We’re going to talk about how writing a book can help you ace your process today. I’m going to introduce my family, introduce our firm and I’m also going to educate you about how to write a book and then also illustrate how writing a book can help you ace your process. And you’ll see that the “ace your process,” the A from ace has a meaning. The C has a meaning and the E has a meaning.

That acrostic, I’m going to give you a few different acrostics today that will have some significant meaning.

This is my wife of 31 years, Marianne, who is right over here. I love you, babe. These are my children, Jake, Ryan and Jesse. Jake is the one who has worked with me. He just started his third year in the business with me and that’s the highlight of my career so far. Ryan is studying fish and wildlife at Northland College and Jesse lives in Minneapolis and works as an administrator in a car dealership up there. My three kids. All about family. This is my grandchild, Isiah. He doesn’t quite look like that now. This is his mom, Allie, my daughter-in-law. And this Isiah today. Isiah just learned his first words. And here is Allie trying to teach Isiah what his first words should be.

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Dada is everything. He calls me dada. He’d call you dada. He calls everybody dada. That’s Isiah.

Our firm is a boutique wealth management firm. We serve over 500 families in over a dozen states. I’ve been in retirement planning from day one, since 1984.

So, the A for “ace your process” stands for: As you write a book, you’ll gain more Authority. I believe that it will help you create more Celebrity. And it will also create some Exclusivity in your marketplace as the result of writing a book.

Now under that first word, authority, I have a story to share with you. I called one of our study group members, Dan Pinkerton, and I said, “Dan, remind me, you wrote a book. Right?” Yes, he wrote a book in 2015 and that book that he wrote was titled “Be a 401(k) Hero.” He was giving it to plan administrators to teach them how to be a hero to their employees by having the greatest 401(k) retirement plan. And Dan, one year later, from March 2015 to March 2016, he had written $32 million of new retirement plan business. And $25 million of private wealth management business. And he says it was because of writing that book. So that’s an example of the authority he gained in his marketplace by having that book. It helped him.

In our instance, we do workshops like this all the time. I built my business since 1989. At the back of the room of every workshop, I would have a stack of books that I had written. If you were a prospective client who came to a dinner meeting and you checked the yes box, you could receive a copy of the book in the back as you left. So, I’ll just pass this around. That’s a copy of the book that I wrote, “Imagine Financial Security for Life.” We’ll talk about it a little bit later.

We’ve increased not our response ratio for people in the room who say, “Yes, come see us,” but those who come and see us. About 80% become clients. Pretty close to that number. A greater authority I think. And I think the book helps in that process.

My dad wrote a book. He was age 85 when he wrote a book. He wrote a book about his life. I’ll talk more about it later, but my dad gained authority so he could speak with his hometown historical society because he had a book. He talked about what it was like growing up in his hometown. So that’s an example of authority.

Statistics are shared on the back of the book that’s being passed around. You’ll see that. According to a TIAA crest study in 2015, 44 percent of Americans don’t know if they’re on track. Sixty-two percent of Americans have no retirement plan at all. Eighty-four percent need guaranteed income. They say, “I want income that will last the rest of my life,” but only 14 percent of Americans have guaranteed income that extends beyond social security and beyond their pension.

In addition to gaining authority in the marketplace, you can gain celebrity status like some of these familiar faces. Suzie Orman or Ken Fisher. Warren Buffet, maybe not an author but he’s been written about a lot and he’s gained celebrity through that. Dave Ramsey, of course, through his book. You can gain a celebrity type status and I’m an example of this. I think because of the book our local news station, channel 19, gave us a call in April and asked me, “What’s the market going to do now that we’re at market highs?” I’m just going to share with you a little clip from that interview.

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So that’s the clip and that’s just what happened, I think, from writing a book and being involved with the channel 19 news. That didn’t cost me anything and it was just helping the news station have a different angle on things. So that happened, I think, as a result of that book.

I also posted that on LinkedIn and I had about 2,000 hits on that. I’ve never had 2,000 hits on anything on LinkedIn. It got a lot of traction. I also posted it on my personal Facebook page as well.

