Tom (00:01.682)
Welcome, Dinesh, to the podcast. I really appreciate you being here. I think one of the first things I kind of wanted to cover was how you've broken away from, I would say, the corporate legal system, and now you're kind of doing your own innovative process. And I mean, even your own website looks very different from a regular corporate website.
And I was wondering if you could just kind of tell me that story. Because, I mean, to me, it's like really, really interesting.
Dinesh Chawla (00:34.757)
sure. So first of all, thank you for having me on today. But yeah, let me get a little bit into my background and I'll try and make this quick because it is a pretty big story. So prior to law school, I graduated about
Tom (00:46.358)
Sure, sure, sure.
Dinesh Chawla (00:52.601)
five, six years before, or no, four years before I went to law school. So I had some time in the working environment. I was in corporate. I was doing sales and marketing and account management for a couple different automotive suppliers. Ford being my biggest client. So I was dealing with, you know, high level, high dollar clientele. Like Ford was at one of my companies. It was it was a hundred million dollar account. So it was it was a pretty big deal. Right.
Tom (01:09.899)
Oh wow.
Tom (01:19.776)
Oh wow.
Dinesh Chawla (01:23.478)
So moving from that, a lot of what I was doing was contracting and negotiations with my clients. And everybody around me in corporate was getting their MBA. So I wanted to distinguish myself. I wanted to kind of break away from that MBA crowd. And I figured with what I'm doing, contracts, negotiation, law school would be a great way to do that. And I had some interest in it before.
Tom (01:40.331)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (01:47.016)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (01:49.689)
But now was my time to go. So in 2006, I dropped Corporate America, spent three years in law school, graduated in 2009, passed the bar in 2009. And I immediately opened up Challa Legal Group as, what am I going to do now? In 2009, not many attorney firms were hiring. The smaller ones were getting eaten up by the larger ones. And the larger ones all wanted top 10 graduates and like,
uh all these other extracurriculars and I just wanted to study law while I was at law school. I don't want to do all the other stuff so that wasn't for me but I got a call from one of my friends at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and he said there's an opening in our Medicare compliance department so I took it.
Tom (02:26.145)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (02:38.605)
It gave me a chance to analyze the law. It gave me a chance to audit our divisions, make sure that we're properly doing things that we needed to do to meet all of the standards that Medicare had for, you know, its contracted suppliers of that service.
So while I was doing that, I somehow fell into management there. I was managing the compliance group for Medicare for about four years. Then I moved to a job in Salt Lake City that I was traveling back and forth for. Similar thing, I was the health care compliance officer and HIPAA privacy officer for a small drug plan out of Salt Lake City. So I was doing that for about a year. Then.
Tom (03:17.901)
Mm.
Tom (03:21.877)
Oh, interesting.
Dinesh Chawla (03:24.865)
An event happened and I was getting a lot of phone calls saying, hey, do you know anybody that does these audits for Medicare compliance? They're annual, they're required. And Pric at the time was charging about seventy five thousand to do these audits on an annual basis. And I knew one guy who was independent and doing them for about fifty five thousand.
So I referred about six people to him in a matter of four weeks. And I thought to myself, I can do these audits in my sleep. And I can also do all the consulting before and after the audit as well. So I dropped that corporate America job. I started my own compliance consulting company called Gemini Compliance Consulting Strategies. Um, and.
Tom (03:54.261)
Oh wow.
Tom (04:02.958)
I'm sorry.
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (04:20.697)
I just started taking on clients and I was sitting as either an interim compliance officer, an interim high level operations person, or I was doing these audits or coaching people on how to take on a government audit like CMS or Medicaid. So those were the types of things I was doing with Gemini. And that was about 2000.
Tom (04:38.476)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (04:49.101)
16 that I started Gemini Compliance and around I'm sorry, it was 2015. I started Gemini and then 2017 ish late 2017 My dad came to me and this is the shift He came to me and he said we have our state plan and you know, you're the lawyer of the family When should we get this reviewed?
Tom (05:06.792)
Okay, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (05:14.585)
And I said, well, from what I remember in law school, it should be every three to six years. When was the last time you had it reviewed? And he said, in 2003, when my attorney handed it to me. And I said, so 14 years ago, a lot's changed since then. And that instant really got me mad. And this is me kind of censoring myself here. It did more than get me mad. It got me irate because they, being the other attorney,
Tom (05:29.615)
Uh-huh.
Tom (05:39.155)
Riot, Riot.
Dinesh Chawla (05:44.525)
just treated my mother, who's my nurturer, because I'm a mama's boy, was born and raised mama's boy, but my mom was my nurturer and my dad's my hero. So to treat the two people I love and care for the most and look up to the most as a transaction with this important subject matter, I mean, this is something that's gonna tell where all of their assets are gonna go, their house, their 401ks, IRAs, life savings, pensions.
Tom (05:45.198)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (05:51.939)
Yeah.
Tom (06:00.623)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (06:14.989)
if they had any minor children, which they didn't, but if they did, what's gonna happen to them if both parents pass away? These are big, big issues, all right? It's not just one little hot button that we're working with. It's everything you've got in your life. And to me, not treating that as more of a relationship type of plan, it bothered me. So I instantly said, I wanna change this game.
Tom (06:31.53)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (06:43.097)
I don't like the way that people are being treated, giving your plan and just walk away and nothing after that. A lot can change in one year, let alone 14. So, didn't like that whole situation. I was trying to find a good attorney for my mom and dad, and I wound up linking up with this group called Lawyers with Purpose. It's a national group, attorneys countrywide from all different states, and all they focus on is estate planning.
Tom (06:52.138)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (07:13.017)
and elder law, but for the right reasons. And I talked to, because at the time, I was traveling on a weekly basis to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, doing a stint with Capitol Blue Cross. I was acting as their compliance officer for almost a year.
Tom (07:16.574)
Hmm, interesting, okay.
Tom (07:28.584)
Oh wow, okay.
Tom (07:33.278)
And so that was like your job for a little bit while you were transitioning? Is that kind of? Okay.
Dinesh Chawla (07:36.557)
Yep, so that was part of Gemini compliance. Through Gemini, I got hired as the interim compliance officer, Medicare compliance officer for Capital Blue Cross. So I was doing that. I was flying from Detroit to Harrisburg. I believe that travel schedule was once a month because my now ex-wife was pregnant with our second child at the time.
