0:01 Who are you? [music] And where are you going? What do you want?
0:15 >> [music]
0:16 >> Hello and welcome to Trust & Estates Weekly. I'm your host Kevin Bemmel and I'm here every Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time to talk about estate planning and trust and probate administration and and and the whole sort of um generational uh you know, transfer of of legacy. Uh primarily from the standpoint of professionals like myself and my guest Pat whom I'll introduce in a moment, but also for those of you who maybe you know, you were appointed the trustee or
0:51 you know, of your of your parents' trust and now you're having to fill this role, but you don't do this every day and it's it's it's complex. It's opaque. So, hopefully you'll learn some things here that will help you fill that role uh more more easily. So, today I I'm super pleased to introduce my guest Pat Kramer. Uh Pat and I ostensibly met just a couple of months ago, but then in talking we realized we we first met uh well, you can Pat wouldn't be old enough for this to actually be true, but
1:26 something like you know, 20 or 25 years ago or something like
1:30 >> [laughter]
1:31 >> in seemingly a different life. So, um it's it's always nice to uh to reconnect with uh someone certainly from from the early days of my professional life. Uh so so uh Pat is as you can see, she's a writer for hire. You may be thinking like writer trust and estates? So, you'll see as as the show develops, Pat has got a a very interesting role to play in the preservation of legacy, which I think is sometimes overlooked in the whole sort
2:07 of press of of financial issues. And so that's why I was really really happy to reconnect with Pat and and have her on the show. So Pat, welcome to Trust & Estates weekly. Thanks so much for for coming on today.
2:21 >> Happy to be here. Thank you, Kevin.
2:23 >> Yeah, you're welcome. So So start out if you would like I have all my guests do, tell us at least a little bit about your background. And in particular, I think most of us are fascinated by the idea of writing for a living, which is it seems like an ever tougher thing to do. But but tell us tell us about your background so the viewers can get to know you at least a little bit.
2:49 >> Sure. Well, I founded my business writer for hire. And uh I go my website is actually writerpatcramer.com. But I founded my business writer for hire uh actually 36 years ago. Um So it was a long time ago we met.
3:13 >> [laughter]
3:14 >> Kevin and I were in a a networking group together when I started my business. Uh anyway, I started out as a broadcast journalist. And that means I was a news reporter a producer, an editor, and a news broadcaster. I worked on radio. I worked all over New England. I'm originally from Massachusetts. And I got my degree in mass communications with a split major journalism and public relations. So my work started in the area of broadcast journalism, and then I
3:51 branched out to print journalism, writing for newspapers, magazines, um out here in LA, the LA area, once I moved here in 1988. And I founded my business shortly after that, writing directly for the client, because I I would you know, I wanted to see if I could help businesses promote themselves better, so they could be more successful. And the news business, you know, it can really become very depressing working in the news business every day.
4:26 Um, there's a lot of
4:28 >> Shocking.
4:28 >> violence, there's a lot of death, there's crimes, and I just wanted to focus on something positive, and that was helping people in business or individuals be more successful to promote themselves better. And as a writer, you know, obviously I could, you know, write a whole range of materials to help them with that. And so, that's how I you know, that's my background working in radio, print journalism, uh and as a writer directly for clients as well as PR agencies.
5:00 >> And so, before we get into the the legacy writing you're doing now, um talk if you would, what is it like to you know, write copy for other people? Um, I I think we we kind of nowadays, I think a lot of people, you know, they'll they just bring up, you know, a chat GPT or whatever and say, you know, write me this, right? Um, I think uh you know, as sophisticated as these, uh you know, large language models are,
5:36 um they don't they're not human, right? And so, I I I'm I'm and I I use them, you know, in my business, frankly, um but I'm very diligent about making sure that what they do reflects my voice.
5:54 >> Mhm.
5:54 >> So, I can imagine that writing for other businesses and such, um, you know, the business owners are looking for something authentic maybe is the best way to put it. So, how do you or how did you when you were doing that work? How did you How did you engage in that process, I guess, to, you know, come up with uh, material that that that resonated not only with the business owner, but then with, you know, clients and customers?
6:28 >> Sure. Well, you know, when you work in communications, um, you become very intuitive in knowing what questions to ask because it isn't just the information that someone gives you, it's also what's missing. And what's missing is what you have to find out. So, you have to ask a lot of questions to find out, um, really, uh, what what it is that you're trying to bring to the to the audience, the target audience that, you know, a a client wants to approach, um, and then you have to put yourself in the shoes of that audience and kind of, uh,
7:07 work with the voice of the client to make sure it resonates with the audience they're trying to reach. So, you have to guide them through the process of providing the right information, withholding the wrong information. Sometimes people give too much information and that can really, um, be a problem in terms of promoting yourself. Um, also, you want to make sure that they're not writing something cliche. You want something unique and original. And as far as AI, AI makes mistakes as
7:43 we all have found out by working with AI.
