You Think You Have Time... Until You Don’t: The Hidden Cost of Avoidance

Most people know they should have a will—but 70% still don’t.

Not because they don’t care.

Not because they don’t have access.

But because something deeper is getting in the way.

In this episode, Eddie sits down with Jermaine, founder of Heirlight, to unpack the real reason we avoid estate planning—and why it has far less to do with money or time than we think.

What started as a simple chatbot to better understand his mother’s life turned into something much bigger: a new way to approach legacy, family, and clarity. After unexpectedly losing his mom, Jermaine shares the deeply personal experiences that reshaped how he thinks about time, relationships, and what we leave behind.

This conversation goes far beyond legal documents. It explores:

• Why avoidance, shame, and “having more time” keep us stuck
• The emotional reality families face when nothing is planned
• How clarity can actually be an act of love
• The hidden value in memories, stories, and meaning—not just money
• A new, conversation-driven approach to estate planning
• What most people regret not saying before it’s too late

You’ll also hear powerful stories from revisiting a first meal in America at Burger King, to fulfilling childhood dreams in Austria, that highlight what really matters in the end.

If you’ve been putting this off, this episode isn’t here to scare you; it’s here to reframe it.

Because estate planning isn’t about death.

It’s about how you care for the people you love while you’re still here.

Use this for the 50% off: https://heirlight.com/en/podcast 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Most people know they should have a will and still don't do it. Not because they don't care and not because they don't have access, but because there's something in us that truly just avoids such an important thing. Hey, this is Eddie with the VoyageCast, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Jermaine E is the founder of Air Light, a platform designed to make estate planning simple, clear, and actually doable, especially with our modern sentiments and app use and things like that today. But this didn't start out as a company exactly. It started out really for his mom. Jermaine built a simple chatbot for her, and then everything changed in his life. Jermaine, thank you so much for being here with me today.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah, thanks for having me in.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Absolutely. Before we get into the app, can you walk us through what happened, what led you to the app, what changed with your mom?

SPEAKER_02 0:59

I got an insight around a year ago that, you know, I was having a conversation with my mom, and we were just having a typical lunch, maybe on a Tuesday afternoon, by this Thai place right by our office. And I realized that she didn't fear retirement, but she had this lack of clarity as to what she currently has. And that clarity, that insight led me to kind of pursue this adventure of like figuring out why she doesn't have a place where she understands how much is in her 401k and what's in her savings and how does that translate into retirement. So yeah, like you mentioned at the beginning, I built this little chatbot that talked to her. And the chatbot is basically programmed to ask her, you know, what are your bucket lists? What are the things that you enjoy the most, the people in your life that maybe you forgot about or there's not a good time to bring it up to share with your kids. And like I wanted to know everything about her. And I wanted to know all these things when she feels like talking about it. But as most adults, you know, I'm not sitting next to her all day. And so building this chatbot really gave me this opportunity to like learn about her, but also at the same time for her to just you know talk to the chatbot at any time, any language she wants. Uh, and it's it's been cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

That is super sweet. And when you say any language, I mean, did I think on our previous conversation you said she spoke mostly Mandarin? Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

She speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, uh Bahasa, which is a language from the country of Malaysia. Oh, um, and English, I think in probably a few dialects that I don't even know.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

That's a pretty sophisticated get to know you app, then, if it can connect with all that.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Yeah, I think the beauty of AI is you know the ability to understand languages even when it's mixed into dialects and things like that. And that's the biggest difference between you know building an app today versus a few years ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So part of this started with you just wanting to get to know your mom's story, who she is, what she's about, where she comes from, but also for her to kind of wrestle with all the stuff in her life, her things, her finances, all the things. But then it inspired you to move forward into creating this app. What else happened with your mom during that time period?

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Yeah, so about four months in, I started seeing this trend of information that I'm getting from her. You know, some of the things, for example, you know, where she wanted to travel to. What did she dream about as a child that she kind of gave up because she was she was a mom of four, right? And she thinks things that she just stopped doing. And about four or five months in, I realized that if I had all the information about your stuff and your people, I can probably organize that into a legal document so that it's clear and you know it's communicated to the people you love. And it doesn't have to be all the legalese, right? It doesn't have to be all these difficult terms that we we associate with having an estate plan. And that's where airlight started. Well, with my mom, what what happened was we realized a few things. One, she wanted to go to Oklahoma, which is where her American journey started. I know we don't hear this often, you know, it's a dream to go to Oklahoma, but it's it's where she first started in the late 70s. You know, she arrived in this country, didn't really speak English. She had the classic immigrant story. She worked three jobs while being a student. And we haven't gone back as a family. Actually, she hasn't gone back in over 30 years. And so my my mom, my dad, my little brother, and I, uh, we we did we took a road trip. We drove down from Kansas all the way to Dallas with a stop in Oklahoma City. And in this journey, you know, we I filmed the whole thing because I was like, I don't, I don't know if I'm ever gonna come back to Oklahoma. I don't know if there's a reason for me to, but let me just film everything, let me just capture everything.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

