The Estate Innovator: Vincent Lackner Jr. on Why Integrated Systems Are the Ultimate Advantage in Trust and Tax Administration

0:01John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by HighLevel, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Why integrated systems are the ultimate advantage in both trust and tax administration. To draw these eyeballs, I brought to Vincent F. Lackner Jr. in the EO Fire Studios. Vincent is the president of Lackner Group and the creator of the six-in-one estate administration system, combining deep tax, fiduciary, and technology expertise to streamline estate and trust administration software solutions. And today we talk about why it's still so complex, the origin of the system, smarter workflows, innovation and practice, lessons learned, and oh, so much more.

0:39John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Vincent and our sponsors. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial, plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, if you have a high-ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you. We'll book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself.

1:18John Lee Dumas:Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you. Vince, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up to Fire Nation? So what do most people disagree with? A willingness to be wrong is an important quality. Active, open-minded thinking. Challenge your own beliefs. There is a wonderful article I came across, the number one habit all highly intelligent people, I would maybe change it to all successful entrepreneurs have, this is by a psychologist. And the one line is that actively open-minded thinking reflects the extent to which someone habitually weighs new evidence against a favored belief, considers others' views before closing on a position, and remains genuinely open to being wrong.

2:17A variation of that is a wonderful line I read in an obituary of somebody who worked for the Labor Department in the government. And they said of him his defining characteristic was he was a frictionless thinker. So I think these are the kind of things that are really useful in building a business, especially a novel business. I would start with that.

2:42John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we are talking to the estate innovator, and we're going to be really focused on why integrated systems are the ultimate advantage in trust and tax administration. And why, Vince? Why is it still so complex? I mean, estate and trust administration has been around literally for decades. We're not talking years, decades and decades, really centuries. So why is it still so complicated for professionals today? Well, I can give a little background. By the way, the Pennsylvania Inheritance Tax just celebrated its 200th anniversary. There you go. It was implemented on April 11 of the year 1826.

3:22The federal estate tax return was implemented in 1916. So there's a long history to some of these tax returns. Why is it so complicated? Well, I liken – so we deal with multiple layers. We deal with estate tax and inheritance tax, federal and state. We deal with income tax to an estate on the federal and state level. We deal with the inventory, which is the list of assets owned at death. We deal with the fiduciary accounting, which is a summary of all of the activity of the probate property owned by the decedent at death. And we deal with gift tax returns. So it's a lot of things going on all at once.

4:08And so in 1985, I started building a one right solution to that subject so that you wouldn't have to enter the real estate description in four or five different places just to get the work done. The idea of unifying it appealed to me, but I liken this to being like a kaleidoscope, or maybe another way to put it is playing tic-tac-toe in three dimensions on a rotating platter with strobe lights going on and off. So to give you an idea of the scope, from 2024 to 2025, we had to review 229 unique pages of tax returns. 582 pages of tax returns with sample data. We had to add in the last four years 3 ,000 fields to the system to accommodate the changes in the law at the federal and state level.

5:09Most recently, the U.S. estate tax return was revised in the most profound way in over 40 years. So it took some work to accommodate that. So it's an ever-changing landscape that we deal with year upon year upon year. It includes e-filing, which is an amazing system. We have a little corner of it for fiduciary income tax, but it's pretty elaborate in itself. So we're dealing with constant change, and that is a large part of why it's so complex.

5:42John Lee Dumas:I want to talk about the origin of the system. I mean, you created this six-in-one estate administration system. So what inspired you to do that? And what specific impact has it had on your industry? I would say I can go back to 1983 to the American Bar Association annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. And I attended the real property, probate, and trust law section of the ABA annual meeting. and there was some talk then about you know putting together a system that could do it all in one place and the sense that I got from the conversation at that time was it can't be done these are people with decades of practice working with all these elements and the conclusion was it can't be done so that in effect threw down the gauntlet for me to prove them wrong And so I set out to build this system, which I started building two years later, basically.

6:46And how has it changed the industry? Well, we are currently the only ones who still have that solution that I pioneered. One other company has had it for some years, but they've broken off two of the six pieces. So they're no longer fully integrated. We are the only ones integrated. and every day we have people tell us how much they love our software, how they depend upon it day in and day out, and how much it means to them and their work.

7:15John Lee Dumas:I want to talk about smarter workflows because technology and your specific tax experience, I mean, it's come together to create, let's just be honest, more efficient administrative processes. So how has that been the case? How have you merged technology with your experience to just become more efficient, to become more effective? After five years in law practice, 1978 to 83, in 1983, I discovered Lotus 1-2-3. Basically, it changed my life because I fell in love with that. I must have bought 30 workbooks. I did every example in every workbook. I attended the first five Lotus developer conferences ever held, 1984.