7:46 >> Right.
7:46 >> Um I you know, I don't have AI write anything for me, but I use AI for transcribing my interviews. And there's constantly mistakes throughout it.
7:58 >> Mhm.
7:58 >> And I have to um catch those mistakes. I have to decipher, you know, all of that information and then I have to uh take it and put it into the right format that from a a reader's point of view is going to make sense. So, you know, it isn't just boom, AI does what you need it to do. You have to massage it. You have to put in the right information. You have to take out the wrong information. You have to look at uh is it is it actually authentic? Is this your description or are they taking
8:33 it from someone else's website? And there could be copyright violations. I mean, you have to be very careful with that. You know, and I'm seeing that now as more people are using it. Um we all have content on the internet on our websites which AI is stealing right now. Taking from, you know, the perspective of something that's original and customized to your business and using it for someone else's. So, you just got to be careful.
9:03 >> Okay, yeah, that that that certainly makes sense. So, how did you move from you know, working with business owners, helping them promote their businesses to what you're doing now, which is, you know, helping people um preserve um their legacies or or the legacies of their families?
9:24 >> Sure. And I still do uh promotional content, you know, if someone approaches me and asks me, "Can you write, you know, a business proposal or press release? Do a press release campaign, contact the media?" I can do all that for my clients. Um, but what I really, really enjoy is writing uh historical memoirs from the client's point of view. Now, most of my clients are people who are, you know, in their 70s, 80s, even 90s. And if they're sharp still in their 90s, uh you know, I can interview them and
9:59 get a lot of information to put into the, you know, the memoir for their family. Uh sometimes it's individual, sometimes it's a family history. And how I started with that was um someone had asked me where my family was from, meaning my grandparents. And that's a common question cuz, you know, we're all immigrants. Um so, you know, I'm third generation and my grandfather and grandmother on my dad's side were from Russia, which is now the Ukraine, the part where they were from.
10:32 >> Mhm.
10:32 >> Um on my mom's side, I was pretty sure they were German, but I wasn't really sure of the history because I never knew my grandfather and my grandmother and I never spoke about that sort of thing. Um and she passed away when I was 15 or 16, so I didn't have that much time with her. So, I went on ancestry.com and I started doing my research, my due diligence, and I was able to build my family tree to over 350 people. I was able to do all kinds of research
11:10 for all four branches of my grandparents, and I was able to get to know my grandfather through the information online and through other people's stories um who knew him when um you know, before I was born and who were able to tell me those stories. So, I was able to write memoirs as tributes to people who had already passed away and that's what I did. I didn't just write one memoir, I wrote four memoirs for all four grandparents. In the [clears throat] process I discovered
11:46 my grandfather on my mom's side was from Austria. My grandmother was from Germany but it was a portion of Germany that was taken over by Russia so it was Prussia and things moved around a lot back when you know her family came over in the late 1800s. Um I was able to connect with relatives who I hadn't spoken with since I was a child, never knew as an adult and I was able to have conversations with them and I was also able to track down some people in the family that I never knew
12:21 before. That I found out I was connected to and it was just a wonderful journey and I enjoyed it so much that I started telling other people about it and people started asking me if I could write their family memoirs and that's how I got into this business and that was about 20 years ago.
12:42 >> So aside from perhaps being intrigued by your story, what do you typically find is the motivation for people wanting to document either their you know their own history or you know their families history?
13:01 >> Oh that's a good one Kevin. Well everyone wants to preserve their history. Everyone wants to be remembered. No one wants to be forgotten when they die. So usually that is the motivating factor. They want something as a leave behind to tell their grandkids who they were in their [clears throat] life but it also serves a purpose to remind the people who are writing it Uh, what they've accomplished in their life. It reminds them sometimes when they begin this journey, they're not quite sure what their legacy is, but as I ask them questions and they start
13:37 answering those questions, stories evolve and they start remembering more and more about their lives and about people in their lives that they hadn't thought about, you know, maybe in 50 years. And those memories start bubbling to the surface. I write them all down. I ask them questions that ties their life in, uh, with all of these stories and then I usually have to take it apart like a jigsaw puzzle and put it back together because when you're interviewing people, they don't talk in chronological order, as you know.
