Where there's a will, there's a way

A deeply personal tragedy is the inspiration behind a new book launched by will writer Steve Bish, and the topic of discussion on the latest Today’s Wills and Probate podcast.

Bish is somewhat typical of many will writers who have unconventional routes in to the legal profession. His own career began in sales, marketing, training and recruitment, before running a traditional wooden window manufacturing business. 

But the untimely and tragic death of a friend led Bish to retrain and become a will writer after supporting the family of his friend, and helping deal with the legal aftermath. 

Close friend Carl was killed in a traffic collision during a scooter ride the pair were taking one evening. Carl died without a will, leaving his wife Anne and young daughter to navigate the rules of intestacy at the worst possible time. Witnessing their struggle left an imprint on Steve that inspired him to retrain. 

He now spends a huge amount of time and energy advising clients on the importance of estate planning; a motivation that ultimately fuelled the creation of his book. He didn’t want a dry technical manual or a textbook that gathers dust. Instead, he aimed for a plain‑English, conversational guide, the kind of resource people could pick up, dip in and out of, and actually understand. The tone echoes how he speaks at WI and Rotary talks: relatable, humorous, accessible and packed with real‑world examples.

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way is now available to purchase, with a proportion of each sale being donated to the Kaotic Angel Foundation.

The Today's Wills and Probate podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider, and at www.todayswillsandprobate.co.uk. Subscribe today to hear all the latest news and views across the wills and probate sector.

Thank you to our podcast sponsors LEAP Estates, and Property Ladder Group

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

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SPEAKER_02 0:48

Hello, welcome along to the latest Today's Wills and Probate Podcast. Today I welcome on to the discussion Steve Bish. Steve is the uh founder, the director of uh your own estate planning business, Steve S. Bish Estate Planning, based in Hertfordshire. And the reason we've invited you onto the podcast, and we're going to talk about wills and all that kind of business in general, but you're the author of a new book, which is the story of how you got into will writing, how it became your profession. And it's a very personal story as as well, Steve, as as we'll get into. So thanks very much indeed for joining the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

In the first instance, I've given listeners a little bit of an overview into who you are. But tell us a bit about yourself, Steve, your background. I I know, for example, that wheel writing isn't your your sort of first profession. You you you you know, like a lot of people in this sector, you you've been in and around business for a long time as well. So you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came into the sector.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Well, background is is sales and marketing, really, sales training, sales recruiting, marketing, etc., for for a number of companies. Ended up in the mid to late 90s setting up a traditional window company. I'd seen a niche for uh traditional wooden windows, and I'm no craftsman by any means, but I I knew someone who was, and it was just one of these things that comes out of a pub conversation, you know. How much would it cost you to make a sash a box ash window? And an old friend from school said, you know, a couple of hundred pounds. At that time, there was there was another traditional box ash window company charging about two grand for a window, so I thought, well, there's there's a niche here, and we ended up setting up our own workshop and yeah, sort of hitting conservation areas for Georgian and box box ash windows and that sort of thing. But I still saw it as marketing because I didn't have anything to do with the surveying or the or the actual manufacture. I got I got people in who could do that, obviously. So um, so yeah, that was that was my immediate past profession previous to estate planning.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

As I say, and uh it's a it's a profession that a lot of people come to uh sort of later on in life, actually, isn't it? So uh and then you you spotted an opportunity to uh set up a franchise that just kind of led you to where you are now.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, I I saw the franchise opportunity, and the first part of the book actually explains you know about a clo very close friend being killed in a road traffic accident one evening, and I saw what the family went through with the rules of intestine. And if that hadn't happened when I saw the franchise opportunity a couple of years later, I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance, but you know, I was looking for an exit strategy, I was looking for something else, and it sort of hit home. And yeah, sort of two weeks training initially up in in the northeast, up in Newton Ayff, and my own little franchise, and from then on it was a case of you know running that franchise or running other people's companies or or just working self-employed for other estate planning companies. And then post-COVID, I was actually looking for a trust supplier and saw the you know, yeah, you had to take all the software, and I thought, well, why not why not set up on my own? So 2022 S-Bish Estate Planning was born.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