There is some celebrity that happens from writing a book as well. And then there’s exclusivity. You could explain in a book if you were to write it, maybe how working with you or your firm is just unique. You spell out what your value proposition is, maybe articulate your process, your philosophy. And I think it can help you gain an edge over the competition if you have that all in writing.

Now I’m a creative person. Thoughts hit my brain simultaneously and I’ve discovered that thoughts untangle themselves over pencil tips. As you write down your process, it begins to get engrained into who I am as a person as I write things down in a book. I even read my books sometimes just to remember how I said things. Because I can clarify or create more of a linear thought process that certain clients respond to better than simultaneous thinkers. So, I think it can help you gain an exclusivity to illustrate that.

Here’s a tale of two advisors. Steven has been an advisor for 30 years and he does not have a book. And Peter who’s been an advisor for 15 years is an author and a speaker. What we notice is that Steven just can’t quite articulate like Peter can what his process is because he does not have a book. And Steven can’t really articulate his value proposition quite as clearly. He didn’t stand out when compared to Peter. He didn’t have a process in place. But Peter aced his value proposition because he was able to share what his value proposition was, what his process was and, in the mind of the consumer, it made Peter stand out. So he gained an advantage. He gained some authority, he gained some celebrity. And then he created some exclusivity because he wrote a book about it. Peter’s process was articulated clearly. And again, from a creative thinker who may want to say the same thing a dozen different ways, maybe there’s one way that’s most effective. A book can help rein you in and make you more focused in your approach.

So the lesson we learn is that Peter gained authority through the book and its content. Peter’s celebrity status as an author helped him gain an advantage over Steven. And Peter then had the opportunity to clearly articulate his firm’s exclusivity. I would think he would have gained the business because of it.

Your book can also help clients trust you and verify what you’re saying. One of our clients that came in, worked for AT&T. Her manager told her, “You want to trust your vendors but you want to verify what it is you’re trusting them for.” So, when you make a statement about something, you better have something to verify what you’re saying. It might be a statistic or it might be an illustration or a story that can help you verify it. And the book can serve as that credential, if you would. You’ll notice that in the book I have a quote by John Fogel. I have just the fact that over the next decade the market may take two up to 50 percent drops in the market. That’s what he said.

Now recently we know that other commentators like First Trust and J.P. Morgan believe that this might be the longest bull market in history because of the fuel in the tank economy. We have lots of printed money in the economy. A lot of borrowed money that’s making that move forward. As an example, Dr. David Kelly, the chief economist for J.P. Morgan, was at a meeting I was at a couple of weeks ago. I was able to shake his hand and meet him like a rock star figure in my life. He said he believes this will be the longest bull market in history when you combine that and compare that to what happened in 1990, 1984, all the way through. It would be about 13 months from that conversation or about 12 more months for us to surpass this bull market to be the longest in history.

I’m just going to tell you to write a book. I’ve been told that everybody has about two books in them. You can just sit down and start writing about your life. Start writing about something that may impact you. Then, after two books, you have to come up with lots of statistics and do a lot of research in order to make that happen.

If you were to write a book or maybe start with a shorter white paper or some kind of thesis, you would put out or a small booklet, each one of you has a small chapter of the book that I wrote. Chapter 18 of our book called True Wealth. That’s an example of putting your values out there. You can put out things that may be important about you as an advisor, you as a person and your process as well.

I think when you write your book you may experience more authority, more celebrity and more exclusivity in your marketplace.

So, the contents of my book are really coming out of something that I read in a dusty, old book called “Ecclesiastics.” And I read about King Solomon’s quote. Thousands of years ago, he said, “Put your money in seven or eight places because you don’t know what disaster will come on the land.” That jumped off the page and I wondered, what would King Solomon say would be those seven or eight places be today where we should put our money. And I imagine he would respond to me with a question: “Brent, what are some of the roadblocks that your clients face today?” If you discover what the roadblocks are, I think you’ll discover what the investments are that will help clients overcome the roadblocks.

I thought about that and I put that together in an acrostic that spells out stop ruin. The S is for stock market losses. It’s a roadblock that financial security impedes. The T is for taxes and the O is for old age illness. That can take apart your wealth. And the P is for procrastination. You could never ever create a plan. The R for ruin is running out of money. If you ran out of money, you outlived your money. That’s a fear that most people have. Stop ruin.

