Five Things To Do Before You Die

In this Marketing Over Coffee:


Life Lessons from Grandpa John

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Have a Will

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Only buy phones at the phone store

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Speaker 1 – 00:03

Good morning. Welcome to marketing over coffee. I’m John Wall. Today is not a normal show here for folks that if

you happen to be just tuning in for the first time. We normally talk about marketing and tech for 25 to 40 minutes.

We cover either what’s the hottest stuff in the past week keeping you up to date, or we have authors and other Execs

come in CMOs to talk about what they’ve got going on. But today is a little bit different. So I apologize if you’ve just

shown up and aren’t sure what’s going on here. For regular listeners, thank you for tuning in. And I have to say that

unfortunately my dad passed away last week and so the show will drop and I will be taking care of a bunch of family

things. We have family coming town and all that, as expected.

Speaker 1 – 00:41

I’m very sorry to have lost my dad, but you know, he was 83 years old. He had a long good run, lived his life the way

that he wanted to and yeah, he lived through some amazing times. You know, things like pensions and fully funded

401ks. He retired in his mid-60s and lived to 83 on a full income, which is unfortunately not the kind of thing that

most people get these days. As my brother and I have been dealing with the estate. There’s been a lot of things that,

you know, it’s made us stop and pause and it is funny too. We’ve had a lot of laughs as this process has gone

through, but it definitely highlighted some of the things that are most important to do while you’re still alive as you

deal with this process.

Speaker 1 – 01:21

And so this week, the five things to do before you die. Number one, and I should preface this, of course, saying that I

am not a lawyer. We are always saying on the show that we are not lawyers. If you are doing anything that has legal

implications, go talk to a lawyer first. I feel like we should even have a stinger, a song for that plays every time.

Regardless. In spite of that, I want to lead off with number five is having a living will because my dad did this and it

was very important. The big thing with this, there’s two things that it covers now.

Speaker 1 – 01:50

It’s, I don’t know how it works in states, but in Massachusetts it’s a one page document and it has two sides and on

the first side it talks about the life saving measures that you’re willing to have done, which is use a defibrillator, be

intubated, have a machine breathe for you, and it goes a Little bit further than that. And so you have the right to say,

hey, if I’m in some kind of accident or I have some kind of short term health thing, do I want these measures used to

save my life? Yes or no. And depending on all kinds of stuff, your approach to life, your religious background, you can

choose how you want to go. But then on the flip side, that document it covers what can we use long term of these

things.

Speaker 1 – 02:28

And so you can say that you don’t want to be on a breathing machine for long term. My dad had a number of heart

issues and for years throughout my life he made it very clear that he did not want to be on machines long term. With

this kind of document it makes it much easier if you’re in a position where you can’t speak for yourself to make sure

that your wishes are honored and things go the way that you want them to go. Number four, following up on that is

having a real will, Your actual will have some legal documentation as far as what you want done with your stuff when

you die. There’s a bunch of implications for this. First and foremost here in the states where I am, if you don’t have a

will, it will go to the courts.

Speaker 1 – 03:02

And so lawyers get involved, everything takes more time, more money gets burned, everything gets stretched out

and of course I’m very fortunate we don’t have the issue here, but in some families, you know, this could trigger full

on battles. Go watch the session if you haven’t seen that yet. So you’ll get the idea with that. Number three is to get

some advice as far as trusts. There’s a bunch of things you can do. The biggest one for us was his home was

actually set up so that my brother and I are basically co owners so that when he passes away we don’t have to go

through all kinds of stuff with the house, we just continue on as co owners and there’s nothing else to be done there.

And so that saved a lot of time and effort.

Speaker 1 – 03:43

And this can be done with all kinds of assets. This is how the American super wealthy stay the American super

wealthy because they set up all kinds of plans and have trusts and things set up that the average person doesn’t

even take any time working on and it can change the long term wealth of future generations for you. So you’ve got to

jump on that. Number two is a whole huge story of only buy phones at the phone store. I’m not going to get into the

long extended version of this story and explaining why my dad was banned from being a customer of Verizon. But

the short version is when you go to get a phone, they may have deals for tablets and smartwatches and all that stuff.

Don’t do it. My dad did, and I was.

Speaker 1 – 04:24

I’m digging through the paperwork now, and it’s 2x3x the retail price of these devices. And it’s kind of funny because,

you know, he just bought everything that they threw him because he wanted, you know, to have the cool stuff. And I

thought it was funny because they put him on my plan and they switched it to his credit card. So he was paying for

my phone service for a couple of months. And, you know, I looked at what he was paying on all these devices. I was

like, well, whatever, that’s what he wants to do. But now he goes and dies on me and I’m stuck having to pay for this

iPad. That’s like 3x retail. Yeah, karma got me on that one. But so, yeah, only buy phones at the phone store. That’s

number two.

Speaker 1 – 05:04

And then number one, most importantly is make sure you live so well that you’re taking so many pictures that you

don’t even have time to go into your photo library and see what a bad photographer you are. My dad has thousands

and thousands of pictures from over the years and the places he loved Paris, he traveled there, he had his gardens

that he took tons of pictures of. And yeah, though, when I went into his photo library, we’re looking for some pictures

to show off at the calling hours this week. And oh, my God, you know, don’t put your finger in the frame when you’re

taking a picture. That’s one tip there. Delete anything out of focus. Nobody wants to see out of focus pictures ever.

Doesn’t matter what they are, and only show your best work.

Speaker 1 – 05:42

That’s a tip that I got from tips from the top floor decades ago. If you have eight or ten pictures of the same thing,

you probably want to pick the one best one and just delete the rest because nobody needs to see pictures that you

feel okay about. Only save the best stuff. But yeah, and I wish that to everybody that, you know, when the time

comes, you’ve got a whole roll of pictures of all the great stuff you do and that you can leave it to your family to pick

the best of the best because you’ve been so busy living your life not combing through your phone library. Okay, so

that’s it. I have a bunch of stuff I have to get going, but I just love to record something and get it out there for

everybody.

Speaker 1 – 06:20

You can sign up for the Text Line at 617-812-5494 or sign up for the newsletter over on the website. But I am off to

spend some time with my family. Chris will be back next time we talk, and as always, thanks for listening. I hope you

have a good week.

Speaker 2 – 06:33

And enjoy the coffee you’ve been listening to. Marketing Over Coffee Christopher Penn

[email protected] Read more from John J. Wal at jw5150.com. The marketing over Coffee theme song

is called Mellow G by Funkmasters and you can find it at Music Alley from Mevio or follow the link in our show notes.

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