Tom (07:46.469)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (08:01.943)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (08:02.125)
So my travel got cut back a little bit. But at that time we could work remote and there was a lot of technologies that could help out. So I was traveling there for a week every month. And while I was out there, there was an attorney, there is I should say, because he's still there, an attorney in York, Pennsylvania. I'm not gonna mention his name. He's a great guy though.
he was on the Lawyers with Purpose website. So I called him, said, hey, I'm interested. Can I just get a talk with you? So we had a 30 minute conversation that turned into him asking me if I could go out to dinner that night. So we went out to dinner and he spent a good two, three hours with me just telling me his story, how he got involved with Lawyers with Purpose and how it absolutely revolutionized his mindset and changed his life. And I wanted that.
Tom (08:56.05)
Yeah, yeah. So did he kind of outlined like what lawyers with a purpose is basically. And I'm guessing this was all new to you and kind of what did it seem unusual at the time? Like, did you seem skeptical at all or was it like, oh, this is the right thing to do?
Dinesh Chawla (09:04.262)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (09:15.869)
It did. Yeah. So, so yes, at first, at first it was very much skepticism. It was what type of Ponzi scheme am I getting myself involved with? What type of like, is this like the cult for lawyers? I didn't I didn't know any of this stuff. So I wanted to test the water. So that's why I met with this guy. And we were talking, I told him where I was from. And he said that there's a few good
Tom (09:24.159)
Mm-hmm.
Right, right.
Tom (09:32.376)
Yes, yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Dinesh Chawla (09:43.217)
people in our area. So we started looking at those people and one of them was about two and a half miles away from my mom and dad. So we went to this guy's workshop at the time he was doing them at assisted care communities in the area. So we went to one of his estate planning workshops, me and my dad. I introduced myself to him. We started talking and he said, you know, if you're interested, you can follow your parents through the process.
Tom (09:51.799)
Oh, okay.
Tom (10:01.07)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (10:13.957)
So I did. I followed my parents through his process, watched the way him and his attorneys handled everything, and I loved it. And I started talking to him about Lawyers with Purpose, and he said it was just basically, it's not a cult, it's a turnkey solution. It's one attorney who put a bunch of processes together that gave him success, and he just started sharing it with other people. And he started charging those other people for his turnkey processes.
Tom (10:31.241)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (10:43.565)
And now we've got about 1,200 lawyers in the country that are operating off of his turnkey processes. And there's a lot of different stuff and business models and processes that go along with this. A lot of what we do is based off EOS, or entrepreneurial operating systems, which is a whole other kind of, I guess, business religion, if you will.
Tom (10:43.569)
right
Tom (11:01.794)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (11:07.919)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (11:08.617)
But that's Mike Morris operates off of it too. So that's kind of the structure that we went with. And it was very client centric. It wasn't the model is we're actually taught and we have to go to these intense training programs for a lot of different types of law. And not just the law. We go through a one day intensive training program on how to talk to your client.
Tom (11:27.52)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (11:37.885)
client services, how to mirror their body language, how to make them feel comfortable, how to educate them, how to talk to engineers who wanna know every little detail and then how to talk to your lay person like they're in fifth grade. Now I prefer the latter. I prefer talking to people like they're in fifth grade because it helps me. I understand things more when I'm doing it in regular speech. If I have to get too technical,
Tom (11:56.686)
Yeah, yeah, just regular talk. Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (12:06.177)
It can even confuse us attorneys sometimes because again, it doesn't roll off the tongue. It doesn't roll off the tongue properly. And once you start spiraling into the legal technicals, unless it's a very specific case that you're working on and you're going through all of this stuff and you absolutely need to hit it, that's when my memory starts getting jogged or I'm involved with the law.
Tom (12:11.67)
You get lost in it. Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (12:32.605)
There's a lot of things that you can ask a lawyer that off the top of our heads, we're not gonna be able to answer because there's just so much information. I mean, I'm sure it's like that in the medical field too, where you know enough about how to react to a question, but you might not know all the details without going back to a study guide or a book or an online something, right? Like a source. So that's kind of how...
Tom (12:40.078)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (12:43.526)
Yeah, yeah, there is just... Mm-hmm.
Tom (12:55.732)
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (13:02.421)
um, everything really, I guess, comes together is just, they teach you how to do a lot of things that you're not taught in law school. And it's practical and it's kind of common sense. But at the same time, it blows my mind how new this is to a lot of people who weren't fortunate enough to have kind of a sales marketing relationship and customer service background. So go ahead.
Tom (13:28.222)
Yeah, and it's interesting how you say that, that like you're talking about business and sales, but yet at the same time, I think you're also saying like, you spend more time like with your client and then they feel that like, oh, this is a lot better than the normal kind of system. You know, like I think that like sales and marketing gets kind of a bad rap.
But yet it's a very strong way to connect with, you know, with me, my patients and, you know, your clients. And did you, when you were kind of going with your mom and dad through that, did they feel like they were, it was a different process and did they feel better about it?
Dinesh Chawla (14:14.849)
It did. My dad really, really liked because, okay, so my dad's an engineer. And he is. He's going to ask all those questions. My mom was by profession an English teacher before she had me. She I say she retired when she had something worth staying home for. But she stopped teaching after she had me.
Tom (14:20.373)
Okay, okay, yeah, yeah
Mm-hmm.
Tom (14:30.732)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (14:40.025)
So education was always big in our family. Like we always wanted to learn more, know more, and all this other type of stuff. And I never felt good about proceeding in something unless I had a good background. And regardless of what it was, I was never the most athletic person, but I was always one of the best on the court or the field because I was a student of any game that I played.
Like I understood the technicals, the ins and outs. I understood my opponent. I studied. That's how I was good at the game. It was with my head more than anything else. So I kind of just take that along with me on everything. And as soon as I found this process that starts with pure education.
Tom (15:04.623)
Oh yeah.
Tom (15:15.837)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (15:26.169)
It's like, what don't you know as the lay person that if you try to do this type of stuff yourself, what are the pitfalls? What's gonna happen? So that's essentially where we start. We start with a workshop to educate the public. And in that workshop, we tell, seamlessly, people don't really count this, but we tell about 15 real stories. And those real stories,
Tom (15:35.106)
Yeah.
Tom (15:53.226)
Mmm, okay.
