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myLife A.D. – Keeping Memories Alive with Their End-
Terence Johnson
Founder and CEO
myLife A.D.
https://mylifead.com/
Contact:
Terence Johnson
888-
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFO Magazine
Published – February 27, 2023
CEOCFO: Mr. Johnson, what is myLife A.D.?
Mr. Johnson: It is an end-
CEOCFO: Has this type of service been available elsewhere? What is different about your approach?
Mr. Johnson: There are companies out there that do something similar and have aspects of it and individual features of what we do but there is not a company out there that takes all the features that we have and makes it available in an easily accessible location that allows you to assign a trustee that will have access to all that information after you pass.
CEOCFO: Are people actively looking for something like this?
Mr. Johnson: I do not think people are actively searching for it in particular, they are searching for pieces of it but when they become aware that they can get all the different features in one application then that piques their interest.
CEOCFO: Would you tell us about the variety of features and how difficult it was to put it all together from a technological point of view?
Mr. Johnson: From a technological point of view, it was very difficult, getting the right people to do what needed to be done was a task. One feature is you can create your Last Will and Testament which we partner with Rocket Lawyer to provide the document through an API and you basically never leave our platform. We are pulling their document into our site. We signed an agreement with Rocket Lawyer to provide all our legal documents.
You will have a password vault to save all your passwords, and you can assign a trustee that will have access to those passwords after your passing. The key to that is there are other password managers out there, but the question is how will your loved ones get access to those passwords when you pass away?
We help you plan and schedule email messages where you can send voice or video attachments. You can schedule it for a future date, or you can schedule it to be sent out after your passing and it can be sent to your daughter on her wedding or your son on his birthday, it is up to you.
There is a virtual vault where you can add documents and those documents can be your life insurance policy or it can be anything you want. You can put the pictures and pass on to people whatever it is, you can save it in your virtual vault. You can keep a journal or start to write your obituary and your trustee can have access to that and you can say most of the things you want to say for your funeral. You can access our document library. We get all of our legal documents from Rocket Lawyer and with the document library you can purchase other documents at a considerable discount on our site. We have a living will, living trust, power of attorney, memorial plans, pet trusts, so those documents are made available for you to purchase after subscription.
CEOCFO: What about the level of security? Why will people feel safe with so much personal information on mylife AD?
Mr. Johnson: The security part of it is very important, important to us and to you. We do not save anything on our personal servers and that was done intentionally because of the security features and the access to that. We have everything on AWS servers, and we had to go through their security protocols to setup our account. In that, we have their protection and on top of that all sensitive data is secure by a HTTP certificate with SHA-
For someone other than the account holder to get into the information once it is on the server, they would have to have the account password and then once they have that password the system is going to send a SMS code to the account holders cell phone in order for them to get into the account. Our employees do not have access to account information even at the highest level.
CEOCFO: Did you just launch in the last week or two?
Mr. Johnson: Yes, we did a soft launch last year where we did some test runs as far as Google AdWords. We were trying to figure out the best landing pages and AdWords to use and so forth. We were live but we were not fully advertising. In January of 2023 we went live and did a press-
CEOCFO: What did you learn during that test? How does what you are providing now differ from the original concept?
Mr. Johnson: It is not much different from the standpoint of the product, but we learned what people are responsive to more as far as the features that we have and the way we market it. Some features garner more attention from customers than others when you advertise. One of the biggest things we learned is that it takes a few times for people to wrap their heads around doing something like this because they are afraid of thinking about their own mortality but yet it is something that you cannot escape.
We look at it like this; death is a debt that everyone must pay at some point. You cannot escape it or run from it or get around it and being prepared for it does not make it happen any sooner.
CEOCFO: Do you know if people looking at the site are older or looking at some life-
Mr. Johnson: Not necessarily young people. Our target market is Baby-
As I was driving by the accident, which was a pretty bad accident, I am thinking to myself what if I was involved in that accident and what if I would have died in that accident, who would know my passwords or where my documents were or my Facebook account password. As I was driving home, I thought more about it. I have kids and I couldn’t remember the last thing I said to them. I decided to put my thoughts down on paper and contact someone to work with me on it and that is how it evolved.
Our target market is Baby-
CEOCFO: Are you reaching out to doctors, health associations, or people that might want to recommend this?
Mr. Johnson: That is something that we have in the works, but it will come later. We are looking at the B2B side whereas we are going to contact businesses and work with them on possibly adding myLife to their employee’s benefit package. Either the employer will provide it for the employee, or it is going to be an electable for the employee to add to their plan at a discount.
CEOCFO: Pretty much unlimited potential for you!
Mr. Johnson: There is some potential there because it is something everyone is going to deal with at some point. The people I was speaking to about it came to me and told me they liked the idea although it was kind of morbid. After COVID, a year later, those same people came to me and told me they “get it.” The people that died during COVID did not expect to die. You do not think about it until you think about it and sometimes it is too late. Everyone must deal with it at some point and being prepared does not make it happen any sooner.
CEOCFO: Are you seeking funding, partnerships or investment?
Mr. Johnson: Yes, we are looking for partnerships and investors.
CEOCFO: What surprised you from concept to where you are today?
Mr. Johnson: What surprised me was how the people that I spoke with or talked to about it had thought about something like this before. I talked to my mom about myLife and she said she hoped I create something like this because my dad would have no idea at all where anything is if something was to happen to her. He would be lost as far as paperwork, bills, what to pay or what not to pay, so she was saying to me how much he would not know and how useful it would be.
When I was opening the bank account for the company, sitting in front of a banker, he asked me about myLife and I started to explain it to him. He looked at me and said, “You have no idea how many people walk into the bank when someone has died wanting access to the accounts and we cannot give it to them because they do not have the passwords.” So, they cannot pay the bills because they do not have the passwords to the account and we cannot do anything for them. That has been a big surprise, how many people have been affected by this and how myLife would help.
CEOCFO: How do you make it easy for people going to My Life A.D., to be comfortable navigating the website?
Mr. Johnson: I use my mom as a barometer as far as what is easy and try to make it as easy as possible. If she can do it, and she is not very computer savvy, then I know other people can do it. We keep changing things and we incorporated instructional videos so you can click on a video, and it walks you through how to do it. Whenever we change or add something, I ask my mom to take a look and ask her what she thinks and if she can figure it out without me telling her what to do.
CEOCFO: With so many new ideas for people to look at, why pay attention to My Life A.D.?
Mr. Johnson: Because it is about your life, your legacy, and how you will be remembered. myLife provides a roadmap and tools that make the process of end-
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