14:12 >> Right.
14:12 >> They just tell me things they think of at that moment. So, I take it all apart. I put it together as a writer, as a story. And then I have the memoir, the manuscript for them to read and remind themselves and relive the past. And you know, reliving the past is a wonderful thing because it it serves to heal old wounds and also remember old loves. It's a beautiful process.
14:41 >> Yeah. Uh, there's
14:44 >> [clears throat]
14:45 >> I I can only imagine there must be a you know, pretty profound emotional and and even a spiritual component to what you're doing and I'm I'm I'm curious to know if if if that's the case and if so, uh, how you how you handle that.
15:10 >> Um, could you be more specific in terms of
15:13 >> Well, I I guess I you know, kind of a like from my perspective, I'm I primarily deal with people's finances and not that there's no emotion connected to finances, but look, it's it's it's numbers and all of that and and and so it's it's, you know, to a certain extent fairly cut and dried.
15:32 >> Sure.
15:33 >> But in in in people bringing up, you know, memories as you mentioned a moment ago of maybe past loves, um those can be I mean, they can be wonderful, but they can also be very sad. Uh and and I can I can imagine that people are experiencing a range of emotions as these recollections come to them.
15:59 >> Mhm. [clears throat]
15:59 >> And and you know, here you are sitting there, you know, writing them down or recording them or, you know, whatever your process is. Um and you know, all of a sudden somebody is, I don't know, perhaps crying over, you know, unrequited love or something like that. So,
16:17 >> Mhm.
16:17 >> you know, it it it it strikes me that, you know, you you you may have a, you know, an additional aside from being a writer, in addition to being a writer, you know, you're kind of mother confessor or you know, something like that.
16:31 >> [laughter]
16:31 >> Well, yeah, that's true. Um and, you know, there is a catharsis that happens when people talk about past trauma. A lot of times people withhold those stories from their children. And [snorts] for good reason, they don't want to traumatize their children. Um they don't want to be judged by something they did or didn't do. And sometimes they just don't want to bring it up because they don't want to experience it again. When they're talking to me and I'm an impartial observer in their mind, they don't mind telling me these stories
17:06 because I they don't I don't have an emotional investment in it. And they're not risking any kind of judgement on my end. Um so, people tell me a lot of things they don't tell their kids
17:19 >> Mhm. and it's really important that they do that because if they haven't talked about these things in 50 or 60 years it's been festering it's been on their mind they're having nightmares they're having anxiety attacks and I've seen this you know catharsis happen when people start telling me their stories so I'll give you an example I had a client who is from Cambodia her son had hired me to write his mother's memoir and she and her family
17:56 had spent almost four years living in the jungles of Cambodia after the American forces left Vietnam they were subjected to ongoing brutality fear of being killed at any moment starvation disease and they were surrounded by people who were in the same boat they couldn't get help from anyone or reassurance
18:24 >> right
18:24 >> she told me the stories of her life during that period and after we completed her memoir she said you know I had nightmares every night for the past 40 years where I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking I was still in the jungle trying to escape and she said I don't have those nightmares anymore
18:50 >> wow
18:51 >> they've gone away and you know her family did escape they waited for the full moon and then they they basically ran with their children on their backs running through the jungle at night in the darkness to escape the soldiers and thinking they were going to be shot in the back in any moment and they they walked for 3 days to the closest village and they were finally able to get to a Red Cross camp and go to safety. The Red Cross camp was not very nice.
19:27 She described it as a place where there were flies constantly, you know, in everything and too many people and it was unsanitary. But she was able to get out of there within a couple of months and she lives in Southern California and like I said, she no longer has nightmares because she was able to unload those stories. And that is really the principal reason people write memoirs is they need that on paper to let go of those memories.
20:00 >> [snorts]
20:00 >> They can they can look at those memories as just something they read after they have them on paper and they don't have to carry them physically in their gut anymore, which is where they are carried or in some portion of their neck, you know, if you see people say they're always complaining about neck aches, the you know, the muscles are holding on to those memories. They're called muscle memories and there's a lot of trauma in it. It just resonates, you know, in some form of you know, weakness in their health. So,
20:36 it's really really helpful for them to talk. I'm not a therapist, but I am there to listen to their stories and to ask questions and sometimes I'm able to tie together the memories and say to them well, I understand that, you know, this was very painful for you, but as an adult, can you look at it from a different perspective now and see how those experiences helped you become the person you are today?
21:04 >> [snorts]
21:04 >> And that's what I try to do to help them remove the trauma to take them, you know, away from the child's perspective, which is how they might remember it when they experienced it. And look at it now as a way that they can inspire other people by having survived these experiences.