Dinesh Chawla (15:56.213)
are not always from my clients' background. 90% of the stories I tell have to do with my family members and why they needed estate planning because things blew up in their face. So if it's hitting an estate planner that close to home, then yeah, people need to get educated on this stuff. So that's kind of why, one of the reasons why I liked that and it kind of brought me back to my original days of sales. My first sales job,
Tom (16:05.151)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (16:24.089)
was with a company, like I said, selling diesel engines to Ford. And my vice president of sales told me something that blew my mind and makes sense to me. He said he's never sold a product in his life. He said he's educated a bunch of people to the benefits of a product. And if they liked it, they bought it.
Tom (16:28.913)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (16:46.905)
He's never sold anything, he's never pushed anything on anybody. He said, here are the pros of my product, here are some of the cons. Here are the cons of other products. Here are some of the pros. You make the decision. It's not, it's a no brainer after you get a good education, right? So if you're behind a product that if properly educated or service, if properly educated people come in, it's a no brainer to, to pick that service or that product.
Tom (16:47.994)
Yeah.
Tom (17:03.323)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (17:15.441)
It's not a sale. It's a, oh, this is the best thing on earth for this particular niche. Let's do this. So that's kind of how my approach has always been. And when lawyers with purpose.
Tom (17:23.666)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (17:28.777)
And most of their attorneys fell into that exact same mindset. It was kind of like a previous world and a new world coming full circle together. And it was one of those signs that the universe presented that I said, this is for me, this is where I want to be now. I'm done helping the corporations, I'm bringing it down to the micro level and just helping the families that need it.
Tom (17:52.226)
Do you feel that it's maybe brought you back to the original purpose of going to law school kind of.
Dinesh Chawla (18:01.729)
My original purpose for going to law school, I never really wanted to practice law going in. I went there to get an edge on contracts and negotiation, thinking I was going to come back to the corporate world and be this like hard-nosed guy who's going to make the most airtight contracts and you know...
Tom (18:07.841)
Mm, okay.
Tom (18:23.226)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (18:23.533)
make all this money for my company and screw all my clients, but no, that's not how negotiations are. Things should be a win-win. And like law school opened my eyes to a lot of different things and it opened up my eyes to a lot of different things that I don't want to be in life. Um, and, and it kind of, it kind of took me out of that attitude and it made me see that there's a lot of bad things in this world and we can't win all of them,
Tom (18:30.907)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (18:41.058)
Oh yeah, yeah.
Tom (18:53.223)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (18:53.607)
can help a lot of people on the way and that's kind of what I wanted to do once I found this niche. It was here's the problem that my family was presented with, I have the power to solve that so let's go out and solve it. So that's when I made my shift and my decision to get rid of all but one of my Gemini Compliance Strategies clients. I needed one to help pay some bills.
Tom (19:09.758)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (19:22.97)
So I was doing that from 2018 till 2022, part-time with one client to...
Tom (19:23.092)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (19:31.589)
Like I said, help supplement everything. And then I dropped that client in 2022 and I've been 100% Chalo Legal Group since 2022. But we've had tons of, thank you, we've had tons of experience in between. So I don't like to discount that. The fact that, you know, it's only been six years that we've really had our doors open to the public to come in and do estate planning. But in those six years, man, we've, there's been a lot of,
Tom (19:40.786)
Oh nice, congratulations.
Tom (19:56.744)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha
Dinesh Chawla (20:01.884)
crazy things happen so
Tom (20:03.442)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know on your website, chalallegal.com, you have like a big button that says register for an upcoming workshop. And are those, can you kind of tell us like what people would expect like when they go there?
Dinesh Chawla (20:09.777)
Yes.
Dinesh Chawla (20:13.981)
correct.
Dinesh Chawla (20:20.121)
I can. Yes, absolutely. So there's about 13 things they can expect and I'm gonna be reading off of a marketing slick that I have here, because it actually says, what will you learn at a Chalo Legal Group estate planning workshop? So one of the first things is the difference between documents and an actual working plan. A lot of people confuse.
Tom (20:28.604)
Okay, okay.
Tom (20:32.746)
Good, good, let's hear it.
Tom (20:40.907)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (20:41.957)
those things. We talk about how to make your rules instead of using the government's rules in terms of estate planning, how to protect yourself from guardianship and conservatorship proceedings, how to protect you and your loved ones from any post-death probate court issues, so basically probate avoidance in simple terms.
Tom (21:05.876)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (21:07.377)
Uh how to protect loved one. Oh wait. Yep. We already did that one how to protect your assets from estate taxes long-term care costs Medicaid, i'm sorry medicaid spend down and rogue-spending family members or family members with addictive Tendencies, so whether that's gambling drugs Anything you can think of we want to protect people from themselves
Tom (21:29.21)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (21:38.305)
Let's see, how to protect your minor beneficiaries and or beneficiaries with disabilities or special needs. So we're looking at special needs trusts there. How to properly structure gifts to avoid gift taxes and Medicaid five-year look back period. How to protect your control over healthcare decisions. How to protect your control over legal and financial decisions.
Tom (21:45.314)
Mmm.
Tom (22:05.802)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (22:06.533)
what a revocable trust does and its pros and cons, what an irrevocable trust does and its pros and cons, the difference between grantor and non-grantor trust, which is a very technical tax difference, and then rules of thumb about when to get a power of attorney, will and or trust. And then it says, and much more. But those are the 13 kind of things that we focus on.
Tom (22:28.094)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (22:34.073)
just to give people an idea and a good sense of what they can expect from a workshop. And each of those 13 things has a story behind it.
Tom (22:44.394)
Hmm, okay, okay. And can you kind of tell, like, or give me an idea, like what age or stage of life should someone kind of consider creating a power attorney or maybe even going to your workshops?
Dinesh Chawla (23:02.397)
Mm-hmm. So I have very few rules of thumb when it comes to estate planning, because there's just a lot there and there's a lot of creativity in it. I always say my first rule of thumb is if you're 18 and over, I don't care if you're single, married, whatever, you should have a power of attorney in place.
Tom (23:14.669)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (23:25.445)
That's the only thing that's going to help you prevent a guardianship or conservatorship case should you be unable to act or speak for yourself. So, and you know, I've done some work with the University of Michigan, their Department of Neurology, and we used to do golf outings with them all the time. This was years and years ago.
Tom (23:34.494)
Right, right.
Tom (23:43.426)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (23:48.052)
Oh, nice.
Dinesh Chawla (23:50.377)
We still do some stuff for another one of their departments, their department of radiation oncology. But when we were doing things for neurosurgery, they would always, neurology and neurosurgery, but when we were doing things for them, at the end of these golf outings that we would have, they would do a little presentation and they would always have pictures on loop and they would have one hero that made it through their treatment.
