Life Changes Fast
“You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”
— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Client Experience Spotlight
Idea: The moment a client thought he was going to die—and what he did next.
Visionary Advisors aren’t just planners. They’re accountability partners, teachers, and guides through life’s most defining moments. They help clients think bigger, feel deeper, and act on what matters most.
One UHNW client I know well thought his private plane was going down earlier this year. For four minutes, he believed it was over. After they landed safely, the first thing he did was call his wife. The second thing he did was write his first legacy letter to his daughters. Then he called me to say thank you.
Not all of us are this lucky.
Joan Didion captured this truth with precision:
“In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an ‘ordinary Sunday morning’ it had been. ‘It was just an ordinary beautiful September day,’ people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers.”
Didion’s point was simple: the biggest moments always start like any other day. That’s what makes them so disorienting—and why legacy has to be ready before it’s needed.
Legacy in Practice
There’s an exercise from The Tools called Grateful Flow. Many Visionary Advisors have modified it to help clients capture gratitude in a FamilyOS.
Here’s how to guide your clients through it:
Open a new entry in the Legacy Vault titled Gratitude Letter. If you're not using Total Family yet, a Word doc works just as well.
Set a 15-minute timer. Share this simple prompt: “For the next 10 minutes, the only thing you can type is things you’re thankful for. They can be big—like your family—or small—like post-its and french fries. Be thankful for what hasn’t happened, like not being in a fatal car accident. Or what has, like falling in love. Ten minutes. Go.”
Leave the room. Let the client do the exercise alone.
When you return, don’t ask what they wrote. Ask how they feel. Ask about their energy. Invite them to share if they’d like. Then have them save and date the letter in their vault.
Content Worth Exploring More
Read: The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower—and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion
By Phil Stutz and Barry Michels
This book isn’t about legacy directly. But it’s one of the most practical books we’ve found for helping clients get unstuck. The Tools offer language and structure for dealing with fear, resistance, and self-doubt—all things that keep families from having real conversations and doing what matters most.
The Visionary Advisor Podcast
As the year winds down, these conversations matter more than ever. If you're looking to help families move from surface-level planning to meaningful continuity, the Visionary Advisor Podcast is a good place to start.
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