying to do is helping people see the why and the purpose behind this kind of stuff. And you know, as an entrepreneur, when there's a purpose there, that infuses energy into an activity. So total family in a lot of ways for us is like, how can we infuse meaning and energy into an activity that is sometimes viewed as not fun or morbid? To say like, there's tons of meaning in this. Let's fill up your energy tank so we can do this in the right way and over a long period of time. So is that like family dynamics? Is that the number one thing that why people don't do it? I think
Cody Barbo:that that plus procrastination and, you know, you mentioned the entrusted book. I'm looking back for those listening. I'm looking back on my bookshelf because I literally have it right here. So funny. Mention that book. It's a great book. Yeah, yeah. It's a great book. It's a great book. And I was gifted this book early on when we started the business.
Alex Kirby:That is, we are not affiliated, either of us affiliated with David or entrusted. We just like the book.
Cody Barbo:Yeah, it's a great book. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, what started the company, honestly, is I got married, planning to get married because we started talking about Trust Mill, Danielle and I's I'm talking about it, early August of 2017. I got married November of 2017. We incorporated the business a week before I got married and Daniel was at my wedding. Daniel is your
Alex Kirby:co-founder?
Cody Barbo:My co-founder, yeah. Forgive me. You know, there's a couple of reasons why this business, why I was not a estate planning attorney, neither was Daniel or Brian, our third co-founder, but like why this business meant something to us is for me, my wife had lost her dad when we'd first started dating. I still never met the guy, but I feel like I just know him in my head. I've seen, I've heard so many stories. I've seen so many pictures of him. I just like, and his entire legacy, even though I never met him and yeah. you know, they didn't, he didn't have a will. He had a house that went through probate cars, guitar collection. I just like watched the pain unfold for my wife, her brother and the stepmom for years. And I was like, okay, well if we're going to get married, I want to have a little more control. So when I got a term life policies for my wife and I felt like that was the most boring thing I'd ever done is like something get million dollars of term life. And it was like, it was cheap. It was like, I don't know, 60 bucks a month. And then, um, we talked about taxes, which was a weird conversation. I was like, Hey, we have to like joint file taxes. Like, Do you trust me to do our taxes? Uh, that was that conversation. Money was, I didn't, I was, I was broke obviously at the time starting this business, but she was my sugar mama for like the first three years working in the hospital. But like, did we
Alex Kirby:share a baby? What'd she do in a hospital?
Cody Barbo:Uh, she works in ultrasound radiology.
Alex Kirby:Oh, nice. Okay. That's great. The TV
Cody Barbo:shows pregnant women. She's like, that's like 10% of her day. It's mostly old people with pain in their abdomen or pelvic region or legs. Okay.
Alex Kirby:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My wife also works in a hospital. and was my sugar mama for our early days
Cody Barbo:too. Yeah, so shout out to the wives. They took great care of us early on. And so I watched that pain for her family and I was like, I don't want that for us. And I went and got a quote for $3,000 from an attorney to do a rev trust and another attorney for $5,000. And I had sticker shock. I was like, why is this so expensive? And I was also curious, what's better about this $5,000 rev trust than the $3,000 rev trust? And the guy's like, that's just my rate. He's like, it's effectively the same documents, but like You know, you start going into like how they do things different. I'm like, okay, it's the same thing. It's like paying more for the same car at a different dealership. That's a dealer markup. So I was like, who's doing this best in class online? And like LegalZoom has kind of done this for 15, 20 years now, but they're not an estate planning company. There's really no one doing it that met my expectations. It was like at the size and scale of a TurboTax that had a brand, had great customer reviews, worked with large financial institutions and worked with professionals like advisors and CPAs. And I was like, how does this not exist? It was so obvious. And that's what we decided to pursue. And the more people we talked to, so from incorporating the business in October of 2017, we launched our beta in April of 2018. And we had like a thousand friends from between Brian and I went to San Diego State, Daniel went to Baylor. All of Daniel's Baylor friends were married on kid number three. All of Brian and I's San Diego State friends were maybe engaged or maybe not. I have so granular Facebook messages, Instagram outreach, texting friends that I think I hadn't talked to in five, 10 years, but were at that stage of life that I was and Daniel and Brian. I was like, No one has this. And I'd be like, why haven't you done it? Well, and then you get all the excuses. But the biggest one was like, I don't know what's involved. I don't know what it costs. How long is it supposed to take? I don't know any attorneys. And even if you know what it costs, you can't afford it. You know an attorney. You've been introduced to one by your advisor or a friend or family member. You're just like, I'll get to it next week. Next week turns to next month, turns to next year. Now it's decades later. this is the overwhelming majority of families like 80 of families don't have any estate plan maybe at maybe at best a basic will in place but like the real value out here is just getting awareness out in the market that's why i've built put so much emphasis on building a brand you know we'll spend 25 million on marketing this year across tv audio paid search and then working with 150 marquee partners some of the biggest banks in the country large insurance companies large fintechs and 20,000 advisors is just like the bigger top of funnel awareness we can create through these trusted partners, our own brand, the brands of others, and these trusted professionals gets us. to our ultimate vision, which is helping millions, if not tens of millions of families do this rather than never doing it or waiting until it's too late.
