Female Disruptors: Leah Del Percio and Tara Faquir of Trustate On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Leah: I have only two words: “Fail forward.”
Tara: “Believe in yourself” — It may sound silly or cheesy, but I really believe that no one else is going to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. You should be your biggest champion and be proud of everything you have accomplished thus far. Dream big, visualize the goals, and go for it!
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Leah Del Percio and Tara Faquir of Trustate.
Leah Del Percio and Tara Faquir are the founders of Trustate, an Estate Administration Tech company that is changing the landscape of estate administration for businesses and individuals alike.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Leah: I am a trusts & estates lawyer, and saw a gap in my industry where most people, after experiencing a death in the family, weren’t getting the value they desperately needed from their trusted advisors, whether that be an attorney, financial advisor or trust officer. In many situations, their attorney would often spend a lot in time and overhead to meet the needs of their estate administration clients, often still coming up short. And while I sat in the role of attorney, I knew inefficiencies weren’t only affecting the attorney. Advisors, as an example, were also had many pain points during an estate administration. I knew that we could build a product to help trusts and estates professionals get back their time so that they could focus on their actual legal work while still meeting all of the other needs of their clients.
Tara: While I am not a lawyer, although I certainly am learning a thing or two along the way, I spent my career in the sales and ops side of the business at large companies and start-ups. However, I had intimate knowledge of the pain points of estate administration because two of my grandparents died within the same year. Both estate administrations were an absolute mess. The frustrations, time, and emotions that played out daily took a toll on my entire family. Although we hired a lawyer, it was amazing the amount of work that still had to be completed. When Leah shared her hypothesis that technology could be applied to this problem…I was all in.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Tara: The work we are doing is disruptive because it has never been done before. Nobody thought about estate administration as a data problem, they often think about it as a grief problem. And while grief is a major factor for the executor and/or family, doing the work of actually administering the estate correctly with accurate data is the source of the pain point for professionals helping along the way. We look at solving the problem for the professionals, so they can, in turn, create a better experience for their clients…the executors.
Leah: In my practice, I saw that having the correct information when administering an estate was key to creating a better overall experience for my clients. At Trustate we have created game-changing tools that provide trusted professionals with a clear picture of the assets and liabilities of the decedent, in real time, so they can actually start the administration knowing what the decedent owns and owes. Prior to Trustate, the only way to collect this information was to wait by the decedent’s mailbox or inbox (if you have access to it) to see if any bills or statements showed up. Waiting for that information could take months, especially if the accounts were enrolled in autopay or paperless billing. As a trusts & estates professional, you are hoping that you can obtain all of this information, but you can never be sure. Part of that is because even when the client is alive, they are often not aware of all of their assets and liabilities. Our tools at Trustate provide the answers. Through extensive vetting and a lot of relationship building, we have partnered with global data providers to create a process to get access to this data and arm trusts & estates professionals with it.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Leah: I was fortunate to work closely with two incredible mentors early on in my career. Aside from being brilliant attorneys, they were also excellent managers and business people, which is rare to find in a law firm setting. Though Trustate is a different business than a law firm, I continue ask myself “what would they do” and apply learnings from my time with them on a daily basis. The first was an attorney with a budding book of business that has since evolved into one of the largest and most sophisticated trusts & estates practices in the northeast. He has the unique and coveted leadership skill of being able to inspire and draw out the best work from everyone who has the pleasure of working with him. The other was my law firm’s founding partner, who built a fantastic business from the ground up and taught me how critical it was to take ownership of your work projects and always keep a close eye on how your actions (especially how you treat others) affects the broader context of your business.