Tom (24:12.747)
Mm.
Dinesh Chawla (24:17.529)
to be honored at each of those dinners after our golf outings. And more often than not, these heroes were situations where most of them were kids. And I say kids, 18 and up. There were kids between 18 and probably 25 that they showcased. Most of them, it was things that
Tom (24:39.926)
Hmm, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (24:44.901)
These kids would graduate from high school. They'd be partying on a boat to celebrate. One of them would dive off and go headfirst into a sandbar and boom, spinal cord injury, and they're in a wheelchair and they've got a lot of rehabilitative road to recovery. So those were the types of things that I saw early on. And this was 10 years before I even went to law school. So I understood that there's a lot of things that can happen that we don't expect.
Tom (24:50.69)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (24:54.224)
Right.
Tom (25:01.92)
Yeah.
Tom (25:08.012)
Mmm.
Dinesh Chawla (25:14.857)
Now these parents, when they find out their kids get rushed to the emergency room.
People will tell you when your children are in the emergency room, but legally, if a healthcare professional is asked by somebody without...
any powers in place. So if I'm a parent calling for my 18 year old kid saying, hey, what course of treatment are you using? I want this, that, or the other thing. They can say that's great, but we don't care because your child's 18 and we're doing what we have to do and there's no power of attorney in place. So we don't know what their intentions are. We're just going to take care of him the way we feel is medically best.
Tom (25:36.93)
Yeah.
Tom (26:00.878)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (26:01.057)
And that's their legal responsibility. I mean, due to a lot of different laws, you can't share certain types of information. Doesn't matter if that's their parent. They're 18. They have a right to privacy.
Tom (26:06.239)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (26:15.941)
therein lies a huge, huge problem. So it's one of those things where it gives parents peace of mind and it gives that 18-year-old person somebody there looking out for them so it doesn't have to be a judge. So 18 years old.
Tom (26:16.186)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tom (26:31.378)
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's a good point actually. Sorry, go ahead, you were gonna.
Dinesh Chawla (26:37.905)
No, no, I'm sorry. So that's the first rule of thumb is 18 years old, power of attorney. The next rule of thumb I have is as soon as somebody has a child, a minor child, well, you have to have a child to have a minor child, but as soon as somebody has that child, they should put a will in place because anything happens to both biological parents, whether they're married or not, me and my ex obviously divorced, but we get along fantastically.
Tom (26:52.129)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (27:04.697)
What if we're both in the same car taking our kids to the armada fair and we get into a car accident that's catastrophic and the kids survive but we don't? Where are our kids going to go? Who's going to be their guardian? Absent a will, that's a court decision and I don't want the courts deciding that for me.
Tom (27:09.501)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (27:19.307)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (27:25.425)
There's too many family members that may or may not be the right decision that the court would have to go through because of their branch tree logic that the rules say that they have to go through that I just don't feel are the best fit to raise my kids and not anything personal to those people.
Tom (27:37.13)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (27:43.849)
One of them's my dad and he's my hero. But he's 77 years old. He has no business raising a seven year old and a five year old if it comes down to that. It's gonna be way too much for him. So me and my ex, we read at our wills when we got divorced. We agreed on who we want to raise our kids if we can't. So if you have minor children, you should have a will. I have very...
Tom (27:53.658)
Yeah, yeah.
Tom (28:04.978)
That's fantastic, yeah.
Tom (28:11.06)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (28:13.501)
little rules of thumb with trusts. Trusts are more often than not, trusts are dictated by how much control you wanna keep. But I will say this based off of recent experience with some clients that I inherited, I'm seeing the value of
educating people with minor children that it's probably best for them to have a trust because then everything can be seamless and we're protecting the minor and their ability to control those assets if we have them in trust. We're also protecting the minor from needing a court-appointed conservator for any assets.
Tom (28:57.486)
So the trust is, can you explain that a little bit? Because I think I understand, you know, I just want my listeners to kind of get an idea what that means.
Dinesh Chawla (29:03.697)
Sure, absolutely, absolutely. So the major difference between a will and a trust, they're both, and let me back up really quick. A lot of people have the misconception that estate planning is about assets and how are we gonna pass those assets. If you look at the core of estate planning, it's about control. The first rule of thumb I told you was get a power of attorney in place, right?
Tom (29:24.295)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (29:31.921)
to make legal and financial decisions and healthcare power of attorney for medical decisions. That's about control. If I can't speak for myself, who's going to speak for me? It has nothing to do with assets. Now they might be speaking about assets, they might be signing off on a bank account, but the power of attorney gives them that control measure that allows them to sign off on that bank account. So it's really about keeping control. Okay?
Tom (29:55.799)
Right.
Dinesh Chawla (29:58.681)
The will is about keeping control through the decedent's probate process. It just means that, hey, if I die with anything in my name, like a bank account, a house, anything like that, that's a probate property now, because I didn't have any beneficiaries on it, and we need to know what's going on with it. It's part of my estate. So the will, it doesn't necessarily focus on who gets what.
It focuses on who's in control throughout that court proceeding, because the will is you inserting your rules and your intentions into that court process. So the judge is basically going to set their rule book aside and say, here's your will. These are the rules we're working with. Okay? The trust, go ahead.
Tom (30:31.655)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (30:46.85)
Yeah, yeah. So I was gonna kinda say that if you don't have those things in place, you have to go through like probate court and I've heard like it can cost like $5,000, you know, 8,000. Like it just depends on what's there and you can't even access like your, let's say, you know, your dad's bank accounts. You can't access anything. Like, and it's a big...
Dinesh Chawla (31:13.693)
Correct.
Tom (31:15.842)
Hassell if you don't have that will and place
Dinesh Chawla (31:20.685)
So the will, you have trusts and wills a little bit jumbled. So the will is only gonna lead us through the court. The trust allows us to avoid court altogether if it's properly funded. That means if we write a trust for somebody and we put everything.
Tom (31:29.086)
Okay.
Tom (31:32.919)
Hmm.
Tom (31:37.107)
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Dinesh Chawla (31:42.773)
out of their name and into the trust or we change the beneficiaries of that item to the trust that means if we put everything in the trust that means the trust owns everything. It's not in my name so when I die I would have a successor trustee to manage that trust for me and that successor trustee that I've named in the trust documents can now go into any bank any real
Tom (31:55.583)
Mmm.