And, you know, as we we got to Oklahoma and I asked her, hey, what do you want to do? Uh and my dad too, because he was also, you know, living in this story. That's where they met. Oh. And and she said, let's, yeah, let's drive around. And she was really relying on my dad to remember where they lived and you know, the restaurants that they used to work at and and the university campus.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

And we ended up going to this place uh that she had her first meal in the United States. And that place was in the city of Edmund, Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Called Burger King.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

So the the morning after she had arrived in the United States, she uh she had met my dad, you know, through really there there weren't that many Asian people in Oklahoma in the 70s. So naturally, when someone arrives, it's it's a pretty small social circle.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

And my my dad uh drove her to this Burger King. And I turned on the camera as we walked back into the same Burger King, renovated, but same location. And uh, she ordered the same thing she ordered all those years ago. She ordered a chicken sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

The Burger King and Burger King.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

And she was actually telling this young guy who took her order that you know she came here all these years ago, she didn't speak English and all that. And after she got her food, after she got this one chicken sandwich that she ordered, I filmed her sitting down and I hit record, and I said, What were you thinking at the time when you left? She had a good life in Malaysia, right? She she had a good family, good support system. What were you thinking to leave all that behind to this unknown place? And and she said, I'll tell you that, but I have to do one thing first, which is what I did all those years ago. She split the sandwich in half and said, you know, at the time I translated or I converted the currency, the American dollar to the Malaysian ringgit, and realized that I can only afford half a sandwich. And I think it's in that moment, all of us kind of slowed down a little. And we realize this journey that our family have been on, how far we've come and also how lucky we are. You know, all my problems are champagne problems. You know, I have all these first world problems in my life, and it's all because my parents took you know this the chance to to come to this country. And if it wasn't for this chatbot, I wouldn't have realized that she had this desire to go back and and check out where she started. And so for that, you know, yeah, I think of Airlight, and I think it's already done its job for me personally.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's amazing. I like that story. Um going to Burger King of all the places is uh that's pretty funny. So Airlight is an estate planning app. Explain what that means for those that don't understand.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

70% of Americans don't have a will. So what that means is when somebody passes away or when they're in a coma and they're not able to make a decision for what to do with their body, for example, that there is no clear instructions. And of course, the most common things we hear is well, I don't have a whole lot, so I don't need a will. And that's probably true for some people. And or if I'm too young or I have nobody to give it to, or I have, well, nothing to give, nobody to give.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

But for a very significant group of the population, we underestimate how we actually have something to leave behind. But beyond that, I think there's two sides of it. One is to give clear instructions to the people that you care about about what to do about all your things after. Right. Um, we we often hear these like pop culture stories about families fighting over things, and that actually helps all the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah. Yeah. I I'm so as a therapist, I've had clients and I've worked with them not directly with like probate or different things like that. And we can talk about maybe what that is, but I I've worked with them on the mental health side of just the struggle of dealing with and going through and fighting with family and negotiating all this nonsense. Even in my own family, when I was a kid, I had a family member pass away, and there was all this uh division and argument and attorneys involved and all these different things. It just made it a nightmare. I remember my family going through that themselves. So you're you're dead on. A lot of people don't have it planned out, and it's a nightmare when it's not.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