Alex Kirby:I love it. I got married in 2016 and we did our estate plan. Our financial advisor referred us to an estate planning attorney, right? And so I'm sure you've heard this story a number of times, but if you're an advisor thinking about a partnership here, these estate planning partners are an extension of your customer experience. Yeah. Right. You have to vet them. And I remember we sat down, it's like a 82 year old attorney and we sat down in this like conference, massive conference room, my wife and I, and he's like, okay, remind me of your name. And he's like writing it down. And I'm, we're making eye contact with each other. I'm like, this is going to be a long meeting if we're starting with my name. that I'm spelling out to you. So I think one, it does reflect your customer experience, right? Number two, to your point, I think a lot of these firms have in-house estate planning resources sometimes, right? And they're like, Bob is the best. It's like, not saying he's not. But I don't think there's like 100,000 different ways to do these estate plans and trust, right? There might be like, Right. Right. Yeah. And if they do, that's also like conference room, old school kind of thing. So just react to maybe those three things and how your platform sort of supports what these advisors are trying to do.
Cody Barbo:I think it's just like a generational shift in how consumers expect certain experiences to play out. That's a great point. People still work with a ton of CPAs. There's a ton of great CPAs across the country. You know who 45 million Americans choose? TurboTax. Why? You could file yourself with IRS, but it's a pleasant experience. There's different tiers from free, literally can still file for free on TurboTax to like give everything to the CPA, go away for a couple of days and they file your taxes magically. It's like really pleasant. So I'm like, how do we TurboTaxify a trustable experience? It's not that we're anti-attorney. We have 350 attorneys that we work with across the country heavily in the wealth management space because they have clients that do have more complex needs. The attorney is a great backstop to our software because it's user-generated. and a user journey that generates the documents. They're state specific. It does accomplish a lot for nuances and decision and tax implications. But if you just want that ultimate peace of mind, both the advisor and the client, you can talk to an estate attorney in our network and it's, it's only 300 bucks. It's far cheaper than going to the direct attorney's office. So we don't.
Alex Kirby:Are you vetting these attorneys? Yeah,
Cody Barbo:we've had a lot of, uh, phone calls of of people hanging up on us because they're like ah you're just like another legal zoom but you have this next generation estate attorney kind of like a lot of these next generation financial advisors they want to use technology they want to practice into the 21st century which sounds silly to say but like the financial advisors have gone through this motion over the last decade like especially in the last three to four years since the pandemic Advisors can be competitive because they're phenomenal at managing the relationship to the clients. They know intimate details about these people and their families, but they also have an incredible tech stack that they bring that gives them a competitive playbook that gives their clients an edge to make more money or to have just more client advisor interface. It's this holistic planning approach. kind of narrative that's really built some steam. The same thing's happening with financial advisors to estate attorneys. So we look at this as we're pro-attorney, we work with hundreds of them, trying to build tooling for them now that brings their clients, their offline clients that they did binders with years or decades ago into an online experience. And it's really, it's like a step function unlock for the future of their practice. And it makes me sad that there's less people getting into the profession of estate planning You have the bar dropped, the estate planning requirement, which is wild. And you have great organizations like ACTEC that are advocating to bring it back in or make it a profession that people are excited to pursue. But technology, it's like if you can do the same thing for $500 that would have cost you $5,000, why would a consumer not choose the cheaper option if it's the same quality of documents? But the attorneys there– as the ultimate backstop to take the things that AI can never solve for, the family dynamics, divorce, health scares, excluding someone from an estate plan. You have a falling out with a child, did a drug or addiction habits. So there's a lot of emotion and EQ that AI can never be replacing that. And that's what advisors do really well. I think estate attorneys are in that next evolution in the coming years.