You allude to the fact that uh the decision to go into will writing was kind of driven by uh a personal tragedy. This is your friend Carl, who was uh killed in a road traffic accident. Tell us about your relationship with Carl and why it was such an important part of your decision to go into estate planning.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Carl was a very, very close friend. My wife and I we bought our first house together in the very early 90s, and it was one of these new builds we would we were the first ones to move in. There was the two show houses, then there was us, and then the rest of the houses were still being built. And it was it was good that as as people moved in, everyone knew each other. It was it was very sort of old school, and everyone knew their neighbours because you all moved in one after the other. And Carl and his wife were one of the first to move in. They actually parked over our driveway when they were coming to look at the how their house was getting on. And I remember, you know, I come around the corner and sort of bib to say, Can I get in there? And Carl's wife Anne, I remember us saying, Oh, you fell out with the neighbours, you've upset the neighbours before we've even moved in. And you know, we just hit it off straight away, really good. You know, they'd have dinner at ours, we'd have dinner at theirs, and yeah, we're really, really close friends. When I had a sort of middle-aged teenage moment and decided to buy a vintage Vespa, Carl, who's he's a little bit younger than me, and his parents didn't allow him to gather scooter during the sort of mod scooter revival of the late 70s, early 80s. So he he went out and bought a vintage lambretta, you know, from the same same guy I bought my Vespa from, or had him work on it anyway. And yeah, so when when the accident happened, we was on a ride out, we were supposed to be going down to Soho that evening, and we ended up just going to Watford. And there was a lot of disgruntledness in the club. Oh, this is soft, this is you know, we're supposed to be going down into town, and we'll end up going to Watford. But then with Carl not making it home, all of a sudden it was, well, you know, this this club is we can't leave this club now, it's we've got to keep it going. And yeah, it was it was just one of those things, you know. A last drink of the evening, another drink, Carl. And his is I think his exact words were something along the lines of, not for me, I've had enough bubbles tonight, I'm going home for a proper beer. And of course he never got there because a boy racer lost control of his car on a bend between St Albans and Hatfield and just wiped Carl out. So we got the dreaded phone call that night and went round to Anne's and to be told that you know he was he was killed instantly. So gosh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Can you tell this story through the first sort of chapter or so of this this is a very important thing?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

And you know, the effect it had on us as a family and obviously on Carl's family even more. And that sort of stayed with me a couple of years later when the franchise opportunity came up. I saw what happened with the rules of intestacy. You know, Carl didn't have a will, I saw what Anne went through, and yeah, it just sometimes seemed to click. It's it's almost you know serendipity, you know, this is for me.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

You also describe about the way that you helped out the family at at the time as well, and you played a role in supporting Anne as much as you could.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah, where where possible, you know, myself and Josie, my wife, and obviously we did as much as we could, which was never going to be enough. But but yeah. He had an 18-month-old daughter, Chloe, who's who's mentioned in the book, and she's now a successful sort of journalist, magazine editor in her own rights. And you know, the first thing I did when when doing the book, because I wanted to put this part of the journey in the book, was to make sure that Chloe and and Anne, Carl's widow, were okay with this, and they gave me 100% support, so so it's good. It's good.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Why do you feel now is the time to pull this book together?

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Good question. I thought about doing a book or writing a book. They they say we've all got one good book in us, don't they? Or something like that. And I did think of I've always always always been an avid reader, and you know, I thought about you know re uh writing a book about direct sales and you know the the funny things. If I'd have kept a diary of when I worked in Hong Kong or, you know, all over the place, it would make a great book. And I thought about even you know doing a a fiction book, and this was all during lockdown. And and then when we got working again, I just thought, yeah, I'm I'm gonna put this down on paper, I'm gonna get this get this out there. And I I didn't want it to be, you know, like Parker's World Presidents or something you stick on a shelf, and you might look at it to to look at you know, look something up for some regulation or some law or something, but I wanted it to be accessible, I wanted it to be uh a lot of my business comes from talks I give at WIs and Rotary Clubs and that sort of thing. And I like the language to be you know plain English, people can understand it. And you know, if I'm seeing someone face to face or I'm giving a talk to a group of people, I like it to be conversational, I like it to be understandable, and and that's what I've tried to do with the book. Make it make it plain English.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

