Growing your business with estate planning: Part 1

Key takeaways

• Nearly any financial advisory client needs an estate plan, especially anyone with kids or meaningful assets, since it addresses guardianship for minors and keeps assets out of a public probate process. Lockshin recommends revisiting a plan at least every five years.
• Estate planning has become one of the few remaining ways advisors can differentiate themselves, since investment management has been commoditized by robo-advisors and largely interchangeable asset allocation models.
• Estate conversations build client intimacy in a way portfolio discussions don’t. Understanding a client’s beneficiaries, values, and family dynamics surfaces information a purely investment-focused relationship never would.
• Retention data makes the stakes concrete: when one parent in a couple passes away, roughly two-thirds of families fire the advisor, and that climbs to about 98% once both parents have passed, which is why building a relationship with a client’s children matters.
• Advisors don’t need to become estate planning experts. The scalable version of this role is closer to a checklist: confirm clients have documents, confirm those documents are current, and route anything that needs drafting or legal judgment to a qualified attorney.

Why everyone needs an estate plan (0:00–10:00)

Lockshin’s answer to who needs an estate plan was close to unconditional: “Everybody who’s got money or a family, I mean, which is pretty much anybody who’s a financial advisory client.” For clients with kids, the plan settles who takes care of them. For clients with assets, it keeps money out of probate and directs it where the client actually wants it to go.

Beyond the will itself, Lockshin pointed to healthcare and financial powers of attorney as equally important, especially for parents of adult children. He described realizing his own son, away at college and playing sports, would need a HIPAA release and healthcare power of attorney on file if he were ever injured and unreachable, since adult children are legally protected from a parent’s involvement in medical decisions by default.

Skipping this isn’t neutral. Without a plan, an estate typically has to go through probate, a process that is both public and, in Lockshin’s words, “a burden” for whichever family member ends up as executor or trustee.

Estate planning as an advisor’s last real differentiator (10:00–16:00)

Westlin framed the shift directly: investing itself has been commoditized, with robo-advisors and shared mean-variance optimization models pushing most firms toward similar asset allocation. Lockshin agreed, splitting the industry into firms still competing on picking investments and “everybody else,” and pointing to financial planning broadly, and estate planning specifically, as where advisors have started adding real value instead.

Most advisors avoid the estate planning conversation, in his view, simply because they aren’t paid for it and aren’t comfortable with it. His own guide for advisors on estate planning argues the reverse case: advisors don’t need to become estate planning experts to add estate planning value, they need enough fluency to guide a client toward the right resources and follow through.

That fluency can start small. Lockshin described a simple annual checklist: are the documents less than five years old, do they reflect the state the client currently lives in, and have there been life changes, a marriage, a divorce, a birth, a death, that would call the plan into question.

How estate planning deepens the client relationship, and retention (16:00–21:00)

Lockshin called estate planning “foundational,” not incidental, to a financial planning relationship. A client who is transparent about their estate plan reveals who they love, how they think about money, and sometimes their health.

For clients above the federal estate tax exemption, the economics sharpen further. Every dollar moved out of a taxable estate saves roughly 40 cents in future tax, compounding over time, a return Lockshin noted advisors “can’t get anywhere except in estate planning” without taking on portfolio risk.

The relationship case extends to a client’s children. Lockshin cited data showing that when one parent in a couple dies, roughly two-thirds of families fire the advisor, and that figure rises to about 98% once both parents have passed. Building a relationship with the next generation while a client is still living, he argued, is what turns an advisor from “the parents’ advisor” into “the family’s advisor.”

Turning estate planning into a growth engine (21:00–26:00)

Westlin raised a common gap: many advisors already offer estate planning conversations informally but don’t charge for them, folding the work into an assets-under-management (AUM) fee that rewards gathering assets, not planning time.

Lockshin’s own approach uses a fixed fee tied to specific services, so the client has a clear expectation of what they’re paying for. He even described adjusting pricing based on whether a client uses self-guided planning tools or the firm’s full estate planning service, treating it as a distinct, identifiable line item rather than something bundled invisibly into a broader fee.

Scaling this across a book of clients, in his view, comes down to process: a consistent way to see what’s in every client’s plan, rather than fifty different attorneys’ worth of formats and terminology, plus a recurring checklist cadence so nothing falls through the cracks as life events happen.

What to gather upfront, and where a platform like Vanilla fits (26:00–30:00)

Westlin’s practical advice for a first meeting: collect copies of every existing estate document immediately, since that alone reveals how old they are and whether they match the client’s current state of residence. From there, softer questions about family relationships and what the client wants their money to accomplish do the relationship-building work.

Lockshin pointed to the cost and inconsistency of traditional document drafting, often five to twelve thousand dollars for a comparable set of documents, as the gap Vanilla Document Builder was built to close: a consistent intake process, a generated set of documents or a connection to a vetted attorney, and ongoing prompts when something changes, a birthday, a move, a shift in tax law, that should trigger a document review.

Q&A highlights

At what estate size should an advisor bring in an outside estate planning attorney rather than relying on a self-guided platform alone?

Lockshin pointed to roughly $30 million and up as the range where specialized outside counsel becomes worth adding, particularly for situations involving carried interest, closely held businesses, or other complex structures. Below that range, he described self-guided tools as built to handle the core, more common scenarios efficiently.

About the speakers

Andrew Westlin, CFP

Andrew Westlin, CFP, is a financial planner and the former Senior Manager of Financial Planning at Betterment, where he specialized in delivering accessible, tech-driven advice to premium clients. He is also a frequent media contributor to CNBC and Business Insider.

Steve Lockshin — Founder and Principal, AdvicePeriod; Co-founder and Chairman, Vanilla

Steve Lockshin is Founder and Principal of AdvicePeriod and Co-founder and Chairman of Vanilla. He previously founded Convergent Wealth Advisors and Fortigent, and was ranked the #1 independent financial advisor in the U.S. by Barron’s in 2011.

The information provided here does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. It is provided for general informational purposes only. This information may not be updated or reflect changes in law. Please consult with an estate attorney, financial advisor, or tax professional who can advise as to your particular situation.