21:25 >> Wow, very powerful. Let's take a quick break and I want to I want to ask a follow-up question to that.
21:30 >> Thank you, Kevin.
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22:16 >> So, you know, I I worked as you know, I was a chaplain in the military for many years and so I've worked with a lot of veterans, people, you know, who are in the military, etc. And one of the phenomenon that I see is that especially people who have experienced combat, and there's only [clears throat] a very very limited group of people with whom they'll share those experiences, if there's anybody at all. Um, and and yet
22:50 >> [clears throat and cough]
22:52 >> I think there's also fear may be too strong a word, but a concern that this whole experience in in which they had a part will be forgotten. And and and especially as they get older, that seems to compel them that to then want to uh tell those stories or you know, document you know, what happened. And so I'm I'm I'm curious to know if
23:30 how that dynamic may impact your work.
23:35 >> Absolutely. I'm going to give you an example. Okay. This is a book that I edited and helped Ghost write for a former Army major. And this is an example of what you just asked about. So it's called Crossing Lines. It's by Edward Zobrist. And Edward um Edward was a client of mine. He um rose through the ranks of the Army to a major. He was involved in the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
24:11 He served in South Vietnam as an advisor to the generals um where he actually was in the command station advising the generals of what was going on on the ground. And he also was the advisor to the South Vietnamese um commander and was out there in the combat areas um instructing the military on where to drop bombs basically. Uh it was an amazing story.
24:49 The most amazing part of it was his love for a young Vietnamese woman who um after he was reassigned to the Presidio he found out that Saigon was going to fall and he wanted to rescue this woman and her family because he knew that they were going to be um killed probably. Her brother was you know in in the South Vietnamese army and the military were the first people assassinated. So he knew that if he didn't do something she was probably going to die.
25:25 And it's a story about how he managed to go back to Vietnam without his uh commander's approval. He said he was taking a two-week fishing trip with his brother in northern California. And instead he managed to somehow get on the last Pan Am flight. You remember Pan Am the airlines? He managed to get in the last Pan Am flight to Vietnam. They were flying in to rescue their employees and get them out of there before Saigon fell. He managed to get a seat on that flight
26:01 and once there he maneuvered a plan to get 150 people including his girlfriend and her family out of the US Embassy on a cargo plane that was flying out of Saigon as the force the communist forces were invading the city. It's an amazing story. I mean it makes it gives you chills. Um he was successful in getting them out and getting them to safety and of course he married her and has children with her
26:37 and he housed her whole family in his apartment. I think it was like a two-bedroom apartment with nine or 10 people living there for a year or two. But he managed to help them get safely to America and start a new life. So, you know, as far as veterans talking about their stories, yes, he told me his story. That was his story. He didn't have to tell me about every detail in combat. That wasn't the important focus. The important focus was how he rescued
27:12 his his girlfriend and her family. And also, why he stayed in the army as long as he did, 20 years. And how he, you know, how he went from from one assignment to another and then into private life and what he did during his his career as you know, a non-military personnel. By the way, he he he did not get an dishonorable discharge, but they took away all of his benefits and he was just 2 weeks from
27:47 retirement when that happened.
27:49 >> Wow.
27:49 >> So, he they allowed him to uh they allowed him basically to retire with with a certain amount of salary. But, it was kept on the down low and he was not able to attend the ceremony where he got, you know, his his medals pinned. Um It was kept very quiet cuz they didn't want bad press about the Vietnam War at that point in time.
28:18 >> Right. Right. Wow.
28:19 >> amazing story though and he's not the only military person I've actually done a memoir for. I did one for a Basque man, a man from the Basque region of Spain, who was also in the military.
28:33 >> Wow.
28:34 >> And uh Yeah, the stories are very interesting. They're from all different perspectives.
28:39 >> Mhm. [clears throat] So, I'm talk if you would about um the process that that you go through. You You talked a little bit about it and you know, interviewing people, asking questions, etc. What What What is the process? How Like it especially if it's you mentioned um the Cambodian woman, it was actually her son.
29:04 >> [laughter]
29:05 >> Mom, I got you this gift. This woman is going to come and ask you about your life, right? I can imagine and wow, um gee, thank you, son.
29:16 >> Well, there's always there's always that agreement that they'll do it before I get involved.
29:21 >> Uh-huh.