Dinesh Chawla (32:13.153)
anything and say here's the death certificate, here's the trust saying I'm the successor trustee and here's my acknowledgement of being the trustee that I've signed off on. Okay so now I've got all the legal authorities to do whatever I need to do with trust property. Nothing else just trust property. So we want to make sure that if we've done a trust we want to make sure that we've gotten everything in the trust.
Tom (32:26.178)
Mm, yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (32:41.817)
So there are two ways to get things in the trust. We either retitle it while we're living into the name of the trust, which we handle for you, or, again, we handle this for people too, we change the beneficiary designations on the accounts to the name of the trust. That way when somebody dies, it goes directly to trust instead of to their potentially minor children or to their potential.
Tom (32:58.446)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (33:07.065)
children who are going through a bankruptcy or a divorce or anything like that because we don't want the liabilities of the beneficiary getting in the way of those properties too. So a trust just offers more safety and control and it takes us completely outside of the probate process. Okay. Now
Tom (33:18.893)
Oh, I see.
Tom (33:25.006)
Interesting, interesting. So, and you're saying that the trust, like if you have a beneficiary and they have like debts and things like that, could that put that, you know, your money that you left to them, could that put that in danger kind of? Okay.
Dinesh Chawla (33:42.062)
Yep, as soon as money is distributed from a trust to the beneficiary, as soon as if they're a beneficiary on a bank account or on an annuity or a life insurance policy, anything like that, any time somebody gets money into their hands outright, then
Tom (33:46.954)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (33:59.731)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (34:06.489)
their creditors can step into those shoes and take that money from them. So if I give three kids a house and one of those kids is going through bankruptcy, well, now the other two kids have a roommate called the bankruptcy court. So those are, you see what I'm saying? So, right, so those, and same thing, if one of them's going through a divorce, it gets caught up in that judgment.
Tom (34:10.771)
Yeah, yeah.
Tom (34:23.279)
Yeah, yeah, coming in.
Tom (34:32.602)
Oh, interesting. Okay. That's interesting, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (34:35.868)
Yeah, like my ex-father-in-law passed away before we got divorced. He was a great guy. My ex-mother-in-law is a great woman. And after he passed away, my ex-mother-in-law put her daughter as joint on her account. And I said, don't do that. I said, what if she gets into a car accident and now you've got her, and my ex is a bad driver. So now you've got...
Tom (34:42.581)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (34:55.552)
Mmm, okay.
Tom (35:03.658)
Hahaha
Dinesh Chawla (35:04.801)
now you've got her liabilities attached to your bank account. And I happen to know that my father-in-law had an insurance policy that is now in that bank account. So I'm fairly certain that there's some money in there. I don't know for a fact, but what I do know is that when I filed for divorce, one of the first things my mother-in-law told my now ex-wife
Tom (35:17.475)
Oh.
Dinesh Chawla (35:34.666)
Oh crap, you're on my bank accounts.
Tom (35:38.05)
Mmm.
Dinesh Chawla (35:39.685)
I could have, if I wanted to, gone after everything that my ex-wife's name was on, but we were amicable. There was no point in doing any of that stuff. But I could have. And that's what I was trying to warn my own ex-mother-in-law against is you don't need to have a joint owner. You've got powers of attorney in place. They can get to your checking account if they need to.
Tom (35:46.306)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (35:50.835)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (36:06.713)
So there's a lot of things that people think that they're doing the right way because their dad did it this way or their aunt and uncle did it this way or generations have been doing it this way and we've gotten away with it so far so we're gonna continue to do it this way. Now, and I hear people say that too. Oh, I don't need to trust her will. Mom and dad gave me my money through, or my inheritance through the mattress money. Why can't I just do that?
Tom (36:07.33)
Mmm.
Tom (36:15.191)
Right.
Tom (36:24.819)
Yeah, yeah.
Tom (36:36.064)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (36:37.185)
And I often, and this is where, this is where I love what I do in my background. The first, here's what I equate it to, is that's great. My dad smoked cigarettes for years and he never got cancer. Does that mean I should smoke cigarettes? Because I'm never gonna get cancer. You know, you can't base the potential consequences of doing things the wrong way based off the fact that other people have done them the wrong way and gotten away with it.
Tom (36:53.11)
Yeah, right, right.
Tom (37:05.738)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's you, you really gotta hedge your bets on things that could have drastic changes. As you know, that's what I kind of tell people. Like even though it didn't happen for this person, the dice are still rolling the same for you. You know, it's like that dangerous thing is still there and you have to change your lifestyle in my case to kind of...
Dinesh Chawla (37:06.477)
Yeah, so.
Dinesh Chawla (37:13.469)
correct.
Tom (37:32.866)
prevent that from happening in the future for you. Because it has, like, in the legal field, things can have devastating consequences. And same with medical.
Dinesh Chawla (37:36.624)
Right.
Dinesh Chawla (37:41.889)
Very, very devastating. Very, exactly, same with medical. And that's why, you know, what's the, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or what is it, something like that. So it is, it's, I don't wanna say it's an insurance policy, but it is, it's hedging your bets in case that type of stuff happens. Now, the most common thing I hear is, that'll never happen to me. Well,
Tom (37:51.67)
Worth it. Yep, uh-huh. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Tom (38:09.427)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (38:10.369)
My friend Pat, who died three days before my 40th birthday, he never thought he'd be on the ladder cleaning out his gutters and fall and break his back and die instantly. He never thought that, but you know what happened? Just that. Now he had an estate plan in place for his kids and his personal family stuff, but he also owned a few stores. And those stores, guess what those businesses were? Those were probate assets.
Tom (38:21.634)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (38:34.266)
Mm.
Dinesh Chawla (38:38.705)
They didn't have any beneficiaries on them. So, exactly.
Tom (38:41.802)
Oh, that's interesting. So that's a that's a new thing. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. Like, so if I have a my business, then that's a probate asset if it's not in the trust there. Wow.
Dinesh Chawla (38:48.238)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (38:53.913)
It is, absolutely. And here's the crazy thing. And I just had this experience the other day because I actually, when we're funding trusts, I walk the client through it. I'm there holding their hand. We were at the bank the other day putting designations to the trust. And this is the thing.
Tom (39:06.828)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (39:19.509)
I didn't think of this prior to going to the bank. I was thinking these were personal accounts. I didn't ask the client. But when we got to the bank, he said, yeah, we want to switch our business account into the trust too. And I had to explain to him that, and I don't know why this is, so this is not a legal policy. This is like a banking industry thing. You can put beneficiary designations on any type of bank account, except for a business account.