Alex Kirby:Yeah, we say that the advisor, their job isn't to be a financial wizard. We say that the job that the advisors are really doing for people is what you're saying. They want someone they trust who knows them, who can help them make decisions about the future. Yeah. Right. That's it. You know, like in these decisions aren't always financial. There aren't always related to their investments. You know, it could be around what school do I send my kid to or do we take this new job or whatever? And so I think the human element is going to continue to be really, really important. But you the human element can't be like, you know, I pick stocks better than money. blank, right? The model has to shift to almost more human. I have a couple of things that I want to ask you about. So what motivated you to create your estate plan is one of your questions from the 2025. And then we have ensuring that my personal values are upheld 22%, or I want to go back to that. Providing financial security for beneficiaries is 34%. And then the two big ones were peace of mind for the unexpected 49.8 and protecting loved ones, 49.6%. Is that any of those? surprising to you, or do you think there's any tidbits that advisors should be pulling from this?
Cody Barbo:Kids is the number one trigger in both direct-to-consumer and in all of our partners. I was just on an interview right before this, and it's the number one trigger. Number two is purchase of a home. It's the largest asset that families will own. And the third is the sadder parts of life. It's death of a loved one. It actually is a diagnosis, a terminal diagnosis. It's oddly quite common for 50, 60 plus now where you have months or years to live and there's like real urgency to get this done. And those are the sadder ones because I'm like sometimes like they literally pass before the doctor even told them they'd expire and there's just there's total gap in the planning conversations. There's a riff in the family. And then divorce. Divorce is super common in this country. You see prenups are gaining a ton of steam. So we're trying to just give advisors the intel that there's these other influences that aren't financial related that have a big trigger as to why people should consider an estate plan and how you can initiate the conversation. So the family dynamics piece I want to go to second is families just aren't talking about this. So I think a really unique value-add advisors can bring to a family, which is to sometimes talk about money, which is very uncomfortable for certain families to talk about. life insurance and estate planning and do it in a way that's very professional in a neutral third party environment in their office or on a proper meetup. Some families just can't talk about it. Like my mom and dad never brought up that they had an estate plan to my brother and I. And it literally took me getting married and starting a company and estate planning to be like, mom and dad, do you have an estate plan? Where is it? I'm like reading through all this like Shakespeare legal language. I'm like, I see my brother and his name in here a lot, but then I saw my aunt and uncle's name. So I was like, I think this is written when we were still minors. So like, it was like 10 plus years old. Yeah. First time I've even seen it. And then I go to my mom and dad, I'm like, who do I call? Like, what's the playbook to run if something happens to you guys? I think this is where advisors are so value add to their clients is like, they can, we give all this Intel to the advisor. Like you don't have to know this stuff. We provide it for you. And so do the other firms too. But like this idea that you're going to be one of the first calls from a client or the spouse, you have kind of this horizontal inheritance that goes to surviving spouse first, then to the kids. And like, yeah, you want to maintain the AUM and the relationship, but like you also can be really helpful to them too. And like navigating the process, whether they have to go to probate or navigating the estate settlement process, depending on what firm you're with, there's a playbook internally to run too. I think that that's such a value add that people will never forget that. You're with them in their hardest moments, like that's the hook. So the data in the survey you're alluding to kind of highlights the very obvious things of why people do this, why people don't do it. Procrastination, I'll die on that hill until we're like 25, 30 million customers. It's the biggest challenge. And that's why hopefully we'll have a Super Bowl spot in two years to tell people this is important. And hopefully every advisor over the next couple of years, regardless if they work with us or someone else, they'll have a playbook to run. And it'll hopefully have the snowball effect before that peak year of wealth transfer in the late 2030s. I think
Alex Kirby:you guys are probably like us. We want families to have values, purpose role is what we call vision. It doesn't have to be through us. We just want people to have it. I feel like you guys would
Cody Barbo:be thinking about it. It's interesting because when I was shopping for my wealth manager five years ago, it wasn't we raised buku bucks we're like a seed stage startup i was just i was interviewing my base test was if they knew about qsbs or not so qualified small business stock and like if they knew about qsbs stacking and then from there it was like if they started with family questions like hey like kids we just had our first kiddo and they're like very thoughtful like sending out like a christmas book for our daughter and she's a baby like really kind gestures that's how i i Found my advisor and I interviewed some really great ones. But I love the fact that I get to educate advisors too now. I'm not an estate planning expert. I'm not a financial planning expert. But in all these conferences that we go to and even conversations like this, we get to talk about the family values a lot. And how do you pass those down to your kids? It's like there's There's the legacy plan, which is kind of the estate plan. But that legacy plan is also– think family heirlooms. It's something that may have no monetary value at a garage sale. Of course, yeah. I think my grandfather's bowling pin is one of my most prized possessions. There might be something that a family passes down, a tradition. It could be a family heirloom or even like a recipe, like a family recipe that could mean the world to you. from a legacy perspective, but not any financial gain to you or your loved ones in that next generation. Yeah. That part keeps me awake and alive and why we're doing this business every day.