I think we underestimate what people end up fighting about, and it oftentimes isn't like we assumed maybe that it's a material good that's worth a lot. But you know, oftentimes it's it's not. Like I I know of someone who whose father suddenly left and you know had a stroke, and he and his sister no longer talk. And I say, is it because the estate is worth a lot and you you guys can't agree on how to split it? And he said, No, it's because I care about something with a lot of meaning to me, but she cares about something with a lot of meaning to her, and we can't decide, it's not the monetary value, right? It's like this emotional association with things of the people you care about. And so so the one side of it is what to do with your things and who to give it to. But where airlight started is the clarity side of things, right? It's the can we organize all our things and have a clear picture of where we are today so that we can one we can know where to go from here, as well as maybe understand what is enough in our lifetime. See, I think my my mom, she definitely had enough. And you know, we we'll talk about this after, but my mom passed away suddenly, you know, a few months after I started Airlight. But she at the time had definitely made the last dollar that she would spend in her lifetime. Not that she was super rich, but she just didn't plan it. You know, she's not a big spender. The the immigrant in her, she's a big saver. She she accumulates things, you know, she doesn't she doesn't know how to enjoy her money. And and like many immigrants, I think this is a common threat. And so I think what helped her the most was to see that okay, this is what I have now, and and based on the trend, based on my spending level, you know, she she probably lives off, I don't even know, super minimal of what she thinks. Yeah, and and I said, hey, look, if you don't spend this, you're essentially working for me, because when you leave, you're just gonna pass it on to me. And I don't want you to work for me. I want you to work for you. I want you to, you know, understand how you can actually enjoy a little bit of this. And I think the clarity part is what AirLight is focused on. That's how we think of wills, that's how we think of you know everything that we're building.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Can you expand on what you mean the clarity part? Like how does the the app or this program work for developing clarity?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Our goal is to have you have conversations with our app, and the app will remember things about you. Right? If you if you go into a lawyer's office, you'll be hit with a 20-page onboarding PDF. Right. We we don't want to do that. What we realize is that that stops a lot of people. A lot of people don't complete the process because of the onboarding. Um, and and so we turned this onboarding into a conversation. We had trained our app to talk to you, to understand the context behind everything you care about, everything, everybody you care about. And then in the back, we're remembering all these things and organizing that into organizing that into a a usable document that is uh tied to the the probate code, which is the legal, the law in your state, because all 50 states have different laws. And that's essentially what the app is doing. The app is organizing information based on the conversation you're having with it.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

So if you start with like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing, it's just gonna start prompting you little by little by little by little to kind of draw out how to build this estate planning or this will or whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. And it's just gonna intuitively kind of ask those questions as you go along. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 13:53

That is exactly what we're doing. For some of our users, they like to visually see a checklist. And so we have that as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

We have it on the back end where you can see exactly what is missing in completing your will, your healthcare directive, which is your uh document that says what to do with your body if you cannot decide, as well as a financial power of attorney, which is the document that says who gets to make decisions for you in the financial realm. So accessing your bank account and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

So we organize these information into a checklist. And for some people who who prefer the conversation style, you can just have a conversation with the app. But for some people, like my best friend, he likes to see a checklist. He wants to get things done, he wants to be task-driven. You can do that as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Got it. Yeah, that's great. For me, I would love to have it conversation driven. I mean, I'm I do that for a living, so for me, everything conversational is much more useful for someone of my disposition. What's been the hardest part about this?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

I think the hardest thing for us is actually a very human thing, okay, which is avoidance. And I I guess in the same vein, inaction. Right. I think people people have the resources out there. People have Google, Yelp, Chat GPT, though I don't recommend uh, and we can talk about why AI is not good for drafting legal documents. Um, but and then lawyers and and free resources. For example, freewill.org is such a good way to make a will. Um, and they're free, it's free, it's literally free. And yet, 70% Americans don't have a will, right? And so we're not up against a tech issue, we're up against an inaction and avoidance issue. Interesting. Which actually, before coming on, I was I was gonna ask you, uh, you know, flipping the script a little bit. No, no, no, you you you watch people have hard conversations every day. And you know, when someone knows that they need to have something done, a difficult conversation, but they just don't. Um what what do you think actually it's going on? Because that's what we're trying to translate from this human condition into an app, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Um I mean it's it's general avoidance of important things. I mean, I I would speculate we avoid a lot of things partly because of shame, partly because of insecurity. Like when you're presented with legal documents, it's a it's a terribly insecure experience. Most people have no idea what any of those things say. And to have something translate that for you can be really useful. I think shame of like actually looking at your life and facing it can be really complicated. I think also people think they just have more time than they do, you know, until they don't. Um I had a friend die recently, and you know, there's unresolved things between him and I, and I'll never have that chance to resolve it because I just assumed passively that I would just have more time. Even though I know that's ridiculous, I think the subconscious process is like, yeah, I mean, maybe one day we'll come around, maybe when we're old we'll we'll figure it out or something like that. Uh you know, there's just no guarantee for tomorrow. Um so I think some of those things play into it. Some people probably think, not even just in the shame category, I think some people think that maybe they don't uh have anything of value to pass on. And you know, maybe they don't, maybe they have nothing, maybe they don't have a dollar to their name. Fair enough. You know, maybe maybe there's a story to pass on, maybe there's something. Maybe it's even just a a directive on on what you want people to do if you're incapacitated or something. I think sometimes we just don't think there's any value or worth in that. When you're on the other side of it, though, and you have a loved one who dies, like I've experienced. I mean, it's it's a lot of work to go through if it's not prepared. Uh, and it can take years to resolve. What do you think of that?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yeah, you know, we we started off building airlight. Our tagline was finish your will in 27 minutes, because we thought that speed is the factor, right? People think it's gonna take too long, it's too difficult. So we we tried to focus on speed. But as we have users come in, we realize speed wasn't really the reason. Speed was just a nice to have to get it done quickly, it's like it's cool. So the the way we've kind of been framing our marketing now is like, let's try to all the tools out there that are appealing to price and speed may not work. Well, because the fact is 70% of Americans don't have it, right? So we're like, well, why don't we try a different angle? Why don't we try to put a little bit of meaning behind it? So uh we're actually gonna switch our website to now say leave more than paperwork behind for the people you love.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Oh, that's great. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