So it's called Where There's a Will, There's a Way. I really like the title, Steve. Uh, what are you hoping to achieve with it? And and what's the ambition of of the book? Just so that listeners understand, because as you say, it's it's not a good precedence book or anything like that, is it? It's it's a much more sort of practical tool.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

It's practical, it's examples, there's some there's some humour in it, there's some illustrations in it, and the cover art and that sort of thing. Uh, I was very lucky to meet a guy called Phil Littler who's got a very, very exciting background. He's worked with Jerry Anderson, he's worked with Disney, he's worked with major film studios, he's he's illustrated many books over the years. And uh yeah, I like the artwork in there. It shows just from the cover, you know, it shows that it's not a dusty president's tomb, it's it's you know what I want it to be, which is sort of pick it up and say, Oh, like the look of that, let's have a look inside. So, yeah, what what am I looking to achieve? Well, I'd like to say, you know, a multi-million pound international bestseller, but that's about as likely as Scotland winning the World Cup. If I can just, you know, sell a few hundred copies and I could say, yeah, my book's been published, people have bought it, and people are reading it. It's been well received so far, which is which is great, and we'll just see where it goes. But it's yeah, it's it's not going to be my retirement by any means.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

And it's as much for consumers as it is for professionals, isn't it? Because it's telling the story of why people might need a will, as you say, using examples of particular scenarios that that might affect them. I mean, have you got some examples of scenarios you use in the book, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, there's there's talk about you know wills that have been written on a cake box, and there's there's I mean there are precedents, but they're quite humorous precedents, if you if you like. Explanations as to to what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, the roles of an executor, etc. It's I've made it clear on the on the cover blurb that it's it's not to replace individual expert advice, and whether that advice comes from me or whether it comes from someone else, it's not there to replace that. It's just something that can be read, it can be picked up, and you can pop into bits of it that might be appropriate for you. So, yeah, it's it's that type of book. So you can just put down, pick up as and when, and it's it's not meant to replace solicitors or estate planners in any way whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

I often think that uh that the profession isn't particularly good at promoting itself. And I think sometimes by its own admission as well, you know, lawyers are lawyers and and estate planners, you know, they're they're good at the technical bits of the law, but they're not always particularly good at the the sort of promotional bits of it. And perhaps, you know, harking back to what you said about your your previous life, Steve, where you weren't an artisan, but you were you know, you you were a marketeer, you understood how to sell the thing, even if you couldn't produce it.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

I mean with with the window company, I I wasn't, you know, a skilled carpenter or craftsman in any way, but you know, I knew people who were. So I was more on the marketing side of the company, and I think that was what I liked about the franchise. It was you know, you could just sort of help people by showing them what they need and pointing out problems. And people are more aware of the problems these days. Twenty years ago when I started, and we talk about you know the 1990 Care Act and and people losing their homes, they were horrified, you know, just had never heard of anything so so ridiculous. You know, you I've seen someone in Stevenich, for example, first generation homeowner, and to be told that the property might not end up going down to their sons or daughters, literally horrified people. Whereas now, of course, people are much, much more aware. Everyone knows someone who's been in that situation, everyone knows someone who who perhaps should have got an LPA or back in the day an EPA, but they didn't, and now the family have got to go down the the call of protection route with deputy ship and and so forth. Everyone knows someone who's, you know, when I do a talk, someone always put the hand up and and and say they've experienced sideways disinheritance, you know, where one of the one of the parents has remarried after the death of their first one and everything's gone to the the wicked stepmum or whatever, you know, it's it's it's much more people are much more aware of estate planning these days. That's what I think makes it much easier now than it was 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

That's interesting, because I think there's still plenty of stats out there that suggest that you know for example, you know, there's lots of people that simply don't understand the fact that you you know, marriage and all's will, or you know, the the the the rules of intestacy and that that kind of thing. It's interesting to hear you say that you think that there has been a a shift. How long have you been in the in the sector, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