Alex Kirby:Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. I saw on the, I don't know if it was 24 or 25, cause I'm just going from my notes here. Um, it was 19% of people say that passing down values or life lessons is more meaningful than money. I think so. And it was like women sort of thought that way more than men. And to me, if you define your values, which we help people do, they're much easier to pass. If you know exactly what you're trying to pass down, whether it be your specific values or your lessons, sometimes you're passing those by the way that you live. So you talked about starting this company, wanting to provide for your family, all this kind of stuff. On the other side of you maybe working a lot, as you're starting a company is you're setting an example for the people around you of driving towards something that's meaningful to you. And so I think there's a value that's intrinsic in that, but it's also nice to just define these values so that you can ensure that you're passing that type of stuff.
Cody Barbo:Yeah. For me, the, it, I kind of mentioned this earlier in the interview, but I've got a five-year-old. The 10-month-old is not really, he says, mama, dada. Our five-year-old, she's got a lot of opinions now. But the one thing that we did really early with her, as early as, I don't know, a year and a half, two years, and very intentional in how we communicate is, and we're in Texas, maybe a different flavor than coastal folks, but like, yes, sir, yes, ma'am. making good eye contact if we're at a restaurant or honestly anywhere like we i dropped my daughter off at school every day and the security guy who most people don't even acknowledge his name's victor we acknowledge him every day say hi victor good morning victor if it's friday happy friday or if we're leaving have a good weekend have a good night like little intentional communications for a young girl to be thoughtful that regardless of who that person is there's a person there that has a purpose in life. And if you can acknowledge their existence, like you might make their day just a little bit better and be a little more thoughtful. And my mom and dad did a good job of this with my brother and I. Maybe we forgot about our manners a little bit in college because we both went fraternity route for a little bit. But the idea that you could bring that back to life as a parent and be very intentional with it. And hopefully, as small of that is as a gesture, when we meet people or have our daughter talk to people, I hope that helps her in her life beyond my time here on this earth.
Alex Kirby:Yeah. So much of this is families saying they struggle to talk about the inheritance and the money. But I say in general, families just struggle to talk about kind of everything.
Cody Barbo:Yeah.
Alex Kirby:And just getting, if you're an advisor that can help nudge along that conversation with families a little bit, you are irreplaceable. for the entire family, right? And it doesn't have to always start with the hardest conversations. You know, we haven't met a family that is like, doesn't want a better relationship with their kids. You know, that doesn't wish they could talk to their kids a little bit more, doesn't wish they could do these things. And to me, when you see the procrastination stuff and you see something like a diagnosis, you know, a talk track for advisors in my mind is like, you're going to eventually want to do this. And wouldn't it be better if we started the conversation now so that we don't have to do it in a high stress, high emotion, time constrained environment when something potentially happens?