A little bit more. And and we're gonna start by asking, you know, why even bother? What what what brought you to this process to begin with? You know, like who are you thinking about in this process if it's not you? And I I kind of want to go back to what you said earlier, which is this unresolved things. Um I was uh because I'm the oldest son, I sat I I stood next to my mom's casket and I and I just watch people come up and a few of them say things to her that they they wish they say just while she was alive.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

You know, and some are some are very close family. Um many apologies, right? And now they gotta they they I mean I I try to tell them that they don't have to because I know that my mom forgave everybody, like she she doesn't hold anything, you know, she just kind of lives her life and uh she's generally pretty happy. Yeah, but I think now the ones who are left behind has to hold on to this unresolved thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah, we already think we all we all think we have more time.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah. Um one of the things that I got out of my mom was that she she loved the movie The Sound of Music.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Because she's a 60s baby. Yeah, she's and and Julia Andrews and you know that that movie came out I think in the late 60s or early 70s, and she was this little girl who went to a Catholic school in Malaysia. Now, for the listener for context, Malaysia is a Muslim country, and my mom is from a small town, not even the capital, I think like the the fifth largest city in Malaysia, uh, which doesn't say much. I think it's like a less than a million people, maybe like 400k. And she went to this Catholic school, had a convent and everything. And of course, when this movie came out, she saw a lot of her in this movie because it was like she was a rebellious kid that wants to go to America, and you know, uh, and and I realized that she wanted to go visit this place in Salzburg where the movie was filmed. And so I we just had a conversation again, and we're like, you know, what are we waiting for? Right? We it is we got a plan for it. It's it's all the way in Austria. And so last summer in July, uh, my girlfriend, my dad, and my mom and I, we flew into Vienna, we like hung out, we did a road trip, and we went to Salzburg. And and when we got there, we visited, you know, the the churches that Maria got married in and all the places that the movie was filmed. And just like two hours in, my mom, you know, stopped and just like look at me and took it all in and said, Wow, you know, the the little girl from this town in Ipo, the small town in Malaysia, could not have imagined that in her lifetime she'd be standing where Maria was standing in the movie. And and that she was living in her dreams.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Yeah. And I just I just wonder, you know, how many more things could I have done with her that would have brought the child back, you know, to fulfill all the things. And these conversations that we kind of put off for so long with our parents because we we just assume that we have more time.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I think that's kind of the the theme, isn't it? Like and and weirdly, like death educates us on that. It tells it reminds us that there just isn't more time. You have what you have until it's gone, and you have no idea. Nobody does. We can't account for tomorrow. We don't know when we're gonna go. And so to leave, you know, piles of papers behind for people to deal with is it's burdensome. I mean, it's fine if you it just you know, it just is what it is, it's life, you know, but like it doesn't have to be that hard, you know, if we can accept the fact that we all will go one day. Um, but it also puts in perspective, doesn't it? Like the idea that that we really do have to make the best of the moments that we have left. Sounds like you really did a great honor to your mom to take her around and even to create this app and even to take her to Burger King. I mean, what a beautiful thing, truly.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

You know, during COVID, I think a lot of people were thinking about and reflecting on their life, you know, how they want to live and what matters to them. And I had a similar experience. Um during COVID, I was living in New York. And New York's a six-hour flight to LA, it's not terrible. And I did it every three weeks or so.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