Tom (39:23.412)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (39:39.15)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (39:46.783)
Oh, that's... yeah, that's interesting.
Dinesh Chawla (39:47.597)
So I can't, the only thing I can do with a business owner is put signature access on their account. So if that business owner dies, somebody who with signature access can come in and sign everything in that account over to their personal account so it flows with their personal plans.
Tom (39:57.174)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (40:08.376)
Oh yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (40:09.573)
But without knowing that, a lot of business owners are dead in the water when it comes to that situation. One of the most common things we see going through probate are businesses, homes, and just things with poor beneficiaries on them. Like mom and dad had their beneficiaries set, but maybe one of the kids pre-deceased and now...
Tom (40:17.363)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (40:38.321)
that stuff goes where? Where's that gonna go? It's gonna wind up in somebody's probate assets. So those are the types of things that we kind of take a look at. It's not just the client, but what are the next levels down there? We gotta figure out who your beneficiaries are, who are your agents that you're picking. Especially as you age. If I have my sister as my power of attorney, well, there's a good chance
Tom (40:41.027)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (40:59.858)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (41:07.985)
My sister's three years older than me. I'm 44, so she's turning 48 this year. I'm turning 45 this year. Right now, we're great to have as each other. What happens when we're in our 70s? Is my sister the best person for me to have as my agent? Probably not, because she's going through probably the same end of life issues that I'll be going through. So I don't want my sister.
Tom (41:19.58)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (41:35.825)
to be worrying about taking care of her little brother if anything happens to her when she's got her own issues to take care of. I want somebody younger acting for me. So these are the types of things, and a state plan isn't just set it and forget it. These are things that we review with our clients, especially the elderly on an annual basis. Because again, I had a client the other day that we were talking to and she said, I,
Tom (41:50.652)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (42:03.257)
I need to move my son into this position and move my sister-in-law back down to a secondary slot because she's likely to die before, like the sister-in-law is likely to die or become incapacitated because of age. And now what good is her power of attorney if her agent under that power of attorney is incapacitated or deceased? So these are the types of things that we look at on annual basis for...
Tom (42:16.864)
Yeah.
Tom (42:28.781)
Right.
Dinesh Chawla (42:32.777)
usually people 65 and older. We wanna make sure that everything is seamless and is ready to go when their plan needs it.
Tom (42:42.218)
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. You know, I was thinking about guardianship, because I mean, I used to deal a lot with that in the hospital. And I think I just want to kind of explain to people what guardianship means. It means that there's one person that's assigned by like the state and they're taking care of you, but they are also taking care of, like it can be like 30 or 40 or 50 other people, and they're just like popping in.
to the hospital and saying, hey, how's this person doing? And then they leave. They may stay like an hour or so, and then they're out of there because they have all of these other people that are taking care of them. And some of them are really nice, some really nice guardians. So I've met ones that are not so nice, but it's much better to have someone who you trust and who can really pay attention to you.
Dinesh Chawla (43:29.936)
Right, yeah.
Tom (43:38.514)
especially if you have like a neurological injury, or your brain gets damaged to it, and you can't make your own decisions. I think having somebody that can really pay attention is a lot better.
Dinesh Chawla (43:43.121)
Yes.
Dinesh Chawla (43:52.561)
So there are two things when it comes to guardianship that if you don't mind, I'd like to clear up really, really quickly because these are some misconceptions that people don't quite understand because guardianship is used as a very loose term. Guardianship from a technical standpoint is over the health of somebody. So if I have legal guardianship over somebody, I'm looking out for their body. A conservatorship,
Tom (43:59.754)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom (44:07.415)
Hmm.
Tom (44:15.264)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (44:22.425)
is very similar to a guardianship except you're looking at their financials and their legals. So the conservator has the power to deal with all of the banks and all that other stuff and your assets where the guardian's main role is just the health decisions. Now if the person
Tom (44:30.917)
Oh, okay.
Dinesh Chawla (44:47.641)
doesn't have much and their funds or accounts are limited, then the guardian can act as both. All right, you don't need two separate, like the guardian can handle minimal amounts. But usually if there's a large amount of assets, the court wants a conservator in place too. As far as court appointed people, you're absolutely right. They usually have tons of people that they're working with.
Tom (44:55.265)
Mmm.
Tom (44:59.332)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (45:14.849)
Which is sad from a guardianship standpoint, especially because that's your health, that's your medical, that is the physical aspect of it.
Tom (45:15.687)
Yeah.
Tom (45:25.438)
Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's it's a and that's very difficult to actually.
Dinesh Chawla (45:26.337)
So when, absolutely, and here's the issue, and I'm included in this, I'm included in this issue. There are a lot of attorneys, good, bad, or indifferent, that will not take on a guardianship because of just that. It's a lot to take on. You have to be involved. To me, going in and talking to somebody for an hour in a hospital,
Tom (45:49.71)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (45:55.741)
It's not enough. You have to be involved. Like that's their physical wellbeing. You have to understand a lot of different things. You have to be at their doctor's appointments with them. Understand what pills they're taking because you're now their fiduciary. You have to make sure that they're complying with this stuff. So to me, that's a huge responsibility. I don't take it. It's too much time. Now, on a conservatorship level, if somebody is slowly going blind,
Tom (45:59.789)
Yeah.
Tom (46:11.616)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (46:25.649)
They're still sharp. They can't take care of their taxes or their bills as well as they used to be able to. I'll take something like that on because we can go in, we can set up a power of attorney. So I'm the acting agent. We can get ahold of their bank accounts and do auto pays and direct deposits and things like that to make life a little bit easier. Now I only have to meet with that client once a month for about an hour to go over.
Tom (46:46.831)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (46:55.105)
Hey, here are the bills that we paid. Here's everything that came out of your account this month. Here's everything that came into your account this month. This is where we're at. You good? Great. And we can move on. It's one hour a month. It's not that difficult. So yeah, we'll take those on, but the guardianships and the guardianships just weigh on people. It's a mental weight. It's an emotional weight. If people think that all lawyers are cold blooded and we don't get...
Tom (47:05.724)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (47:14.375)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (47:22.381)
emotionally charged or emotionally involved with our clients, you're wrong. Like if a client loses something, I lose sleep. If a client fails at something, I feel like I've failed too. It's whatever their outcomes are. Since we've tried to get them to where they are, we, we rise and fall with them. You know? So it's, it's not like, like think about a medical case.