Cody Barbo:Yeah, I shared with my advisor after our Series B, so valuation of the company in the nine figures today. But after our Series B, I had a pretty serious conversation with him. I was like, hey, equity, if we take this thing all the way to an IPO, it's life-changing money, generational wealth that comes from building this business for myself, my co-founder, some of our investors, and for some of our team. Some of our earliest employees will make millions and tens of millions, potentially, of dollars if we go all the way to an IPO. But rather than share the what-if, I was like, let me start with the tricky, sticky dynamics between my parents, my wife's birth mother, her stepmother, and I want to share the not-so-fun stuff within our family that would never be a surprise if you found out about it. But to get that out of the way earlier and up front, I think that that's the trust that an advisor has. They have the opportunity to build that trust over time, but they can do it very quickly in the early days. Understanding the multi-generational family dynamics. Like, do you have any surviving grandparents? Nope. All grandparents are gone. Okay. Let's talk about parents layer. What's that dynamic there? And then go one layer deeper with our own kids today. And like, it's cool that my mom and dad read like two weeks ago, you know, they, they did an attorney drafted plan. They updated it with trustable and my dad has some health stuff, but like. I've got like full visibility into their state. Cause you can do shared access kind of like a, you know, like a Google doc. And then I told, I was pretty candid with my mom. I was like, Hey, my brother, Ty, like Ty and I are doing pretty well in life. Like you don't need to give us anything, like give it all to the grandkids, but like specifics of like, don't give it to them as one lump sum at 18, like put age-based conditions or put life milestone conditions. And she went in and she made the updates. And I love that, that she could just like think of something based on a simple conversation, go log into trust them all. And I told her, don't text me. I said, chat in with our team. if you have any questions, and she did. She's like, oh, I chatted with so-and-so, and it was so fun. But I share this, even at the success of the business, for anybody who's listening, they're like, If you look at it through the human lens for yourself, for your clients, it will strike a chord to get people to go do this, whether it's with us or with someone else. It doesn't
Alex Kirby:matter. As you said, I don't know if you said this at the beginning or before we were talking before, but advisors not having their own stuff in order.
Cody Barbo:25% is in our study. 25% of advisors know a state plan. If you don't have one, we're not here to shame you. It's encouragement to go get it done. and to look at a variety of opportunities out there.
Alex Kirby:I think there's a level of authenticity that comes when you do it. You know, we have, when advisors get work with Total Family, the first thing we have them do is do their purpose, values, and roles for themselves. Yeah. Because it's very hard to say to someone, oh, Cody, your family needs values. And you're like, what are your family's values? Our family doesn't need them. Just yours does, right? It's going to miss every time.
Cody Barbo:For
Alex Kirby:sure. And so to be able to talk firsthand, I did it. we update it, we use trust and will or whatever, I think that really carries a lot of weight with the clients. Agreed. Yeah. Okay. I want to touch on a couple just like things that lightning round as we wind down here, a couple of things that I just found fascinating. Okay. Number one, the surprising importance of planning for pets. That really struck me. We actually updated our software to allow for people to make pets as part of their family tree. And we don't, I had a lab growing up, don't really know how, I didn't think of this already, but kind of made fun of my team who tons of them have pets i'm like guys where were you on this
Cody Barbo:yeah
Alex Kirby:this pets thing like does that surprise surprise you it feels surprising
Cody Barbo:i'm laughing because my dog is on my office couch my dog snoring is not coming through the audio uh it's not it's a six-year-old bernadoodle he's truly part of the family yeah pets are extremely common like dogs and cats are the obvious ones they don't live as long as humans but you'd be shocked turtles and parrots are way more people have turtles and parrots than i thought and they typically outlive us so having care defined for your pet if something were to happen to you having fun set aside for your pets if something were to happen to you is very thoughtful you have people the double income no kids the dinks movement yeah totally fine their pets are their kids and they may have more than one they might be rescue oriented they might have five six pets at a time so to have funds and guardians set aside for your pets i'm a huge fan of I think Scooter goes to my mom and dad first, then to my wife's stepmom, and then to my brother, in that order. He lives the life of a king already.
Alex Kirby:the next thing I thought was just so interesting. So you and I are both, you're millennial, right?
Cody Barbo:Yeah.
Alex Kirby:35. Okay. Yeah. So, all right. There's a, in the 2024, there's a, what should happen to your social media accounts after you die? Now that the fascinating thing here is the generational differences. Okay. 50% of baby boomers, want them to be deleted. But then only 23% of Gen Z wants them to be deleted. Memorialized per the platform's policies, I don't really have social media besides LinkedIn for the company. That was the millennial preference, memorialized per the platform's policies. This was just like a fascinating generational thing to me.