29:21 >> Um so, usually it's the children who hire me and [clears throat] they ask the parent or whomever they're writing want me to write this for if they would be interested in doing this. And sometimes um wealth advisors or financial people like yourself will direct their clients to me because they know they have good stories and they think they should be um you know, somehow memorialized or uh you know, the legacy should be somehow recorded.
29:52 >> Mhm.
29:53 >> So, once there's an agreement, I speak with them about, you know, the general rate. There's different levels of how I work. Uh do they want the starter package which is 50 pages? Do they want to go 100 or 150 pages? Um they want to maybe go 200 pages. Is this a family history or just an individual history? Do they want this to be kept private or is this an inspirational story they want to share with the world? And we talk about all those things and
30:28 then I advise them on how to get started and we go through the process of the specifics of their life that they want to talk about just in a general way and then we set an appointment and I begin the first interview. And every interview will go an hour to an hour and a half. It will be at their convenience. Um, anytime from 9:00 in the morning till 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon on a weekday. Um, usually I do it the using Zoom
31:04 because I can get my transcript um, that way. Um, and then I take the transcript from the interview and I go through it. I improve it. I take it apart and put it back together as I mentioned, you know, and write the first chapter. Because it's going to take 5 6 hours for every hour of interview for me to take the transcript, improve it, then go back, take it apart, put it back together as a writer and write that chapter. And then we I send it to them. They review it.
31:39 We set up the next appointment and we start the next chapter. And we do that through every segment of their life. When we get to the end of the memoir, we review the whole manuscript. They make any changes they want. They add any photos they want to add. We decide on whether it's going to be a public memoir or not, whether it's going to be digital or printed or published as a book.
32:07 >> Mhm.
32:08 >> And that's the process.
32:10 >> Wow. And
32:14 >> [laughter]
32:17 >> I'm I I have this image of me, you know, going to my mom, and saying, you know, my mom is um, she uh, you know, earlier this year celebrated the um, let's see, I have to think about this for a minute now. Uh, 53rd anniversary of her 39th birthday. So, [laughter]
32:37 >> It's wonderful.
32:38 >> I I promised my mother a long time ago she would never get older than 39. Um
32:43 >> [laughter]
32:44 >> Um I could imagine, you know, her kind of, you know, giving over this information to you um and then reading it and kind of going Mhm. No.
32:57 >> [laughter]
32:57 >> I don't I don't want it to say this, right? So, I'm I'm curious what kind of um conflicts might arise uh you know, as you're working your way through someone's story and how do you how do you deal with those those conflicts?
33:15 >> Well, I always tell them first of all that they don't have to give it to anyone to read while they're still alive. So, A, they don't have to share it with anyone. They can have it held in their estate plan until after they are deceased. And I always tell them this is from your perspective, so you can say whatever you want. You don't have to edit it for anybody else. Um this is your story and you tell it the way you want to tell it because if you don't tell it someone else is going to tell it for you and they're not going to remember it as well as you do and they may mess up the
33:52 the dates, the facts, the names, the way the story went and they may tell it from someone else's perspective that you know, if there was a conflict say between your mom and a sister, they may tell it from how her sister viewed it instead of how your mom viewed it. So, you want to make sure that it's you know, recorded from your perspective cuz that is your chance to have that story told the way you want it remembered. And if you don't do that, someone else is going to do it. It's like the game telephone. Do you remember the game telephone? We all played this
34:27 as kids. It gets changed every time someone else tells the story.
34:31 >> Right.
34:31 >> That's going to happen with anyone's story if they're not written down. And you know, I I could just tell you from my own perspective, um when I was starting to research my maternal grandmother's story, I had memories of my grandmother, but only till age 16. So, I didn't know her that well. She came to visit. She lived out of town. She came to visit a couple times a year, but you know, what do you ask your grandmother when you're that young? You know, you don't really you're not really interested in talking to the older
35:06 people, um when you're a teenager. Um so, I didn't know her that well, but I I had memories and I wrote them down when I started doing my research for my memoir. I called my first cousin. My first cousin lived in the same city as my grandmother and spent a lot of time with her. And I shared my memories like 20 years ago with my first cousin. And my first cousin said, her name's Jody, by the way. Jody shared with me a lot more memories that she had and she corrected some of my perspective of my
35:42 grandmother. Um she said, "No, it wasn't that way, it was this way." And she had a lot of detail, which was really helpful to me because I I just thought I knew, you know, I was grasping for details. Um but my cousin knew and my cousin, by the way, has a photographic memory. And she remembers dates, names, things she saw on pieces of paper. It's amazing. Still, she's in her late 60s and she can still do that. Uh so, she had a lot of information on my grandmother. I just
36:18 happened to be going through my files last week and I somehow opened a Google Drive file and this file popped up from 20 years ago and I said, "Hmm, what's this?" And I read it and I was like, "Oh my god, I forgot that I had done this." Um and it brought back all these memories of my grandmother
36:40 >> [snorts]
36:40 >> that I had forgotten about. So, um you you really want to preserve those things early on when you still have a vivid memory. But but to answer your question, my grandmother had a falling out with one of her sisters and that feud um persevered to the end of her life. So, we never saw her sister. Her sister never came to our house when I was growing up because they had this falling out when I was a little kid or before I was born.