But what was really interesting is because we were all stuck at home, it wasn't as easy to travel between LA and New York, in the sense of like I had always taken for granted that if I wanted to see my family, I hop on a flight and I'll be, I'll be there soon in the same day. But during COVID, I didn't want to it was this was like the early days. We didn't know how quickly or slowly it would spread, and we we just didn't know a lot about it. And of course, I didn't want to risk me bringing in virus to my parents. And so I would quarantine for the 14 days in a hotel. And I was just by myself in this hotel and thinking, gosh, I I've I've taken for granted um how easy it was to go and see my parents. And and when when we were hanging out at home and we're just sitting on our laptops all together and just doing our own thing for days in a row during COVID, you know, I thought this it's kind of cool, right? Like to be building my career and spending time with the people I love the most. It got me thinking that, you know, I wanna, I wanna try to design my life around this. And two years later, you know, we it took us about two years to get this all in order, but we ended up getting a co-working space, uh, which is one I'm in right now.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

We're getting a we got a co-working space across from each other so that you know, we we all go do our thing as adults. We work and during lunchtime, we get to have lunch together every day and and then go to the gym after work. And it really challenged me to think about what you know, how how can we design our life around the things that really matters?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

It was around the same time that this chart got popular on the internet, which which essentially says, as uh as a child, all the time that you would spend with your parents, let's say 100% of it, you you would have spent 90% of that by the time you're 20 years old. And by the time you're 30, you would you would have spent about 95% of all the time that you have with your parent. So it really got me thinking like, if I was 30 at the time, if I only had 5% statistically, 5% of all the time I have with my parents, I want to focus that 5% on everything that I really enjoy. Right. And I think we we don't we're as humans, we're just so caught up with the urgent stuff that it's hard to like zoom out and really look at the entire picture. And and that was just a reflection that I had during COVID that led us to work together and led us led us to have a lot of lunch together that led to the conversation about airline.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Oh, I love that so much. Yeah, it's it's really difficult actually for people in general to step outside of themselves and see what's really happening in their world to then reassess values, priorities, meaning, purpose, all those kind of big, big things which accompanies, you know, uh our time with our family and and having those understandings of of kind of as you described as percentages with family. If you really think about the amount of time we spend with people, it's very few hours until we're dead after we leave home. You know? Um, and it's that's something we I probably I think we probably take too much for granted.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Yeah, and you know, it's it doesn't have to be so morbid as well, right? It's it's kind of just to have this awareness that we're here for a limited time and what we spend our energy focused on, you know, determines a lot of the quality of life that we have.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yeah, I'm so I'm 34 now, uh, and a lot of my friends, you know, I went to uh USC, you know, a lot of ambitious friends, and a lot of them are golden handcuffed to a job that maybe they don't love. And yeah, but but because of you know, keeping up the Joneses and this cost of living that they signed up for, that they're not able to, you know, put a lot aside a lot of things to actually do what they really want to do. And you know, I always challenge them and say, hey, what is this narrative that you're telling yourself? Like, why do you need to have a nicer car? You know, why why do you need an extra bedroom? Right? People, now my girlfriend's European, like we live, we're we're totally comfortable in apartments, and people have lived in small spaces all their lives. Right. So kind of challenging some of these assumptions of like, you know, why do we accumulate the things we have and put so much stress on ourselves instead of you know using it to live a little?

SPEAKER_00 28:14

So this journey for you is not just been about estate planning for the next generation, it's also been about changing the way you conceptualize how you live now and how you prioritize your time and your efforts and your money now, too, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

I I've always been like that. You know, I was I was 25, 26, I was driving Uber because I didn't have money to build the startups that I want to build. And I was driving Uber by day, and I was just sitting at Starbucks working on something, uh, an app or whatever I'm building at the time. And you know, back back in the days, I was definitely chasing the validation. You know, the validation of that kid who showed up to USC not being cool enough, didn't have rich parents, you know, didn't have a lot of things. And I I definitely thought uh that, or I knew so clearly at the time when I was 20s that if I was just successful, all my problems would go away. You know, all the validation that I needed, I would get. And to some degree, you know, that journey set me up pretty well because I worked really hard. I just I worked like crazy all my early 20s. And when I got to my late 20s, I realized I was a little underlived and I wanted to do a little bit more. And so I flipped this the script. And I think now that I'm in my mid-30s, I'm finally landing on a company, Airlight, that embodies everything I am as a person, which is I love helping people around me question the things that they're doing, just to find a little bit more clarity and to be more focused. And you know, I I try to ask this to myself all the time, which is if somebody is watching me, my life, like they were watching a Netflix series, what what would they be screaming at the TV that is so obvious that I need to do that I'm not seeing?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

