David 0:00

How did one woman's tragic experience launch a book and a very important practice? We'll find out on this episode of Shift Shapers.

Announcer 0:11

Change either paralyzes or energizes. The choice is yours. You're listening to the Shift Shapers podcast. You're about to learn firsthand from businesses and entrepreneurs who have successfully shaped the shifts in their industries. Get ready to become the change you want to see. This episode is brought to you by Shift Shaper Strategies. In sales, if you confuse, you lose. Clarify your message so you win more clients, crush your sales goals, and build your practice. Learn more at ShiftPaperStrategies.com. And now here's your host, Storybrand Certified Guide and Chief Transformation Strategist. At Shift Paper Strategies, David Staltzman.

David 1:03

We love talking to authors, as everybody who listens to the show knows. And sometimes the books are more on point. Sometimes they're just things that are interesting and that our listeners find our viewers find interesting. Today's podcast is one that I think everyone ought to pay attention to. We're speaking to Esther Pipoli, and she's founder and owner of Lots of Life Advocates. And she was kind enough to send me a copy of her book called Lying on the Floor, Holding My Breath, which is a great title, but the subtitle I think is more instructive. It said The Grief Experience and the Lessons I Learned After I Got Up. So with that, welcome, Esther.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Thank you for having me, David. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

David 1:46

My pleasure. So I think probably the best place to start is the same way you start in your book. Tell us your story, because that will explain how you got to be doing what it is that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Well, thanks for asking, because my story is what led me into creating my company. But basically, born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, I grew up, you know, normal childhood, both parents, uh the youngest of three kids. And I somehow ended up in the insurance industry. I don't think when you're a kid you actually grow up to say, I'm gonna be in the insurance industry. But I had a really long career as an account manager. And in 2012, 1213, my husband had wanted to go on a sailing trip to the Bahamas. And I start way back then because my dad and I were super close. My husband and I were super close. My mom died in 1999. So my husband goes off on a sailing trip with my son, comes back and says, you know what, I'm gonna sell my law practice. It's gonna take me a couple of years, but I want to go sail around the world. And I remember being like, Well, where am I gonna be? I'm not gonna get on a boat with you. I don't like open water. So he said, Well, figure out where you want to go. So I was working for a self-funded company in San Antonio and called my recruiter in San Diego and he said, I just got an opportunity in downtown Denver. Does that sound like a place that you'd like to live in? And ironically, my daughter had just graduated from the University of Denver and she was in Denver. So I said, you know what? I think I could do this. You know, we could sell everything, we could, I could move into an apartment, I could live there, make some friends. So I interviewed with a really great insurance company in downtown Denver and became an account manager with them. And it happened just that quick. Super fast. Interview process was on point. And the day that I did my acceptance letter and faxed it over to uh the recruiter, my dad called me and said, you know, I don't feel good. So went to go pick him up and we made this long journey down to the emergency room and called my brother, and he opened the door to the emergency room. My dad popped out of my car and I went to park, and my dad walked in and unfortunately never walked out of the hospital. He went in for major surgery. And at that point, before he walked in to before they wheeled him out, he said, I want to invoke my durable power. We've talked about this. We've spent years talking about now that your mom's gone, what's gonna happen? And I was his durable power of attorney. And I said, Okay, great. He said, and whatever happens to me, promise me you will not give up on going to Denver. I want to see you take launch your career. It's time for you, you've raised your kids, time for you to do you. So I said, Okay, no problem. Well, my dad was an ICU for 21 days. And it sounds like a long time, and it was a long time, his legs atrophied. He never went home. He went to a step-down facility. So I learned a lot about being on the front end of being in a family where you're having to make all the medical decisions, having to make all the financial decisions, talking with doctors, having to be present, making sure that you're there because doctors come in and out at all hours of the night. They're making decisions, they're doing procedures on your loved one without even asking you, really having to get firm. And so my dad ends up going to a skilled nursing facility, and then we move him into a long-term facility to live out his last years of his life. And I remember him saying to me when he came out of ICU, when he woke up 21 days later and said, You're still going to Denver, right? I was like, Yes, I'm still going to Denver. So I ended up taking my job. And after my dad got out of ICU, I went to Colorado and started my career. And they always say that the top stressors are new career, change of location. You know, I was doing all of them at the same time. So flew back and forth for about 18 times in that year, making all the decisions for my dad and um getting him through the last year of his life. He ended up being diagnosed with bladder cancer. And he got to a second round of chemo, and then they called me from the nursing facility and said, it's time for you to come home and leave your laptop, which was kind of the code for you need to come home to transition your dad. And came into San Antonio. He was in the hospital and he said, Whatever you do, just make me comfortable. I don't want to be in any pain. I'm scared of dying. And it was really hard because I knew that we talked about this so many times, but when it came down to really making that decision, it was more painful than I thought it was going to be. So my dad from one day to the next lost consciousness. I stopped all care for him. We put him on hospice in the hospital, and he passed away 48 hours later. And at that point in my life, I thought that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do is make a decision to stop care. And little did I know that 10 days from the day he died, my husband would be diagnosed with stage four cancer, and that we would be going on a very quick journey of trying to figure out the Hail Mary for my husband. And he ended up dying 50 days later. And, you know, a lawyer didn't get to sail around the world. We had a business in San Antonio, you had a law practice with a lot of clients. He was a litigator, so he had a lot of clients that were in process, you know, so you're trying to figure out who's going to take over this, how are you going to close down an office? And by the way, it's fourth quarter. So I've used up all my PTO with my employer. I was reminded of that when my husband died. And so it was a lot of things coming at me at the same time. The book goes into more detail, but you know, basically my husband wanted to come back to Texas. He had gone to Tijuana for cancer treatment, got back to Denver because they couldn't treat him the way they needed to. And he wanted to get back to Texas and he lost consciousness on a plane flying in. And I say that because people need to know that, you know, when people die, it's not always like in a bed. You know, my dad died in a bed. My husband pretty much lost consciousness in an airplane flying into San Antonio. And you talk about your friends, your best friends show up for you when that happens. And I have some very, very good friends. I learned really fast who was who was in my in my court and nut. But all the things that kind of happen right after somebody dies, my dad, pretty prepared. We'd had all the conversations. My husband shut down. If you weren't on the carl train of him fighting and beating cancer, then you were working against him. So I had to really quickly pivot the way that I talked with around death between my dad and my husband. And I really learned that in those moments of total grief, that you find out if your employer is really going to support you. And I say that because my employer did not know what to do with me when I went back to work. They needed me back. It was fourth quarter. And I think once they saw that I could not function, they left me alone. And by leaving me alone and alienating me, kind of isolating me, I should say, put me to the side because they just didn't want me. I was crying. I was going to work and I'm here, but I'm crying. I think that that really it was a learning experience. And I ended up on the floor of my bathroom at my office because nobody was advocating for me. And really that in itself really led to the journey of having to figure out there's a missing component in our benefit system. We have all these wonderful benefits that the consultants and brokers out there provide. But it's in those really rare moments of grief and tragedy, and that if you are truly the best place to work, you're focusing in on those life changes for your employees because that's when they need the support the most. And they don't need a checklist. They don't need a 1-800 number. They need a person that picks up the phone and says, How can I help you? And that's really from those experiences, all of that drove me to creating what I have now, which is Lola named after my mom.