37:15 Uh so, I didn't know her sister or her sister's family. Um but I had heard the story of why they had a feud. It was over financial things. And um it was just amazing to me that I had this story told to me from from my my cousin's perspective, from my mother's perspective, and also a cousin on the other side who knew the other sister. And I got to pull all these details together in my own mind and realize
37:50 these were two people who never got to heal their wounds. They were sisters, they were close. Um it's unfortunate that I didn't get to write this memoir earlier cuz it could have healed a lot for the two of them.
38:03 >> Yeah. Yeah. I I again I have a follow-up question, but let's take a quick break. Probate and Trust TV, your curated source for the most useful and insightful content on estate planning and trust and probate administration featuring standout professionals like Bill Gross, Paul Rabalais, James Cunningham, and yours truly. Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, real estate professional, or working on your own succession plan, this channel helps you quickly find the clearest, most
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38:50 >> So, when you're writing more of a a family memoir as opposed to an individual, um and and this this is sort of speaking to the story you were just telling, um and there are, you know, conflicts between family members or between branches of the family, um how do you um
39:23 >> Navigate it?
39:24 >> Navigate it. That's That's the term I'm looking for. How do you navigate that, right? Because it's like walking through a minefield. I would
39:30 >> Yeah. Well, this is again from the perspective of the person who I'm interviewing. So, I'm not a news uh reporter saying, you know, my grandmother said it was this, but her sister said it was that. I'm not doing that. This is my grandmother's memoir. I'm telling it from my grandmother's perspective.
39:48 >> Mhm.
39:49 >> I'm I'm reinforcing whatever she wants to tell me. So, it is These memories are sacred to her. She needs to hold on to her memories. I'm not telling her she's wrong. I'm not looking telling her to look at her sister's point of view. I'm saying, this is your story. Tell me whatever you want. And I am reinforcing for her that her stories are uh worth preserving. So, my purpose is to um honor that individual and um give
40:24 them that opportunity to talk and not challenge anything that they say.
40:29 >> [snorts]
40:29 >> Um I do want to tell you a little about inspirational stories because a lot of times memoirs are meant to be inspirational. So, one of the first books I wrote with uh a client for his memoir was called The Rebel and The Rabbi's Son.
40:47 >> Uh-huh.
40:47 >> And this is by Izzy Eichenstein.
40:50 >> Uh-huh.
40:51 >> And Izzy came to me and said, "I would like to write my memoir about my life um and then you know, share it with my kids, but also share it with an audience outside of my family because I think this could inspire you know, more people and you know, when they when they hear my hardship and how I overcame it." So, Izzy was raised in a Chassidic family in Chicago and both his mother and father's families were um head rabbis back in the old country and
41:27 they were the leaders of their congregations. And every male in the entire family on both sides was a rabbi. And there was no question of what they were going to do with their life. This is what they were going to do with their life from the time they were born. However, Izzy decided as the youngest male in the family that that wasn't the path he wanted to follow. And he pushed back. And this is the story of how yes, he was the rabbi's son, but he was also the rebel in the family and because of that his family tried to indoctrinate him.
42:02 That was the first response. "We're going to send you to the Catskills to a um Torah study camp and [clears throat] you're going to come out the way we want you to.
42:14 >> [laughter]
42:14 >> That didn't happen. He ran away.
42:16 >> Mhm.
42:17 >> He ended up in Greenwich Village. And this was around the time Bob Dylan was um building an audience. As was a um Israeli folk singer who he mentions in his book. And he ended up living in the village and becoming that singer's um manager, more or less, and traveling with him for his shows and booking shows. And then after a while, he decided to go to California from the East Coast and put on his own events.
