Like a Library Burning

 

Sharing and Saving a Lifetime of Stories

 

 

by Scott Farnsworth & Peggy Hoyt

Most people don’t realize they have amassed a fortune over their lifetime, a fortune in wisdom, insight, and life-lessons.  This human treasure is at serious risk if it is not shared and saved.  Like a Library Burning addresses the why and the how of protecting and passing on a lifetime of stories and explains how to improve our lives here and now by examining and expressing our personal stories. 

You will learn:

·         How stories allow us to better understand ourselves and the world around us.

·         How stories connect us with others and help us share ideas and feelings with them.

·         How stories effectively teach our deepest values to our children and grandchildren.

·         How stories dramatically improve the quality of our financial planning and estate planning.

·         How stories help us discover our life’s purpose and passion and come alive in pursuing it.

This practical, timely book can help you preserve and enhance your true wealth: the richness and meaning of your life, your relationships with those you love most, and your power and influence for good in the world, both now and when you’re gone.

To order your own copy

click here!

( $20.00 per copy)

Stories change lives — telling ours and listening to others’.  And storytelling is the framework of one of the most important changes in our world right now: story-based estate planning and financial planning.  Scott and Peggy present an inspiring and touching, practical and profound picture of the central place story has in understanding ourselves, in building the relationships we want, and in leaving our true legacy.  This book also ignites a determination to capture our own and our families’ stories now, so that the inevitable “fire” is no threat.

 

Nancy Kline

President, Time to Think

Author of Time to Think

www.TimeToThink.com

 

 

I am convinced that stories and storytelling are critical for the success of our business and the success of all of the stakeholders who touch our business. This isn’t just an academic claim. The use of storytelling has had a positive and powerful impact on our ability to deliver our message.

If you are in a business that relies on communication—and who isn’t—you will realize tremendous value by simply taking the ideas from this new book and bringing them into your life.

 

Scott Hamilton, CEO, InKnowVision, LLC

www.InKnowvision.com

 

 

 

Peggy and Scott lead us on perhaps the most important journey each of us can take—to capture and tell our story. Not only do they make a persuasive case for this endeavor, they beautifully illustrate how preserving our stories can lead to meaningful and fulfilling connections among family members. Most importantly, they give us the blueprint for how to start and succeed.

 

Rick Stone

President, The StoryWork Institute, Inc.

Author of The Healing Art of Storytelling

www.StoryWork.com

 

 

 

Scott and Peggy have crisply distilled the cutting-edge ideas that form the vision for the future of estate planning and financial planning.  We’ve known for years that when estate planners and financial advisors tell stories, it increases clients’ trust in them and makes the planning experience more understandable, effective, and fun.  When advisors listen to their clients’ stories, it enriches the entire professional experience.  Yet as monumental as these insights are, they pale in comparison to the delight and joy and personal growth that come from applying these principles in our own lives and families.

 

Richard L. Randall,

Chairman and CEO,

National Network of Estate Planning Attorneys

www.NNEPA.com

 

What a fantastic read Like a Library Burning is! Peggy and Scott do an masterful job showing us that our real legacy is the memorialized stories of our life. Their well-written examples bring home the point that we all have connections that can and should be maintained through story telling -- that story telling helps the ones we leave behind, not only in dealing with the loss but in dealing with the future. I have always enjoyed hearing my mother's stories of her life, and now I am anxious to record conversations with my Mom to memorialize not only her stories but her life lessons. Thank you Peggy and Scott for showing us how important this is!

Debbie Roser

To order your own copy

click here!

( $20.00 per copy)

As a reporter who has covered personal finance for 25 years, I was curious when a source told me about a new kind of financial and estate planning that was being taught to advisors by Scott Farnsworth. Always a cynic, I didn’t really believe there could be much new about the subject.

But I followed up and contacted Scott because I had developed a pressing personal interest in estate planning.  I was about to turn 52, and my wife Mindy and I had no wills to protect our two children, Alison, 15, and Jason, 13.  I called Scott and asked him to let me put his ideas to a real test: try his approach with my wife, Mindy.  Scott agreed.

A few days later, I called Scott with my wife on the line.  I stayed silent and listened while Scott went through one of his Priceless Conversations with Mindy.  I’ll never forget what happened during that 45-minute phone call.  Scott engaged my wife in a conversation about how we could pass our values, our faith, and our heritage along with our financial assets to Alison and Jason.  By the end of the call, Mindy was in tears and I was emotionally shaken.

A few months earlier, Mindy and I had worked with a prominent estate planner who wrote our wills.  But the 100-page document sat in a pile of paperwork in our kitchen.  Mindy and I had allowed our wills to sit for months unsigned.  Why didn’t we just sign them and send them back to the attorney?  How could we be so irresponsible?  After Scott’s conversation with Mindy, the answer was clear.  While our wills contained all of the right legal remedies—trusts that could protect our kids from themselves, creditors and the IRS, they lacked the personal connection we wanted to feel.   They failed to give voice to our greatest hopes for our children.

People have a natural desire to pass on more to loved ones than their money.  Our humanity instills in us a need to help the next generation progress by passing on what we have learned, the ideas we hold most dear, and beliefs precious to us.  Traditional estate planning fails to address this most fundamental desire.  As a result, many wills go unsigned, and many people die without ever passing on their most valuable assets.  Wisdom is wasted, like a library burned.

The effort to prevent this sin of wasting mankind’s fuel—our knowledge—is a noble one, but it surely will not be easy. The financial and estate planning industry is an entrenched, complex system with established financial incentives, professional roles, and educational infrastructure.  Changing the established financial and estate planning system requires changing the way lawyers, insurance agents, and financial advisors think, and changing the way clients think.  Though it may take five, 10, or 20 years, financial and estate planning will change and adopt the ideas laid out in this book because clients and good professionals will demand it.

This type of caring, probing, and personal planning—let’s call it story-based planning—will ultimately become the norm for practitioners because it is good for people, makes the world better, and makes our lives more meaningful.  It is progress.  And this book is a first major step toward reaching this worthy goal.

 

To order your own copy

click here!

( $20.00 per copy)