Tom (47:26.353)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (47:44.095)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (47:50.777)
One of my cousins is an ER doctor and her and her husband both and the husband He told me that his job is the worst thing. He loves it, but he said it's in the endgame It's always a losing battle. He said his job is to prevent death There is nothing that can prevent death at some point. We're going to die. So whether He has a case
Tom (47:53.944)
Nice.
Tom (48:07.522)
Hmm.
Tom (48:13.205)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (48:18.085)
that he's seeing over and over and over in that emergency department, and no matter what strides they're making with this chronic case, eventually he knows he's gonna lose. Now mentally, how do you get over that and still try your best to help these people every day? That's an emotional connection. If you didn't have that emotional connection, you wouldn't care and you just give up. You know what, this person's gonna die. It's a chronic illness. Let's move on to somebody we can help.
Tom (48:30.283)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (48:36.786)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's.
Tom (48:47.107)
Right, right, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (48:47.589)
But we don't do that because we care. It's our job. And we're the people that got into this for a reason, right? So yeah, I haven't figured out how to emotionally wrap my head around doing a guardianship yet, but more power to those people who do. And I can't say enough about, even if they let something fall through the cracks or miss something, those people are not making a lot of money.
Tom (48:51.79)
Mhm.
Dinesh Chawla (49:16.693)
in their jobs as attorneys and they're doing what they do because they care. It's not because that's where they landed and they can't get out of that situation. You can find a job anywhere, a very well-paying job anywhere. They're doing what they're doing because they care and they love doing it. So they're stressed. I have all the sympathy in the world for them.
Tom (49:18.868)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (49:27.199)
Right.
Tom (49:33.727)
Yeah.
Tom (49:39.046)
Yeah, yeah. So I know we're kind of getting towards the end of the podcast, but I wanted to know about this story. So I saw one of your emails, there's a, you said it's a wild client story involving a fish sandwich at a large chain restaurant. Can you tell me, because I've been wanting to know more about this story here. Can you go into that?
Dinesh Chawla (49:43.813)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (49:48.767)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (49:54.193)
crazy client story.
Dinesh Chawla (50:02.365)
Yeah, yeah. So I will tell you exactly what this client told me. So we were in, when I say we, it's me and my assistant, Debbie. And I don't care what we do virtually, we meet with a lot of our clients virtually over Zoom. But the signing meetings, anytime we're signing something, it's always in person because I love going to the client's home and visiting them and just seeing what we're protecting. It gives me a little skin in the game.
Tom (50:12.393)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (50:32.213)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (50:32.921)
So my assistant, Debbie and I go and do these signing meetings in home for people. Now this particular client is a quadriplegic. He is married. Very good guys. Wild stories. He was a truck driver for a really long time. Like long haul cross country truck driver. Well, one day...
Tom (50:53.499)
Mmm.
Dinesh Chawla (51:02.405)
He was explaining this he said, you know He was you want to hear how all this like got its start and I said sure I'd like to know because I didn't know if it was like some sort of genetic degenerative disease or what it was so he said a Few years ago. It's like four or five years ago he was hungry and he was just driving home and Decided to go through a drive-through and pick up a fish sandwich meal
Tom (51:15.339)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (51:32.601)
and he got his fish sandwich meal, and as he was driving home, he took a bite into it, because why not eat while you're driving? I do it all the time, but he took a bite into it, and he's like, it tastes kind of funny, but I'm hungry, so I'm just gonna wolf it down, and we'll deal with the consequences later. So he wolfed down his food, and within about eight to 10 hours, he said,
Tom (51:41.291)
Yeah, yeah, why not? Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (51:58.149)
He just had the worst stomach pains and he knew right away. He's like, this has to be the food. So again, he started going through what happens when you've eaten something bad with your stomach and he's going through all the symptoms. Save some details here, but he wasn't feeling well. And he was very sweaty all the time. He was woozy, he was dizzy for about two and a half, three days. And on like the third day when he was feeling a little bit better,
Tom (52:03.221)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (52:11.248)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
Dinesh Chawla (52:27.617)
He said to his wife, I need to go to the bank and I need to run another errand. Let's go. So he drove to the bank. They did their thing at the bank. He got back into the car and said he felt dizzy and woozy again. Could she drive? So she did. They went to the next errand. They ran it. Coming home, they get into their driveway. He steps out of the car, passes out, instantly falls down.
hits his head on a brick paver that was like the corner of, you know how people will have their front porch and then there's like planter boxes right next to a porch? So that planter box was surrounded by brick pavers. And when he fell, he hit his head on the brick paver, which cut him right up here. So he was gushing blood. And he was only out from the point that he got out of the car,
Tom (53:06.371)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (53:25.937)
he passed out and when he hit the ground is when he came to again. And he was yelling at his wife that he's bleeding and all this other stuff. So she's coming around the car saying, if you're joking about this, and then she saw the blood. So she said, you know, where'd you hit? And he said, I feel it on my eye, but I can't feel the rest of my body.
Tom (53:31.939)
Oh, I see. Yeah.
Tom (53:43.584)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (53:56.377)
So she called the ambulance, they came, they did all these tests, and when he hit something, like one of his discs ruptured, I think it was, and it caused some severe damage on his spinal cord, and I think it severed some of the nerves in his spinal cord instantly. So now he's left as a quadriplegic. He can...
Tom (53:56.522)
Oh.
Tom (54:07.633)
Oh wow.
Tom (54:18.362)
Mm-hmm. Wow.
Tom (54:23.452)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (54:24.629)
move his hands, he can move his feet, but he can't feel anything below his neck. So he's in rehab right now. And this is a guy in his late 60s, early 70s, same with his wife. But he's in rehab now and I can see he does this stuff. He was holding his pen, he signed his name to everything. He's got really good handwriting to tell the truth. He's got better penmanship than I do. But
Tom (54:40.46)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (54:47.97)
Oh good, wow. Okay.
Dinesh Chawla (54:52.313)
He's a very capable guy. He just he just can't feel anything below his neck anymore now
Tom (54:58.242)
Hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (55:02.413)
When I tell people this story from now on, I know what the reaction I'm gonna get is. From 99% of the people, they'll say, that'll never happen to me. What are the odds that that'll happen to me? He thought the same thing. What are the odds that that's gonna happen to me? My friend Pat, what are the odds he was gonna fall off his ladder while he was cleaning the gutters off of his roof? To his death.