I like that reflection.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

And I try to do that for my friends. Uh it's gotten me into trouble because it has you know, because people may not want advice. You know, I'm giving unsolicited advice, and I my close friends know that it's it's out of love. Yeah, but you know, if if someone's new and you're like, who who do you think you are? And you know, to be fair, like I don't have the context of their entire life, and nobody has for mine, and so take everything with a grain of salt.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Absolutely, man. You have to take it all with a grain of salt, especially when you're gonna be so bold. I get paid to be bold for a living, you know, and to to tell people the truth, you know, as I to the best degree that I understand it. Um, and you know, I I have been fired many times for saying true things. Um, and so there is a great risk in what would it be? I would say uh loving somebody authentically and in a real way, there's a great whisk risk in being rejected or pushed away because to to love somebody truly you have to tell them the truth. But I think the sophistication comes in time where we learn how to tell the truth in in nice and kind ways.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Yeah, I you know, I try to always give the caveat of like, hey, look, there's we're we're complex humans, right? We were built on all the history and environment and everything, cultural, religion, everything that affects how we think and see the world. And I'm no different. And, you know, I think I try to just remind my friends that like, look, I see so much potential typically in in my friends, and I also see so clearly the belief that they have that's holding them back. And yeah, we've gone into arguments uh about me being too pushy. So I I get it. I I think I'm generally a fairly intense person, to be real.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Well, you probably would have to be to be so entrepreneurial, right? Like you have to be kind of a go-getter, you have to be a little bit intense, you have to be a little bit opinionated to think that you have an idea that's gonna work. And so that makes sense. But for some that are not as intense, that can be complicated and they're not always gonna understand or appreciate that some of those ways of being is actually normal sometimes for that disposition. Although, again, as we age, we we develop hopefully more sophisticated approaches, you know, to to to handling these truths. I I had this thought, one of the things that everybody's gonna be wondering about, everybody's gonna be asking is, and this is something that I actually really liked when you described it to me before, is how how does it actually work? What is the the functional process of I I log in, I set an account, boom, then like what's the flow of how it works? Yeah. Because you know, we can all have good intentions, and I think one of the things like I and I'm guilty of this too, is like I'll start something and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm just I'm a little confused, and then I just fade off with it. And I I don't know. I just kind of fall away because I just I get lost in the weeds of things sometimes. Tell me about it. How does it work?

SPEAKER_02 33:21

When you go to airlight.com, actually, uh, I want to say whenever this comes out, it may be a little bit different because we're actually building something different based on data that we have. Good. So yeah. So when you go to airlight.com, you'll be prompted with two questions on the homepage. Um, it's it's gonna be in one order or the other. We're gonna randomly test it, but who do you want to protect? And what is one thing that you want to be sure to have a plan for? So we'll try to keep it simple. Once you answer those two questions, we will now bring you into a app within the website itself. So you don't you no longer have to download a mobile application and then you're gonna go through a series of explanation, the onboarding flow in in more technical terms, to explain to you that wills are state specific. We understand, we'll ask you a few questions to understand your context. For example, if you're married, if you have kids, if you have pets, you know, if you're if you have home, we ask you these questions. And then we go based on the shortest route possible, we help you fill in the information asking you about your executor, which is the person that will carry out the wishes of your will. And we'll just ask you these questions. And every step along the way, uh, there's legal definitions that you can look up. So every time we we send you a message, right under it, there's a tab that defines all these things.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

So the only thing we cannot give you is legal advice and interpretation. But we can always give you all the best practices that are out there, as well as you know, all the definitions of everything you need to know in plain English.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

And so this back and forth, what ends up happening is you're you're giving us a little bit of information at a time, but we're remembering all your preferences based on what you told us. And we're building this profile of you in the back end. And once we realize that we have enough information and this is on us to keep the progression going with you, then you'll you'll be able to generate a will. So all the way up to this point is free. You don't even have to put your credit card down. There's essentially no limit of like how slowly or how quickly you go. And the only time you have to put your credit card down is when we actually give you the document. Right? We're we're filling in all the information we have from you into a lawyer-approved template on the back end.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Very good.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

And when you export it, you'll get also the instructions as to how to make it valid, whether it's for notary, it's for having witnesses, and how to store it will give you all these instructions specific to your state.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

