Last September, during swim practice with my triathlon team, I suddenly felt my chest tighten and experienced difficulty breathing. My wife took me to the ER, where a cardiologist performed a heart catheterization, resulting in the discovery that I had advanced heart disease. This diagnosis despite my finishing three Ironman triathlons, nine half-Ironman triathlons and 40 other races of Sprint and Olympic distances within the past 10 years!
A few days later, at age 55, I underwent open heart surgery—a triple bypass. It would take me several weeks to recover and return to the office.
“You need to cut the stress out of your life,” Dr. Kenneth Towe, a fellow athlete, friend and my cardiologist told me. “Your condition wasn’t caused by poor food choices or lifestyle. For you, it’s all stress and genetics. And, if you don’t change some things, despite the surgery, you may not be around five or 10 years from now. Take this seriously, your family needs you.”
Six months later, the COVID-19 crisis hit. As the senior partner of a boutique estate-planning law firm in Fort Myers, Fla., it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Certainly, there’s no good time for anyone to navigate the perils of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic complete with stay-at-home orders, remote working, plummeting stock markets and distracted clients during the height of our “season.”
Taking away March and April from a Southwest Florida estate-planning law firm is akin to closing retail stores during the Christmas holiday shopping season. Just after Easter, many of my firm’s clients head to their northern residences for the summer, putting everything on hold until their return in November.
An Uncertain Future
How would we serve our clients? Would our firm remain open? (Thankfully we’re deemed an essential business.) Should anyone work in our office, or should everyone work from home? What would the protocols for remote working look like? What about will and trust signings? Would we be able to meet payroll?
I wondered whether my heart was up for the task. Literally.
Not only would the added stress of the situation negatively affect me, as a heart patient, but also I’m especially now vulnerable to contracting a contagious, deadly virus. Most of our clients are elderly retirees who don’t want to venture from home except for the most essential tasks. Would they be amenable to video conferencing?
Tackling the Problem
The first forays into Zoom conferences were comical. I’d see my client’s mouth move but he wouldn’t have his microphone turned on. Remember the joke about the tourist shouting English louder to the Italian hoping he would understand? That’s what I found myself doing at my computer!
Eventually, our clients learned how to operate video software on their laptops and tablets, and we expanded our online capabilities. Our video conferences went so well, in fact, that I believe we’re going to use them as part of our process more often, even after the current crisis passes.
In Florida, remote testamentary document signing isn’t legal until July 2020. That’s right around the corner as I write this article in late April. Before COVID-19, we didn’t anticipate relying too much on remote signing, but now it appears that it will become a staple of our practice. We also learned how to incorporate DocuSign for our engagement agreements.
We quickly realized that our increased use of technology would result in new capabilities that could expand our season and the reach of our firm, while increasing our client value proposition.
Thankfully, our practice remains vital and busy through the crisis. We learned how to use free and low-cost software to automate various tasks.
Giving Back
Despite its small size, my firm is nearly 100 years old and has always had a philanthropic bent. John Sheppard, who hired me away from another firm 28 years ago, led that charge. He was instrumental in establishing The Southwest Florida Community Foundation, serving as a trustee for decades. More recently, John entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the all-time blood donor champion! More than 41 gallons so far!
To that end, I wondered what we could give back to our community. When it became evident to me that many don’t have simple health care directives, we created an online system to provide free designation of health care surrogates and living wills to anyone who wants them. My in-house tech guru automated the process on our website. The service has proven popular. Once our website was programmed, it takes zero additional man hours to provide this valuable service to whomever requests it.
Handling the Stress
So, how am I doing with the increased stress levels? I guess okay. Obviously, no one wants to go through this, you, the reader, included. Working 11-hour days doesn’t help. I’m getting exercise, taking walks at night and riding my bike several miles during the weekends, albeit alone as group rides are frowned on, at least until this all passes. Hopefully, the local high school pool will reopen soon, and I’ll be back with my triathlon team swimming laps two evenings a week. It would be nice for life to return to normal.
Until then, I suppose we’ll all do our best. Stay safe.