David 8:38

So hope I gave you the whole story of how it's a great pivot point because in the book you say, especially without planning, death isn't the end. It's really just the beginning. So the question is from an advisory standpoint and from trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together, where do you start?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So, you know, every family comes in to me at a different position. And that's, you know, some people come in, my dad's been diagnosed. Some women come to me. My husband has been has tragically died, and I haven't wanted to open the mail for six months and I need help and I'm financially overwhelmed. I don't, I'm running through money. Some people come to me with, you know, I want to get prepared ahead of time. I just saw what happened to my friend, and I want to get all my affairs in order. Where can we start? So people um buy our products of getting prepared. But every single person comes in at a very different position and standpoint versus, you know, I have some clients, unfortunately, that have lost loved ones to suicide. Their entry point into Lola and what we do is very different than that of a woman that's been married for, you know, 50 years and she's like my husband was a veteran. So we know what those benefits were around the veterans. It's, you know, benefits to make sure that she's taken care of and there's pensions and, you know, there's all kinds of things that go just with a veteran. But yeah, I mean, every single person comes in at a different level, and we have a checklist. And so, based on asking them that very first question, what is the biggest hurdle that you have to jump right now? How can I get in there and take that and run with it? And what phone calls can I make for you? I'm here to block and tackle, but more importantly, I'm your confidential resource. I am somebody that you can tell me anything about, anything, and it's not going anywhere. And people need to know that that somebody has their back because your family and your friends are there for you initially, but you don't always want to share things like what I went through. My husband had thousand-dollar suits, thousand-dollar cowboy boots, drove a Porsche, we had a Range Rover, lived a really great lifestyle. But when my husband died, he did not leave me any money in the bank. He had no financial investments. He we lived in the moment. We never talked about those conversations of do we, if something happens to you, do I have enough to live off of? And you can't go to a friend and say that because they're then a wonder, well, what do you mean? And you can't go to your employer and say that because your employer is gonna say, Well, so you really do have to come to work then, you know. So it's it becomes very difficult conversations. But ever I would say that the very first question we always ask is, tell me what is the biggest hurdle that you need to jump right now, and let's get started.