That's very cool. What about like when people um like life changes? So like I've I've created the will, I've gone in there, I make it, and then I don't know, either I have a windfall or something comes crashing down and things change. And can I just go back in? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah, that's the beauty of having an app, right? You get to pull up your phone and you get to talk to the app and say, you know, let's say you're walking at a mall right now, and you see a picture frame, and it reminded you of a picture frame that your your grandmother gave to you. But you had you didn't think about this picture frame when you were creating the the will at the first place. So now you can go to the app and voice to the app and say, Hey, next time I update my will, remind me to add a picture frame from grandma, and I want to make sure to give it to my niece because the story.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

You know, the app will then ask you, you know, is there a note that you want to keep with this? Right? So we're gonna keep the story as well as the actual thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

That's very cool. I like that.

unknown 37:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

So the next time, you know, we'll try to give you some emails, email reminders, especially you know, if you're coming up on six months or a year, or if you accumulated a lot of things that you added where we think that, you know, hey, maybe it's time to take a look. We'll just like cue up some emails there. And the next time you go into your app, you you'd have all these things saved.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

That's very cool. I love the idea of that. And I love the idea that you can just kind of talk it out. I find, and maybe it's just me, I don't know how many people are like me out there, but I find it is so much easier if I can just like work it out verbally with somebody or something. Like I do use AI to kind of like work out ideas and just think through things sometimes, or I'll be talking to you know a friend or my wife or my children or something, and I'm working it out. Um, that's definitely my preferred model of processing, managing, sort of crunching uh ideas in my life. Um and I'm always finding that like if I can come back to something quickly and just update and edit, that's lovely. I love the idea of that. That's a big deal. Because I'm I'm not, you know, if I'm in, if I'm doing my job, I'm relatively organized with the person I'm sitting with. But if I'm just doing life, um I don't again, I don't know how many people are like me, but probably a lot, since what I mean, what two-thirds of people don't have you know this stuff done. So probably more people are disorganized like me in some ways. Like it's nice to be able to just come back to it.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

You know, there's so many ways of people doing this. You know, like if you speak Spanish and you're from a household of uh a very conservative religion, right? You talk about this topic differently for sure. And as you alluded to earlier, you know, sometimes it's the ego that stops us from confronting this process. A lot of times it's it could be an ego to yourself to like, I don't want to look in the mirror and admit that I don't know these things. Uh, but what I realize is especially true, because we have users who clearly has the financial capability to uh afford an attorney. And and I asked him and I said, Hey, look, I I can't give you legal advice, but I'm really curious why you use my app instead of hiring an attorney. And uh his short answer was he didn't want to talk to another human, right? He didn't want to sit in front of a human to review his life or admit that he didn't know what executor was. Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

So that yes, that goes back to what I said earlier, too, like not just ego, but shame. We're kind of afraid because we feel insecure, inadequate. And so we can walk into this. It's it's it's a softer blow in some sense.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

Yeah, and it comes in a million different forms because by all accounts, this specific person that I had a kind of a user interview with, um by all accounts and measure in societal success, he's made it, right? And like I I just can't imagine, but but our perception of what is success is so defined by our people close proximity to us, right? It's like it is our closest circle, it's a neighborhood we live in. And so maybe to this person, they just don't want to confront us. Um, and and yet to almost everybody else, I think, in this country, they would look at this person and think, wow, you're so successful, must be nice. And it's not up to me to judge, right? It's like I'm I'm trying to build this in my mind when I think of the user that I'm building it for, it's really the the person who was my mother who kind of she has the means to do it, but she just put it off.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Okay. Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

And and she knows that she needs to, right? It's important. Right. She knows that. Right. And and just for whatever reason, she just kept putting it off. And so I want to offer an alternate solution to what's out there in the market right now.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Yeah, that makes tons of sense. Is there anything that you think the listener would really need to know about estate planning that maybe they're probably missing? Because I have a thought, um, but I'm just curious if there's any last thought that you want to share uh with the listener.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

I think there's a pre-conceived notion that estate planning is either expensive or difficult. And yes, of course, it can be expensive and difficult. Uh, in fact, my my mother, my father had a trust setup because what we realized was that you know, they're business owners, they have homes. Oh, sure. It it it makes sense for them to get a trust. But for most of the people, statistically, if you're listening to this, there's a pretty high chance that all you need to do is to start very small.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

