From navigating the estate planning landscape to handling wills and trusts, Holly Geerdes has over 22 years of experience in the legal field as a premier trial and asset protection attorney in the United States. She has overseen the major legal issues pending across the U.S as well as locally for local State legislatures and State Bars. With her array of knowledge, she is now considered one of the most sought-after attorneys who trains lawyers interested in the categories of estate planning, elder law, and asset protection.
Holly is also the founder of Estate Law Center where she hosts in-person and online workshops to educate the general public on the process of wills and estate planning.
What is Estate Law Center USA all about?
Estate Law Center USA specializes in protecting assets for individuals, families, business owners, and investors. We utilize wills, trusts, and corporate set ups and structures in various different ways to give our clients peace of mind that their assets are protected while they are alive and for their families post-death.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company.
I was adopted when I was 6 from Seoul Korea. During my childhood, I grew up in a small town made up of barely 900 people in Iowa. After high school, I discovered my passion for the legal field. I pursued my degree as a lawyer and graduated from law school at the University of Minnesota. It was from there that I moved to Atlanta, Georgia where I began working for the State of Georgia on the most important legal appeal issues to the highest court, Georgia Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court. During my time here, I won ‘Case of the Year 4 years in a row. Then five years later I opened my own law firm that concentrates on complex litigation and asset protection. For the past 15 years, we’ve been specializing in asset protection, estate tax planning, and charitable planning.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- Wisdom – It allows you to go beyond the numbers and even achievements. Wisdom comes with experience and allows you to make informed decisions that benefit your entire organization.
- Courage – Allows you to operate at a high level even when you don’t have all the answers. Courage leads to unearthing the answers and applying them in time to execute plans in a timely fashion.
- Temperance – Gives you the balance necessary to guide how hard to work, and balance your personal life as well as essentially every single aspect of your very being.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
As a head attorney and founder at Estate Law Center, we operate as a national law firm with several offices around the United States. Our team has a network of attorneys that we train and have availability in several states to help clients wanting high-level attorneys experienced in asset protection and estate tax planning.
Our plans are to continue to grow our markets exponentially, especially in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Texas, Florida, and the Silicon Valley area. While we are already in these markets, we strive to continue to grow our market size.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We are considered one of the few law firms that are licensed and serves clients in over 20 states. Our law firm is made up of a network of trained and experienced lawyers that cover most of the United States. We also have Chinese and Korean-speaking attorneys. Our staff and attorneys specializing in estate planning, asset protection, and estate tax planning are the most diverse culturally, language-wise, and race.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- Not focusing on the business and marketing side. Owning your own law firm is no different than any other business. The legal practice is more than a full-time job so many lawyers are bad business owners. I learned that neglecting the business and marketing side would not accomplish my vision of owning and managing a national law firm that caters to not only English speaking but also for Chinese and Korean-speaking emerging markets.
- One of the biggest mistakes I made in business was starting with just ideas and not an actual well-thought-out plan. I would highly encourage anyone starting a business to thoroughly map out their road to success.
- I ended up setting unrealistic goals in my early years of business. Over time patience helped to put everything in its proper perspective. The odds are that none of us are going to be a success overnight, so definitely take your time.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Some challenges I’ve faced are hiring a dedicated and intelligent staff. I got in the habit of taking too long to hire but quick to fire when the person hired did not meet the law firm’s high expectations. I began to learn the importance of nurturing excellent staff so they become loyal and stay with the firm as well as providing benefits and salary for longevity and loyalty.
Another challenge faced was continuing to keep up with the growth of the law firm. We overcame this challenge by having the headquarters in charge of quality control of our legal products and overseeing staff and attorneys nationally. We also systemized the training and our legal processes to ensure timely production of our legal work and products without sacrificing quality.
Virtual meetings also helped us serve our clients wherever they reside in the United States several years before Covid. So, when Covid hit, we did not lose a beat and our law firm revenue grew even faster and exponentially.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
My first business idea was starting my own law firm which I started five years after obtaining my Bar license. It was a huge life goal of mine that I am very proud to say I accomplished.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
- Green Zone-Dedicated time each day for creative ideas for growing the business and time to improve your blind spots.
- Red Zone-Dedicated time for urgent and important tasks and meetings to finish on or before a deadline.
- Yellow Zone-Dedicated time for meetings and tasks that are not urgent but need to be accomplished to meet the goals and vision of the firm.
- Color coding my calendar based on the above has helped me to prioritize tasks and check things off of my to-do list.
I also have started meditating 2-3 times a day to stay present, focused, and grateful.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs?
- The letters from a Stoic by Seneca
- Podcast-Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
- The New Earth by Eckert Tolle
What is your favorite quote?
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day…The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”
– Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
What is your definition of success?
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou