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David 12:10

It's more complicated, of course. I I mean I did a lot of work with buy cells over the years. It's a lot more complicated when there's a business involved, isn't there? What are those considerations like?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, so we work with business owners and sit down with them and go through, you know, two different options, whether you become disabled due to COVID, you know, we learned a lot with business owners that if they didn't have a plan in place for furlough, that word that came out, you know, everybody was being furloughed, you know, if they didn't have a plan to shut down if something happened or if something happens to them, you know, who's in charge? Who's on the bank accounts? How is it styled? Are you an LLC? Are you a single member LLC? Does who's what's your investment plan for if something happens to you, who's going to run the business? Who, how is it going to be moved on into a legacy plan? Do you have legacies set up and those buy-sell agreements, you know, talking to them through if you become disabled, is do you have your business overhead insurance that can pay to run your business? And do you have somebody identified if there's a death, such as a key man policy, to pay into the business, to either hire somebody to shut the business down, sell it, or transition it into that legacy plan? What do you have in place as a business owner? And I will tell you that right now working with a business owner where her husband died and they had a she is in the middle of the biggest storm in her life on top of grieving. Now she owns a business 100%. And when we sit down with her and say, okay, if something happens to you now, what is your plan? She literally says, I trust nobody because she's going through that vulnerability phase. So as a business owner, if you don't have it set up with your partners, or you know, I always tell men when I'm working, when I'm talking with them, so you have a partner now. If something happens to you, your wife is now partners with him. How does that look for you? How do you see that? And they start thinking, well, wow, that's something I'd never thought about. So, you know, if you don't have your personal effects in place, like your will and your own estate plan, and then you don't have a business plan in place with a legacy and key man and buy sell, then all of a sudden you've really got a business that's going to tank in the middle of the worst time in your life. And um, for me, I can honestly say my husband's business, we had attorneys that were taking clients the next day after he had died. His body wasn't even cold, and they were calling in and um calling up clients. You have to have a communication strategy in place to make sure your clients don't walk away and they don't leave you because that is part of the value of your business and you've worked so hard for it. So when we go through our Lola business protocol plan, we really work with business owners on thinking about what they don't want to think about, but they need to start putting those those plans in order.

David 14:41

Well, that's the role of a good advisor. And unfortunately, a lot of times that those conversations are not held. One of the things, by the way, that I think is really interesting in the book, and I'd like you to kind of go into it a little bit, is you say make sure the people you choose are up to the task. As you're putting together this whole plan, if assuming you're smart enough or prescient enough or whatever to be planning early, or you're just a planner, what does that mean to make sure they're up to the task?

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Well, you know, people can say, you know, if something happens to you, I'm happy to take your kids, I'm happy to help with the business, I'm happy to advise your wife. Some people will say that to you, but they really don't understand what the true meaning of what you're being what you're asking them to do. It means you're having to not only work your career and your job, but you're having to help with the second thing. So when I'm talking about building a team, you should have your own team in place. And especially for if you have, you know, widows, I more or less use that term for widows because a lot of time the husband's team are the people that he's saying, oh, don't worry about it, they got you, don't worry about it. And really, in all reality, your husband dies and his team will be so freaked out because of his death and their grieving, they forget that they're supposed to be there for you. So if you don't have the wherewithal to ahead of time start looking at who are the attorneys that I need to have in my court, in my place, who are the people that need to be in my corner, who are my business advisors, who are my financial advisors? I've gone through several financial advisors for my own personal stuff that I have that are investment accounts, because it takes a long time to find somebody that you gel with. So you really do have to plan ahead of time. But for some people that say, Yeah, I'm in it to help you, you have to sit down and have a conversation and tell them, this is what I'm asking you to do for me. If something happens to me, I need you to understand, I need you to help shut down my business. And that means you're having to step aside from whatever you're doing to help this be handled because I trust you. And that's a very big ask for people to take on. And what I find is that a lot of people, when they find out exactly what you're asking them to do, if something happens to you, they will say, No, I really think you should hire a professional. And so, you know, it really is hard to put that team together. It's a lot harder than people think.

David 16:47

No question. I mean, I've thought for a long time, especially because I did so much work in buy cells, both life and disability back in the day, that it's not so much that people don't want to talk about planning for their death because nobody gets out alive out of this life. You know, we've all got a fatal disease, and someday that party's always come as you are, right? Which you know better than most people. I think it's the fact that advisors are aren't in their face in a nice way about it and saying, look, this is something that I need to help you think through and I need to help you talk about. What's the first step? Is the first step telling advisors as we are on the podcast today, gee, maybe this is something you ought to think about to add to the things that you do, you know, for your clients, because ultimately it may be the most enduring and the most important thing you do.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Right, right. And so look at just the time that we're going through and we went through when we had a total shutdown. And, you know, your good advisors were picking up the phone and calling clients. Hey, I know that you're shutting down or you're having to make some things. What can I do to help you? What do you need? Looking at their current benefit packages that they're offering, looking at their business, you know, benefits if they're a property and casualty advisor, what do we have in place that I can step in and help you with immediately? Having those as an advisor, the most, it's such a relationship-driven relationship in our industry that if you're not there asking them, how are you doing? And if you're not right now, because we've been what living in this pandemic for almost over a year, I was watching something the other day and I was like, has it only been a year and a half that we've been going? It feels like it's so much longer. But if you're not picking up the phone and asking your clients, tell me how COVID has affected you, not only from a business perspective, from a personal perspective, what were your challenges? We obviously went through a surge in mental health, you know, awareness when people were at home and all the things that you run away from to come to work, or now they're having to work at home, they're having to deal with all those challenges. We know that those mental health was issues were coming up, and there's a strategy we need to build around that. Do you have enough in place for your employees if there was a death? Knowing that death is not the same anymore, where families can't go and grieve and be able to be around each other because of the current status of our pandemic, as an advisor, that's the most meaningful thing that you can ask somebody is how are you doing? How have you handled it? What are your plans and do you have the right products in place in the event something happens to your employees? How do you handle a death in your workplace? How are you educating your leadership to talk about what to say, when to say it, how to identify when they see somebody that's going through a loss? And a loss can be a lot of different things, right? It doesn't have to always be the death of an employee. It can be, you know, having to transition their parents from home or they they're in the nursing facility and they can't get in to be with them. You know, our times have definitely changed, but from an advisory perspective, having those conversations and saying, tell me how you're really doing. What have your personal challenges been? And what have your challenges been for your employees? And what products can I go out and find for you to make sure that you're covered and that you really aren't truly the best place to work, right? Everybody wants to say, oh, I'm the best place to work. And I always say, are you really the best place to work? I mean, are you really there on the floor with your employee in the bathroom when they're having a mental breakdown because they've had a loss? Are you in it with them? Are you providing those benefits to them? Are you looking to see what do we have to help them? Or are you looking at that's not my issue? They just need to take their leave and go home and not be here and be a distraction because there's two totally different things that happen with that. You have employees that you either want to keep and retain, or you have employees that will leave after suffering through a horrible loss. It just adds on to it. So the advisory position here, it's we are living in a time where if you're not an insurance, if you're in insurance and you're not talking to your clients and having these meaningful conversations, then you're not really getting to know your clients.

David 20:31

That's a great point. We've got about a minute and a half left. And I thought a great place to wrap up would be advice that you give in the book towards the end of the book, where you say, find your sturbs, S-T-E-R-B-S. What the heck are STRBs and why is it important to find them?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

So sturbs are your short-term emotional release boosters, right? And so when people go through any type of life change and they're going through grief and some type of anxiety, you start looking for those. Are they shopping too much? Are they eating too much? Are they drinking too much? Are they on their web, their Facebook and LinkedIn too much, those social media? Are they doing things in excess? And those are really good things to be looking at, whether it's for a friend or a family member or a coworker that has gone through a loss, you look at it from two different perspectives, the excess or the stopping. So did they stop eating? Did they stop drinking? Are they not taking care of themselves? Are they not doing anything for maybe they used to be workout every day, now they're not doing anything? Are they withdrawing? You know, these are all short-term emotional release boosters that have to be addressed. And those are things that when you start looking at somebody and they're saying, I'm doing fine, I had a gro I had a loss, my dad died, but I'm back at work, I'm good. Those sturbs, when you start seeing that the excess or the stopping of a behavior are really present, then you realize that they're not dealing with their grief and you need to get in there and find some support for them. Whether it's through the EAP program or there's something like what we offer as a benefit option, as a just a layer in between EAP and the HR department, so they can refer to us to do triage, and then we get them over into their benefits. We realize we work with an employer on what are your benefits, how do we help get them accessed in without telling them, by the way, you have a mental health issue, because I've noticed that you just could come to work and you just can't stop getting off social media or something like that. So those sturbs are really important indicators and identifiers for advisors and their clients to look for.

David 22:24

And that's a great place to end our interview for today. Esther Pipoli, founder and owner of Loss of Life Advocates, and the author of this great little book called Lying on the Floor, Holding My Breath, which I would recommend to everybody, advisors, pick up a copy of this because it's a small book, chock full of just the things that you need to know. And if you want more help, get in touch with Esther and let her help you or help your clients. Esther, thanks so much for sharing your experience with the audience today.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Announcer 22:55

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