8:00I met Dan Bricklin, who was the inventor of BusyCalc, the first spreadsheet ever invented, as well as Mitch Kapoor, who founded Lotus. I watched Steve Jobs give a demonstration in about 1988 of his next computer. So I was seeing all these great thinkers and their new technology, and it was fascinating. For three years, our system was based on Lotus 1-2-3, believe it or not. Then we switched over to the Q &A database from Symantec. And there was great stuff on the source and CompuServe. All these listservs you could go on and interact with people. That was wonderful. And we had that as our platform for 16 years.

8:46And then we moved into FileMaker Pro, attended 20 years of conferences, learned from the best in the world who were presenting at those conferences. I hibernated in a local hotel. for weeks on end and implemented every example in FileMaker magazine. So I learned the tricks and tips of the technology, which I could then apply to my domain and the subject matter that I was tackling.

9:13John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we're going to talk about innovation and practice, about lessons learned about looking ahead and more when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer, but you are not getting enough quality sales calls on the calendar, Nexus install is exactly what you need. This is a custom LinkedIn client acquisition system built to help you connect with the right prospects, start real conversations, and turn those conversations into booked calls. Here is what makes it different. We do not just hand you a bunch of theory and tell you, good luck. We build the system with you.

9:46John Lee Dumas:Dial in your audience, sharpen the messaging, run the outreach, and aim to book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month. Then, once the system is proven and installed, We train you on how to run it yourself so you are not dependent on another agency forever. If you have a strong offer, a clear result, and are ready for more quality conversations with real prospects, email my team at john at eofire.com, and then we'll set up a call to see if Nexus Install is the right fit for you. Simple, focused, and built for predictable, long-term, quality lead flow. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom.

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11:06John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Okay. Vince, we're back and I want to talk about innovation in practice. Specifically, what role do you think that innovation plays in improving fiduciary systems and of course, the overall law firm efficiency? I think it's essential. And I would go to a slide that I saw somebody present. It's the best slideshow I ever saw. And he ended with a picture of a cat. Now, as we know, cats have nine lives, right? And apparently this cat had exhausted his last life. And the closing line was that curiosity might have killed the cat, but the cat died happy.

12:03And so I would say that innovation depends on endless curiosity. And if you're curious enough to make systems better, then it can go a long way to improving the efficiency and the pleasure people get from the work and the pleasure that the clients get from your work that you do much more effectively. And of course, AI is going to, in a big way, obviously affect that. And we'll get to that in a few minutes. But I would say curiosity and innovation go hand in hand.

12:42John Lee Dumas:I love that word curiosity. I mean, it just comes up over and over again that the most curious people are the innovators, are the ones that are on the cutting edge, are trying new things, are testing new things. By the way, they're failing, but they're learning from those failures and those struggles, and they're improving and they're adjusting. And that's why they're leading the way. So I love that word, curiosity. And you've had some lessons learned as a result. Again, when you try new things, sometimes they don't always work. So, I mean, let's talk about after the decades of product development.

13:12John Lee Dumas:And of course, you know, you work closely with customers day to day. What are the biggest lessons that you've learned, Vince? What can we take away from your lessons? Customers really appreciate the hands-on interaction we have with their questions. and there are lots of novel questions in this field it's endless. So years ago we were using, I remember the names of the tools, they'll come to me I'm sure in a minute, but screen sharing so we can see their screens and share the mouse and keyboard with them. On simple questions walk them through it. On novel questions think it through with them, make changes right then and there on their system and and make the same change in the master copy of our software.

14:00They really, really appreciated that hands-on interaction with us. And then to sort of illustrate further the ongoing, I feel like sometimes the constant gardener. You're constantly trimming here and planting there, et cetera, et cetera. When we converted from FileMaker 6 to 10, starting in June of 2009, I started keeping notes on a yellow pad of all the changes, not just the daily notes of calls with clients, but the changes to the software. And so between June of 2009 and June of 2025, well, 26, actually, so these 17 years, those tweak notes, I'm now on page 1 ,655. So it gives you an idea of the constant change and the constant attention to the subject and the interaction with the customers.

14:59And that's gold right there.

15:01John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about looking ahead, Vince, because now that you've seen the improvements that this has brought to your life by trying new things, by staying cutting edge, by becoming more efficient, by implementing technology, all these different things, what future trends are you seeing in estate, trust, and fiduciary software solutions? Well, one trend I'm trying to introduce and educate people on is this notion of visual law. And that is to help practitioners get up to speed on various topics. And we also get into the estate planning side with more of that as well. That's a whole other topic for another day.

