Advisors
"I believe everyone has a legacy letter in their heart, but getting it from your heart to your mind and then to a piece of paper — easier said than done."
Blake Brewer, Founder of the Legacy Letter Challenge
Client Experience Spotlight
Your clients will never regret writing a legacy letter.
Nobody wakes up on a Tuesday morning and says, "I should write a legacy letter today."
That's not a knock on your clients. Life is full. The idea of capturing your values, your stories, your love for the people who matter most feels important but never feels urgent. Until it does.
This is where advisors step in. Not to own the process, but to start it. The best advisors act as catalysts—surfacing the idea at the right moment, in the client’s best interest.
Legacy work does not start with a finished letter. It starts with a single answer.
Make the first step smaller. The first legacy letter doesn't have to be a tearjerker or addressed to anyone specific. It just has to exist.
Give clients a starting point that feels conversational, not ceremonial. One simple prompt is enough:
Intellectual: What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? Why did it stick?
Human: Who's someone in your life who may not realize how much they’ve shaped you?
Cultural: What’s a meal you love to make—and what makes it meaningful?
Social: What's a big decision you made, and how did you arrive at it?
One sentence, one paragraph, one page, telling a story they already know.
Once that first letter exists, the door is open. Legacy Letters can be stored directly in Total Family, preserved for the people who will need them most.
What to Say
"Can I give you one question to answer?
Just this: what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Write it out, whatever feels right. We'll save it in Total Family, and it becomes the first page of something your family will have forever."
Content Worth Exploring
46% of advisors say the great wealth transfer is an existential threat to their business.
The 2026 Natixis Wealth Transfer Report says 55% of next-generation heirs plan to leave their benefactor's advisor.
But the same data points to a different conclusion for those willing to adapt. The most effective retention strategy is not product or performance—it is building long-term relationships across the entire family.
Legacy letters are relationship building.
Activity: Pull your top 10 client families. For how many do you have a documented relationship with the next generation? That's where you start.
On Legacy Letters
We talk often about Legacy Letters as a gift to the people who receive them. And they are.
But the act of writing changes the person writing it too.
If the first letter your client writes does nothing more than that, it's already worth it.
The Visionary Advisor Podcast
Blake Brewer, founder of the Legacy Letter Challenge, joined Alex on the Visionary Advisor podcast to talk about how advisors can make Legacy Letters a standard part of their practice without it feeling heavy or hard to start.
His story begins at 19 years old, standing next to his father's body on a beach in Hawaii, and a letter that arrived hours later that changed everything.
"You start thinking about your family tree and your grandchildren's grandchildren. Someone's got to go first."