Tom (55:17.367)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (55:29.312)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (55:31.769)
We don't think, we think more about the odds of something happening than the prevention. And it's an easy prevent. Like, I'm sorry, it's not a prevention, like he wouldn't have been able to prevent falling. But a lot of the things that happened afterwards could have been prevented. Like there's a lot that could have been prevented, whether it's a medical plan, an estate plan, a financial plan, all of this stuff that happened.
Tom (55:45.259)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (55:51.616)
Right.
Dinesh Chawla (56:00.733)
after the fact could have been prevented. So those are the types of things that we look at. It's not so much a, hey we're going to guarantee that these things are going to happen to you, so we're going to stop it. No, it's, what do we need to consider based off your situation, right? If somebody is married with kids,
Tom (56:05.346)
Yeah.
Tom (56:22.452)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (56:25.509)
They don't even get the same treatment that somebody who's divorced with kids get because there's a host of separate issues. So each thing is a case by case basis and each case is gonna be handled differently based off the individual. So there are attorneys out there who we call trust mills. Just like there are physicians out there who will, you walk in, oh, you need a script? Here you go.
Tom (56:47.34)
Hmm.
Tom (56:53.31)
Yeah, patient meals. We call them patient meals, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (56:53.933)
No big deal, right? Exactly. Yeah, so exact same concept. They're not diagnosing the situation. They're just giving the client an easy out. That's not us. We, like I was raised in a family of doctors where we diagnose things and then we figure out what the best game plan is and we execute that game plan.
Tom (57:05.579)
Yeah, yeah, that's.
Tom (57:18.244)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (57:20.917)
It's the same concept with most professionals within their industry. I don't care if it's real estate We're gonna figure out what kind of house you want to be in. What's your pricing now? We've got a game plan Let's go execute it Same thing with medicine. What's your diagnosis? What are your living standards? Whether your health standards? Let's put some rules and regulations around you and now let's execute that health plan for you
Tom (57:34.72)
Yeah.
Tom (57:40.665)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (57:46.706)
Yeah, yeah. And I, and one of the things you say is, you know, put it around their own wishes too. Right? Like we're actually working with them almost for me, it's almost like I'm a coach. And if I approach it as a coach method, they're more likely to adopt a plan because I'm including them into it instead of just the dictator doctor that's like, Hey, you're going to do this. You know, I, I think the coaching really helps do that. And then the educational point.
Dinesh Chawla (57:51.697)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (58:10.48)
Right.
Tom (58:16.47)
component like you do as well.
Dinesh Chawla (58:19.393)
And that's what I think is so key is the education. For me, I don't want because again, it's not like my services are cheap because they're not no attorney services is cheap.
Tom (58:33.754)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (58:38.085)
The education is paramount because I need for people to understand what they're getting from me. My clients don't leave the office, I don't leave their house, I shouldn't say office because we don't have one, we do house calls, but I don't leave their house until they can tell me some key points of their plan and how it works. All right, I want them to understand what they're doing, why we're doing it this way.
Tom (59:01.931)
Mm-hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (59:07.821)
and what the outcomes are going to be. And they should understand all of that because some of the first few questions I ask are we back into that? What are the outcomes that you want? Okay, well, what's your life like? Okay, well, here's the best thing that we can do to match up with your life to get those outcomes that you want.
Tom (59:31.614)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (59:33.021)
It's a very simple equation, but a lot of people like to overlook it because we're the experts now, and if you come in and you look exactly like the last person that came in, then you need this for sure. That's not the case, but that's what people think. So if Uncle John and Aunt Karen went to a lawyer and got a trust, well, why do I need to?
Tom (59:35.356)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (59:47.44)
Yeah, yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (59:59.281)
go to a lawyer to get a trust. I know I need one now because Uncle John and Aunt Karen got one, right? No, because maybe Uncle John and Aunt Karen have like three houses, a couple boats, this, that, and the other thing, and you have an apartment and a cap and a leased car. So your needs, your wants, your situations, wildly different. So it just baffles my mind to think that you can see
Tom (01:00:05.232)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (01:00:19.004)
Yeah.
Dinesh Chawla (01:00:27.729)
different situations and think that, oh, I need the same legal help that they do. That I'm no different. Because you are. Everybody's unique. Everybody's different.
Tom (01:00:32.423)
Mm-hmm.
Tom (01:00:35.986)
Yeah, it's very, yeah, vastly, vastly different. And, you know, I really appreciate you going over all of this with me. I think it's awesome. I think it's really cool the new way that you're practicing, you know? And I'm sure it gives you energy too. And, you know, thanks a lot for just taking time out of your day to go over this with me and...
Dinesh Chawla (01:00:49.382)
I do too.
Tom (01:01:03.722)
I'm sure all of my listeners really, really appreciate it too.
Dinesh Chawla (01:01:07.469)
Well, thank you very much for having me. And I really do appreciate it. And yes, I do feel like we've got, in our professional mindsets, we've got a lot of synergies and similarities. We've talked before about all this stuff, but.
Tom (01:01:21.754)
Yeah, we have and I'm definitely gonna, I'm gonna get my wife and me maybe to talk to you or sign up for one of your workshops. I think it'd be a good idea. Yeah, go for it, let's do it.
Dinesh Chawla (01:01:29.649)
Great. Just, if it's okay, can I plug the workshops? All right, great. Then, all right. We have the same workshop four times a month, online via Zoom. We have them the first and third Tuesdays of every month at 10 a.m. And the second and fourth Thursdays of every month at 2 p.m. Like I said, they're over Zoom.
Tom (01:01:57.293)
Hmm.
Dinesh Chawla (01:01:59.697)
on-demand workshop on our website which is www.challa.com. If you go to our workshops and events section we have an on-demand workshop that it's the same as any in-person or zoom workshop. The concepts are all the same. No two workshops are the same though because I go by my crowd and.
We ask questions of the crowd so I know how to tailor my stories to that crowd.
Tom (01:02:32.778)
Mm, nice. Okay, well, fantastic. I'll put that all in the show notes as well. So I'll put it right up front so they can see it and get access to it because I know people are gonna be, they'll text me for it, you know. Well.
Dinesh Chawla (01:02:38.041)
Awesome, awesome, thank you so much.
Dinesh Chawla (01:02:48.208)
Well, again, thank you very much. I love having these opportunities and I can't wait to have you on my podcast.
Tom (01:02:57.694)
Yes, definitely. All right, thanks so much.
Dinesh Chawla (01:03:00.634)
Alright.