20 20 years last year, yeah, 21 years this year. So so yeah, there's definitely been a shift in in awareness, but as you point out, there's still lots of people out there who don't realise in a marriage, as you say, will revoke any previous wills. I had to point that out to someone that was at a business meeting only a few weeks before Christmas, and the chat was talked about getting married and want to talk to me afterwards, and I said, Well, yeah, yeah, because anything you put in place now is revoked. Is it? Is it really? And I said, Yes, it does. Unless you've written it with you know a contemplation of marriage clause, then it's it's not going to be valid anymore. So so yes, there's still m more education needed, but there are more people who are aware, I think, of some of the problems than they used to be. So we're moving in the right direction, maybe not fast enough.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

I guess if we're thinking about how firms can better educate clients and how we as professionals can better educate people, things like you know, this book are great tools, Steve, to uh to help both professionals deliver out that message but also for individuals to receive that message and and you know, finding different ways to deliver that message and for people to receive that message is really important, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Absolutely. And uh as you as you touched on earlier, maybe a lot of the legal profession aren't that good at promoting themselves or marketing themselves. There's a a chap called Charlie Lawson who spoke at the Legal Growth Conference last year or the year before. He he's got a marvellous book. His his first one was The Unnatural Networker, but he's followed it up with the Unnatural Promoter. And it really is written from the point of view of someone who's shy and and not naturally sort of good at pushing themselves out there and getting themselves or their company known. I would recommend those for people in the profession, the unnatural networker and the unnatural promoter, both very, very good sources of ideas for getting your your yourself out there and your your company out there.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

And you you know, you you mentioned that the premise of those books, for example, is that they're written in a style where this particular chap is quite shy, he's trying to explain how he developed those skills. I mean, did you have a voice in your head when it came to writing your own book, Steve, as to how you wanted to present the story and how you wanted to present the book? I mean, is is it your voice, for example, or is it somebody else's? Is it Carl's voice?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

It's it's I I've tried to do it as the voice when I'm giving a talk to a group of people. It's supposed to be understandable, relatable, it's not supposed to be dusty and dreary and too factual, it is factual, obviously, but it's it's supposed to be written in a way that people can understand it. That that's that's the bottom line. Is it's gotta be understandable, it's gotta be relevant, and a touch of humour here and there.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

We are moving towards the end of the time that we have together for the discussion, Steve. And and I guess I just wanted to finish on really a question to you about the just the impact that that Carl had on your life. So, you know, clearly it's pretty profound. You you changed career, it's ultimately led you to produce this book and and to share that story. Have you you know what why was Carl such an important person to you and and why do you think he had that kind of profound impact on your life?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

We just became friends instantly, really. We had a lot in common, and you know, we've we've stayed very, very close to Anne since then and and Chloe as she's grown up. I've got as gotta admit there was a little bit of guilt as well when he died. He he bought his his vintage Lambretta purely because I bought my vintage Vespa and he even borrowed a few quids for the purchase from me. So so yeah, when he died, it did hit me quite hard, I've got to admit. And yeah, if I can keep him alive in some way in just the the first chapter there in the book, then job done.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

One of the things I take away from running today's Wheels and Probate and talking to people through the podcast is people are often very particularly in this sector, driven by personal experience. And I've spoken to a number of different founders of businesses who have all expressed very similar kind of views to you, Steve, where something very personal has happened to them and it's had a a big impact on them in some way, whether it's you know, an experience of going through probate that's inspired them to try and improve the process or you know, to your own experience, Steve, trying to get people to understand the importance of uh estate planning and and later life planning. Uh it's definitely a sector that lends itself to that sort of life experience, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Oh, absolutely. I think you can see that from the average age of people in the industry. A bit of life experience is I think it's invaluable when you when you're speaking to clients. It's yeah, it's one of one of the industries I think where maturity is an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Oh no. Well, thank you so much for joining the podcast. Thank you for sharing your story, which you know I appreciate is hugely important to you. Where there's a will, there's a way is available on your website, isn't it? Tell us a little bit about how we can get hold of it.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

On the website, which is sbishestateplanning.com, there is a section called Book, and it can be purchased there. A minimum of two pounds from every sale is donated to a charity called the Chaotic Angels Foundation. Hopefully it will be available on Amazon later this week, and I'll try and make it available from as many outlets as possible, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for joining the podcast, Steve. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Again, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

The Today's Willsman Probate podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider. It's also available on today's Wills and Probate.co.uk. My thanks to Steve. Thank you as ever for listening, and we'll see you again soon.