Cody Barbo:Yeah, boomers, inherently more private, generally mostly Facebook, but maybe some polarizing comments in this political environment over the last two cycles that maybe they don't want the world to see or how it could potentially define their legacy. I think that for millennials and younger, like our whole lives have been documented on social from MySpace to the Facebook before the whole wave of social media platforms. And I like that Google, Apple... uh, meta, they have even LinkedIn, they've got this memorialization feature. I've lost, I've lost friends whose family have gone in and activated it. So it's refreshing that like, you don't wish somebody happy birthday and they've already passed it. Like it, you could wish them happy birthday knowing that they've passed, but it doesn't have the pain or doesn't trigger pain for the family. Yeah. Have access to that account. And yeah, it's like the idea, like you've got, I don't know, I've got 20,000 photos and now half of which are probably my kids on my iPhoto cloud. Right. That like, I don't think anybody would care outside of my immediate family, but I still want someone to gain ownership of that when I pass. So they have that iOS legacy contact feature. It goes to my... parents today and then eventually to my siblings, obviously my wife. So the digital assets, even inclusive of crypto, cryptocurrency, which has become a pretty large asset class, there's a way and a playbook to pass those assets on. And there's actual laws that we've seen change over the last seven years, even since starting the company, that make it easier and more frictionless. And there's some states that have a lot of friction that you make it difficult to gain access to someone's account.
Alex Kirby:Okay. So the song. In one survey, it's song of choice, popular songs for end of life. life commemorations. It's probably the songs I would have thought of. What a Wonderful World, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Let It Be. Can people actually select this and trust and will, or is this only a survey question?
Cody Barbo:It's a self, no, it's a self in the free form. Like, what do you want to have happen or said at your celebration of life? People will put a lot of, I think we have a Spotify playlist, actually. I don't, I think it's public. We share it amongst the Slack, but it's like a lot of religious songs, the ones you mentioned. Some people get pretty comic related, like This is the End by the Yeah,
Alex Kirby:my
Cody Barbo:way, Frank Sinatra. And I just love the fact that, you know, it's your life and all the way till the end and you can dictate, you know, dictate who gets what, how you want to be remembered. We have a, we have a guy who posted publicly on social. That's why I share it that he requests. He's like, whatever amount of funds necessary to have my casket dipped in the maker's mark, red wax to the earth. And all my friends are cheers and a shot over my, my casket and taking a shot back for themselves. And then one poured on me to, you know, final send off, which I thought was great.
Alex Kirby:I think it's cool. You know, these things to me are less morbid. It's something that is not on the plate of all the people that are dealing with the loss of someone who matters to them. And even something like that is such a celebration of who that person was instead of it just being... You take something that is inherently very sad, the loss, and just sort of make it beautiful in a way. I thought it was really cool. All right. So very quick, rapid fire questions. One action you wish every financial advisor would take around estate planning? Do it yourself first. Do it yourself
Cody Barbo:first.
Alex Kirby:Yeah. What's one big mistake you think advisors make? are making in bridging the generational divide whether it's working with the parents or the rising gen?
Cody Barbo:I think advisors assume people have a lot of complexity by the default when a lot of families don't. Aside from my equity in this business, I'm a homeowner, I've got two kids, got term life, got some financial accounts, some investment, pretty straightforward. And I am in a strike zone for a revocable living trust, as most families are. And I think that not really as a knock, but it's like if they can understand what even a simple will does, let alone a revocable living trust, like getting their clients through that experience first and then naturally evolve if they have complexity or tax implications over time, that's fine. But I think that's the– That's what I've picked up on for many years. All my clients have complexity. Talk to me about the bottom 80% of your book of business because most of them are like my wife and I. There's not a lot going on.
Alex Kirby:Yeah, we always say sometimes we'll do an exercise if I'm speaking. I'm like, raise your hand if you think your family is crazy. And that is every single client in the room. Cody, thank you for coming on. I love your guys' branding and your story. Congratulations on all the success that you had. Check out the show notes for the links to some the stuff that we talked about. That is all we have for you today, Visionary Advisors. Until next time, remember the future of wealth starts with you.