15:44but also when you are visual with it, it helps the practitioners educate their clients more effectively. I would call to attention the listeners to a fabulous website called 3blue1brown.com. That's three, the number three, the word blue, the number one, the word brown.com. I discovered that when I was tracking the growth of COVID in February, March of 2020 for my class Listserv. And I came across a video on that website that illustrated beautifully the whole notion of exponential growth. Well, he's got about 100 videos on visual mathematics. And anybody who goes to that website who loves math will probably binge watch.

16:35And we're now trying to dissect how they do that so we can incorporate it into our software. We have probably 100 ,000 tech support tickets in a database for the last 41 years. Maybe half of them, 50 ,000, deal with the subject legal tax accounting questions. I actually just looked up a database I had pulled together and scraped from the Pennsylvania Bar Probate and Solo listservs between 2006 and 2017. 17, 37 ,745 posts relevant to our subject. We could apply Claude and co-pilot and Claude code and Claude design and Claude legal to that kind of data to do wonderful things for the betterment of the practice and the consumers out there.

17:29So I would say that looking ahead, I think the more visual we can make it, the simpler we can make it appear to people and the more digestible it will be for them.

17:41John Lee Dumas:Vince, I want to talk about a closing value bomb. I mean, what would you say of everything we've talked about today? Looking ahead, lessons learned, innovation and practice, smarter workflows, origin of the system, just why it's still so complex. What is the one thing that Fire Nation should understand about simplifying complex systems, whether it's in law and business, or hey, maybe in life itself? I would say a couple of things. One would be, I think you need to live, breathe, eat, sleep, the subject matter. If it's complex, then that, you know, there's a reason it's complex. And so you have to really live it to understand it inside and out.

18:21Connecting with the national or in some cases, international experts in the field. We work with a fellow who is the world's expert on actuarial calculations. Larry Katzenstein, a great guy and an unbelievable intellect on the subject. So it's great to have that kind of person in your bullpen to work with and bounce ideas off. I just got out about two hours ago from shadowing the 55th reunion class of the Harvard class of 1971. And in their class survey, there were two wonderful lines that came out of it. One, they said that AI is the fastest way to get wrong answers. So you need to keep the human element in play for accountability and trust and so forth.

19:10And then I thought this was a great line. Somebody said, as a hedge I'm investing in artificial stupidity. So interesting counterpoint. I go back to the visual decision trees, the yes-no trees that you can use to sharpen the logic, iterate, iterate, iterate. And one example of that, some 20 or so years ago, when the feds introduced an oddball, long-term capital gains period, holding period of a year and a half, that was kind of bizarre, but we built a decision tree, went through 20 iterations, printed out 3 ,000 copies, and put them at the seats of every attendee at the Heckerling Estate Planning Institute at the time in Miami, Florida, now Orlando.

20:03The powers that be asked us to remove every chart from all 3 ,000 seats before the session began. But many people who had already taken their seats insisted on keeping the chart and continued to use it in their practice for the next several years until the law was made less stupidly complex. So I would say that the more we can do to help people with the tools to make the complex simple, because the complexity never goes away, I think the better off they are and the greater service we provide to them.

20:37John Lee Dumas:Vince, if Fire Nation is inspired by everything that you shared today and they want to connect with you, they want to learn more about you, they want to consume some of your content, what would be your call to action for our listeners today? Great question. Well, certainly you can reach out to us. I assume you've provided, you know, relevant contact information. Email address, for example. How would you like to go on that? Yep. Okay, so my email, Vince, V-I-N-C-E, at LacknerGroup.com, L-A-C-K-N-E-R Group.com. Certainly, we're happy to interact with these folks who might reach out. Secondly, I would say the whole visual world, and I would really recommend that, FreeBlueOneBrown.com.

21:29It is the most exciting illustration of math, but I think it goes beyond math, that I've ever seen. And this fellow came out of Stanford, used to work for the Khan Academy, has done an amazing job of putting together some great things that would be relevant to lots of people's work going forward.

21:50John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with VFL and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And just like Vince said, links to everything about him, his company will be on our show notes page. So just go to eofire.com and type Vince in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Vince, thank you for sharing your truth and knowledge and value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. And I appreciate the opportunity. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Vincent for sponsoring today's episode.

22:26John Lee Dumas:and Fire Nation. Are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for what? EO Fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, just visit eofire.com slash guest and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highleveelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

22:57John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you. We'll book you eight to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself. Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you.

23:26Thank you.