42:53 Um and that didn't really work out for him. But um in the process of doing that, he uh he, you know, he had a girlfriend who was also from a Hasidic Jewish family, and they decided that they were going to move to California and start a family of their own, far, far away from his family in Chicago. And that's what they did. And he knew that if he took this course of action, there would be consequences, and there were. And you would have to read this book to
43:28 find out what the consequences were. But um basically, the book is Izzy's perspective on how he got through it despite um the fallout from his family and how he has uh been able to lead a life with an honorable life and raise children with an openness and acceptance of um what their their choices are. And it's also geared to anyone from any other family who has not been accepted
44:05 because of their choices. So, that's a whole range of people who are considered outcasts in their families and who need some guidance. They They don't want to be told what to do. They don't want to be indoctrinated. They want some support and they don't know where to go and a lot of them end up on the streets and leading really awful lives. And Izzy's story is how you can hold your head up high and choose to be who you are and and still be successful, whether you have your family's approval or not.
44:38 >> Mhm. Interesting. Um how often do you find um people want to use their life for some or their life story, I think is a better way to frame it. Their life story for a purpose beyond perhaps, you know, edification for their families. Um in other words, to impact a larger larger
45:07 >> Um you know, it's maybe 1/3 of my clients. Uh not that many.
45:14 >> [snorts]
45:14 >> Um because you have to be going out there on the speaker circuit to promote whatever book you have if you want it to be seen. You have to do social media campaigns. A lot of them are just at the age where they're not that interested in doing that. Um I worked on a book for an older gentleman who's in North Carolina. He's an attorney and he had written a a fiction book, but it was a lovely story. Um and he he wanted my help in, you know, of
45:49 course, editing it and and then trying to get it published with a traditional publisher. And I explained to him it was it was going to be difficult cuz he's a first-time author and then he's going to have to get out and prove that he has an audience before traditional publisher will, you know, invest in it.
46:07 >> Right.
46:07 >> Um he wasn't willing to do that. And I said, "Okay, then your other option is you self-publish and you get out and you go to bookstores in your local area and you do speaking engagements and maybe you go to some um conventions that have uh fictionalized stories uh in in the genre you've written. And he wasn't interested in doing that either. And I said, "Okay, well, what were you thinking then?" And he said, "I just, you know, I just figured if I wrote it, everyone would buy it." And so I have to educate a lot of people
46:42 as to what the process is and how difficult it is to become a well-known author. You know, you may think that well-known authors or best-selling authors instantly got that way because their books were good. No. Um it takes a lot of work behind it. So that is why a lot of people aren't willing to do that, Kevin.
47:05 >> Yeah, yeah, I you know, it's it's it's interesting you raise that issue because uh this this sort of Field of Dreams perspective on writing.
47:14 >> You build it, it will come. They will come.
47:17 >> It it it it it does not happen. I I I was not that I ever necessarily had that perspective, but I I I wrote a book a number of years ago based on my work uh helping veterans or helping people coming out of the military find their first civilian job. And look you know, I had to build a social media following. I had to query, I think it was 200, you know, public or 200 agents before I finally got a couple who would, you know,
47:46 >> That's amazing, Kevin.
47:48 >> So, you know, it it you know, and it it's just it was an iterative process and that's that's what it takes. So
47:54 >> What's amazing to me is that you got to 200 and you didn't give up at 20 or 25.
48:00 >> So, there's uh you may have you may have heard of a guy by the name of Michael Hyatt. So, he was very popular at the time. He had been a he had run a publishing company. I don't remember what it was called, but he had kind of a a program that helped writers who actually wanted to get published and I subscribed to his program and I just I just followed the steps, you know, and and and the steps were basically do this and don't give up.
48:30 >> Yeah, and you can't give up. And see, that's the thing, you know, um it's a process. Writing a manuscript is a process. Writing a memoir So, let me just define a memoir is a story about your life and it can be about a certain segment of your life or it can be like an autobiography, which you would call a memoirs, plural. Um the manuscript is actually the story. The book is the printed or digital story. So, it isn't a book until it's actually published.
49:06 >> Right.
49:06 >> You don't have a physical book till you publish it.
49:09 >> Right.
49:10 >> People always refer to books and you know, can you help me write a book? And I say, I can help you write a manuscript and then getting it published is a separate process. I'm not a publisher.
49:19 >> But, um yeah, it it's very intense. Um I do the heavy lifting for my clients because chances are 99% of them who start writing their memoir, even with these programs, they're not going to finish it.
49:35 >> Right.
49:35 >> Cuz they get tired. They wonder if why they why are they doing this? Is it worth it?
49:42 >> Right.
49:42 >> Um they don't have any encouragement. Uh it's it's a lot of work. I I'm there to meet them at the halfway point and and them over the finish line. And I think that's what people most need to know that it's very hard to do by yourself without someone as your writing partner, collaborator, editor, etc.