And I'm gonna call that like the first hour. And what does the first hour entail? Find a quiet space, have a cup of coffee, take a few deep breaths, and just write down a few things that matters, or if if that's too heavy of a question, then let's think of you know, something in your childhood, a memory in your childhood, a gift that you think so fondly of. We start there and we start making a list of things and people that brings us a smile.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 42:35

And then as you kind of get more comfortable with this process, then you can start exploring tools like airlight, right? Like trust and will. You know, I I firmly believe that the rising tides raises all boats in this industry. And and I I just think like the more people to have to do this is just generally better.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Well, and it's it's a way of caring about your family that I think we just don't consider, you know, it's a way of loving uh that we just don't think about. And I think that really does actually matter. And I and I like the approach that you have to this because it's like even if I'm sort of a procrastinator, I can I can start slow. And again, I'm not trying to like be manipulative with it, but I can start slow in loving my family in this kind of way. You know, maybe I'm procrastinating. It's not that I don't love my family, but it's another way to love my family. And so I'm starting slow and I can work towards just having these chats, which again, for me, having the conversations helps move the needle a little bit and helps organize things. And if I can start just talking about, you know, this one item or this one thing, or oh yeah, I gotta I have this savings account, or or I don't have a savings account, you know, maybe I should start a savings account. Um, you know, that might be something to consider too. If you're young and you have a family too, like some of these things may not, that actually might be an interesting barrier too. If you're young, you may not think that you're At that stage where you have anything to get like you know, you have kids, you have a family, they have to go somewhere if you die. You know, something has to happen if you know both parents are gone and they're not available. Um but I like that you can just kind of start quietly a little bit at a time and love your family through a new avenue.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

Our North Star as a company in everything we do is clarity, is love in practical form.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Love it. It's great. Um any other final thoughts that you want to share?

SPEAKER_02 44:31

You know, go check it out, and I'm gonna actually send you a link to uh give your listeners a 50% off discount. Uh we we'd love to have you, and you know, by the time you listen to this, I hope we're in your state that you're living in.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Well, I can tell you it is in Colorado because I did pull it up. So, you know, last time we looked at it and we couldn't find it, but it's there. It's in Colorado. So, you know, the ups and downs of a business, you know, a new business and being an entrepreneur is that some of these kinks will get worked out over time, but that's the that's the beauty of somebody who's ambitious. You know, you can create something new to help people along the way, and uh helping people is what this is all about in the long run. And if you can make money helping people, I make I make money as a therapist helping people, then we can keep helping people, right? We can keep making a difference, and that's something that's important too. So, Jermaine, I appreciate you coming on and sharing all of this. I appreciate you sharing some of the story and some of the vulnerability through some of this stuff too. It's super hard when we lose people, and it's so cool what you did for your mom. I'm I'm impressed by that. I I hope to be so thoughtful with my own mother uh as as I as I get closer to that stage of life as well. And I think this is one of those conversations too today. I I don't know if people understand this, but it's probably one of those things that people don't realize they need to know. They don't realize this is, and from my perspective as therapist is actually good for their mental health to talk about. That's why I even agreed to like bring this on to the Voyage Gast, is because I think this is actually something that's useful for people. And I've dealt with families and I've dealt with couples and I've dealt with all kinds of situations where their loved ones die and now they're struggling to figure out what to do next because it's complicated. But now we have this new technology. You have air light, we have all this stuff out there now where we can really make a difference for that next generation. Um, and for those of you that are listening, if this is something you've put off, don't. You don't need to. It's so easy. You can just start with a conversation and it's free to start, which is amazing. No credit card needed. There's so many apps out there, and I'm sure this is why you did this, Jermaine, where they'll say it's free. You put the credit card in and you're like, ooh, I don't know if I like that so much, and then suddenly you get billed later on. It's very confusing. And this way you can just get to it, and if you really like the product, then you can pay for it, which is, I don't know, that's like a testament to the value and the craft of the product, right? So, Jermaine, I think uh this has been a delight having you on and talking to you and learning more about your story. And we'll hopefully talk to you soon if more comes. Sound good? Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hey, thanks so much for joining me again for another episode of the Voyage Cast. This is Eddie, and I appreciate you guys tuning in to this interview today. If you really like this kind of content, please do me the biggest favor in the world because we know this content changes lives. We know it helps you. Share it, share it with people in your life, share it with your friends, share it with your family, share it with anybody you can think of, maybe even people you hate. I don't really care. Just share it. Tells the algorithms that this is good content and it's useful. And that's what we're here for, to bring you help beyond the office. Thanks so much for joining us. Until next time,