Tara: For me, I don’t have that one mentor or one person that I go to for everything, it’s more a group of people who I respect both personally and professionally. Leah, as my business partner, is a great sounding board and we share all of our ideas with each other. We often have differing opinions, but those differences have built one awesome business, so she is someone who is definitely part of my mentor crew. Beyond her, my husband is an amazing public speaker and person, so I can learn tips from him that allow me to be a better presenter. My parents built a great company together, so I learn from them and their successes and mistakes. I often reach out to my uncle who is very much part of the Silicon Valley scene and ask him for start-up advice, because he knows the landscape so well. Then there are my friends who I learn from everyday, their kind and generous nature makes me want to be kinder and more generous each day. I truly live by the motto that I surround myself with people that I strive to be like in one way or another. Having amazing examples of good humans around you each and everyday is key to my growth.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Tara: I think it depends on the type of disruption and the intention of the disruption. If one is just disrupting for disrupting sake, then perhaps it may not have the best outcome. However, if you are disrupting because you’ve identified an area that could be improved and benefit many people in the process, then why not? I also believe that just because something has “withstood the test of time”, does not mean it isn’t ripe for disruption. For example, an argument could be made that the estate administration process, albeit choppy, was fine, because that is just “how you did things”. But when you look at it through a different lens, you realize that ‘fine’ is causing people to incur costs in both time and money, so if we can improve upon that then let’s do it.
Leah: I agree with Tara 100%. The term “disruption” gets thrown around far too often in the startup and software world. There are a lot of technologies out there that don’t actually move the needle forward that are heralded as “disruptive.” In order to actually disrupt an industry or a business practice, you need to be intimately familiar with that industry and all of its nuances. The actual sources of the problem and areas for improvement are often far different than they appear on the surface. In this climate, people spend far too little time actually learning a business and far too much time shouting (uninformed) opinions from rooftops about how to disrupt that business. For us, we knew it was important to be doing this work and actually interacting with the estate lawyers, wealth managers, and (most importantly) their clients.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Leah: I have only two words: “Fail forward.”
Tara: “Believe in yourself” — It may sound silly or cheesy, but I really believe that no one else is going to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. You should be your biggest champion and be proud of everything you have accomplished thus far. Dream big, visualize the goals, and go for it!
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Leah: This is just the tip of the iceberg. We value our customer feedback and listen to what they want and need to better the way they can service a client through an estate administration. We look to our customers and identify patterns to uncover the gaps in the process so that we can build technology to better serve our trusts and estates professionals, which ultimately helps the families dealing with everything.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Tara: Underestimation, which ends up being our greatest strength in a lot of ways. It is easy to write someone off, particularly if they are easy to underestimate. That underestimation gives me the motivation to keep going. Who doesn’t love a great underdog story?
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
Tara: We are big fans of “How I Built This” with Guy Raz. It’s always inspiring and educational to hear the challenges other founders faced before you.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Leah: We would start a movement towards functional education. Our education system could do a lot more to prepare the next generation for the real world. The core classes are certainly important, but teaching life skills is crucial. How to create a budget, how to do your taxes, negotiation tactics, how to cultivate relationships, work with others, etc. And these should be taught early and often. Being in technology, Tara and I are privileged to see the positive impact that technology has on each of us every day. Technology has produced amazing things and advanced society in tremendous ways, but it has also made information so easily accessible that many have forgotten how to learn. Learning takes practice, context, commitment, and, most importantly, critical thinking. Too often today, we only learn how to “find” an answer to a question but don’t teach the “why” behind the “how.” It prevents us from having the insight and knowledge to truly apply those skills and grow as individuals and in turn society.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Tara: “Don’t expend energy on the competition, focus on what you do best and do it well every single time.” As a founder, this can be hard to wrap your head around at first because you are constantly bombarded with people saying “did you see what xyz did today?” or “did you see that this xyz company raised $25 million dollars in the first six months of launch?”, but once you get into your groove, you realize that you only have so much energy to give each day, and that energy needs to be focused on building your business, not worrying about someone else’s.
How can our readers follow you online?
Visit our website at www.trustate.com
Follow us on linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/company/trustate
Follow us on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mytrustate
Follow us on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/mytrustate
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