50:01 >> Yeah. I mean you you probably know Stephen King wrote a book about how to be a writer. I I don't recall the title of it, but the main thing he stresses is you have to sit down and write every day and and and and that's it's a tough discipline. I know when I wrote my book for 3 hours every morning 5 days a week. I had blocked out that time and I wrote. Um it was one of the most self-disciplined moments of my life, right? Um but but and what I found was the farther along I got with it, the
50:36 more enjoyable it was. But it it really didn't get enjoyable until kind of the the discipline of writing every day had sort of sunk into me. So
50:47 >> always takes longer than you think it's going to take.
50:51 >> Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Well, uh unfortunately we're we're we're up on our time here. We I know we could continue on, but I I so I'll have to have you back again to to to talk about this some more. Uh this is a writing is a topic near and dear to my heart. I've I've been a writer really my my whole life, you know, one thing or another. Um but just any closing thoughts on on this idea of of you know, helping people preserve their legacies, which is really
51:27 I think the the the central theme of this at least this aspect of your writing.
51:31 >> I'd say get started at whatever point you are at in your life. It's never too late. It's never too early to start. And the earlier you start, the more vivid your memories will be. So start taking notes and if this is something you're interested in, get going with it. Do not wait cuz none of us are guaranteed a certain amount of time in this life, unfortunately.
51:57 >> Yeah.
51:58 >> And I and I would encourage you to start it sooner than later.
52:02 >> So, um I'm I'm going to I I think I have I I meant to check this before we we started the show. But, this is this is your website, right? Writer for Hire?
52:13 >> Yeah, it's it's actually writerpatcramer.com.
52:19 >> Okay.
52:19 >> So, writerpatcramer.com is my website. And um if people want to go to my email and send me an email, it's pat@writerpatcramer.com.
52:35 >> Okay. And and and so, this is I think this is Pat's website up here on the screen right now. Um and you can see she has her telephone number, her email address if you want to get in touch with her. And here's the various, you know, writing services, clients, about Pat, etc. So, if if you are interested in in talking with Pat, um by all means, go to her website. And and if if you, you know, aren't writing this down, just look right below where you're viewing into the show notes and this information links will be are in the show notes. So, you don't, you know, you don't have to remember it or scribble it
53:11 down. Just look right down below. And um and and you will uh you know, you will see um the this this information. Oops, what
53:20 >> I'm everywhere anyway. I'm on Yelp. I have a Google business page. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. You can find me if you Google Pat Kramer. But, just know there's other Pat Kramers. I I got a uh phone call just a couple of weeks ago from someone looking for a totem pole carver in Oregon named Pat Kramer. That's not me.
53:44 >> Wow.
53:45 >> [laughter]
53:47 >> Not me.
53:50 >> Well, on the other hand, you have a second career in the offing, I guess. Totem pole carver.
53:56 >> [laughter]
53:57 >> That's That's wild. I didn't even know that that was, uh, you know, a thing. So
54:01 >> Mhm.
54:03 >> Well, Pat, it this was This was really delightful talking with you about this subject and I I know that, um, you know, for for for people who haven't, as kind of where I started out the show, for people if you haven't thought about more of the emotional side of trusts and estates and estate planning, etc., um, I encourage you to do so. This is the chaplain side of me coming out now, of course. Um, but the it it, you know, the catharsis a catharsis, I should say, um, about which
54:40 Pat has spoken, I think, is an incredibly important aspect of this, you know, business in which we're engaged. And I I think, too, that so often conflict comes up as we're going through the estate planning process or even the, um, you know, the administration process. Um, if there has been, um, a a a discussion and documentation of legacy, I I think it could potentially forestall that or at least make it
55:15 easier to work through. And so, I I encourage you to consider, um, this this aspect of of our work and and you know, obviously I I I recommend Pat to you as someone who can help you and your clients with that. So, um, hav- having said that, um, I'll have you hang tight here for just a second, Pat, while I wrap up. So, real quickly, schedule of shows every week, Monday, like today, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Trust and Estates Weekly. Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Business Lessons from the Military. Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time,
55:52 People Making Money. And then every other Thursday at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Pacific Time. Listen to me. 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time is my show, Jigger's Place. We sit back, have a cocktail, and a schmooze about all kinds of things unrelated to finances. So, so Pat, thank you so much for being my guest today. It really was just a wonderful conversation. I I I can't thank you enough.
56:18 >> Thank you, Kevin.
56:20 >> And that just leaves me to sign off as I always do, which is to remind you, Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.