S03E110 Building a Successful Estate Planning Firm with Anna Pelligra

Episode notes

We sit down with Anna, a trusts and estates attorney who launched her own firm after processing thousands of estate plans during COVID, to unpack a growth playbook built on education, community, and fearless outreach. Her story shows how to convert hands-on experience into a practice that actually scales, without sacrificing empathy or client care. Anna explains how early exposure to planning, administration, and litigation gave her the confidence to go solo in 2024. From there, she flips the typical marketing script. Instead of chasing every digital trend, she doubled down on local print ads in a beach town where older residents still read the paper, and it worked. She pairs that with small group networking and hosts laid-back, high-value events at a brewery that spark real referrals between advisors, accountants, and attorneys. The goal isn’t to collect business cards; it’s to create a trusted web that benefits everyone in the room. We also dig into the operations side: managing a solo workload, documenting standard operating procedures, and choosing the first role to hire (start with an admin who frees your time).