I have the book and I have that written down right over here. U is for an unstable economy. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the market, the economy in the world and that could create problems for us. The I is for inflation and the N is for having no plan.

It costs something to create a plan and it costs something to not create a plan and quite often not creating a plan costs much, much more than creating a plan.

So, I came up with those roadblocks. And I came up with the eight investments strategies for life. And just for the recording, I want to read what those are. I put an acrostic down, “semi auto,” to explain the eight investment strategies for life that overcome the eight roadblocks to financial security and peace.

Semi auto. S is for stocks. You need stocks to fight inflation. E is exchange traded funds having lower cost indexed type funds. M is for mutual funds. Sometimes you need more active management in mutual funds and I wrote that not for you, but I wrote that for the consumer who is looking for answers. They’re looking for investment strategies for life. And then I is for investment airbags.

My friend, Paul McCreedy, taught me that most of you probably drove a car to the airport that had airbags in it. And the question for you is, would you ever want those airbags to go off? No. You don’t want those airbags to go off because that means something bad happened. But it’s very expensive to have airbags in your car. Isn’t it? So, if you have something you’re paying a lot of money for and you hope you never use it, why do you have it there? You have it there that in the event of a big crash, it might save your life.

And so, we talk about investment airbags as an insured guarantee on investments. Otherwise known here in the United States as variable annuities with income riders. They’re very expensive, but if the stock market crashed, they may provide guaranteed income for life.

Advance and protect. We’ve developed five different models, Wilshire 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 which represents up to the maximum stock exposure in your portfolio. And we can rotate down 40 percent to take risk off the table from time to time in our advance and protect model. And that’s what we’re doing through portfolio rotation.

We provide upside potential without downside risk. We take guaranteed income for life and provide old-age insurance. Those are the eight investment strategies for life that correspond to that acrostic semi auto. You just read my book.

And then there are a few other chapters. The one that I gave you called True Wealth. There’s another chapter about how to get started on your most important investment strategy and then tax advantage investing as well. We talk about the circles of finance and how gaining a tax advantage in your investments, moving it from taxable to tax deferred and even tax free can really improve your investment efficiency.

Now, here’s a question for you. How long does it take to write a book? The typical book may take six months to a year to write. So, if you were to sit down and write a book, isn’t it like eating an elephant in one bite. It’s just a huge task. How do you get started? You begin with the end in mind. You want to ask: What do I want the reader to feel when they’re done with the book? I kind of wanted them to feel maybe a little like, “This is overwhelming and I need help.” That’s kind of what I wanted them to feel like. How did I want them to act? I wanted them to move back to the person who wrote the book on the process that they’re reading about and come back to us and help verify what they’re trusting us to do in their finances.

The cost of the book is about $24 a book for the first 1,000. That’s if you hire a hybrid publisher. It will cost about $24,000. To order another 1,000 would cost about $5 a book, about $5,000. And you can pay $5 for a corporate brochure. People probably aren’t going to throw your book away. They might turn it into Goodwill or might submit it to a library or give it to a friend. They’re probably not going to throw it away. It becomes way more cost efficient as you produce more.

I didn’t write the book to make money. I wrote the book to organize my thoughts, create our value proposition, and to help our clients be educated and make better and more informed decisions about their financial future.

Here’s how you get started to write your books. Think about: What would I like to write about, whether it be a paper or a book? Would you like to write your biography? Would you like to write a novel? Would you like to write about investments or your business like my friend, Dan, who wrote about his retirement plan business. I met in my rehearsal yesterday, a gentleman who wrote a book about life insurance and then he tells his clients he wrote the book on life insurance and then he’s created another one that’s basically like a money tree. How to create a family bank. He wrote that in a book. What book would you write?

Here’s how you get started. You start with your outline. You write down the things you want to cover. Those things that are important to you. Again, my book came out of the eight investment strategies for life. And the eight roadblocks of financial security. And that’s 16 chapters right there and I added four more. I had 20 chapters. Had an entire book right there. Started with that outline.

And then I recorded my thoughts. I’ll tell you how I did it. And I’ll tell you how my dad did it. My father recorded the thoughts with the use of a retired editor from the local newspaper who happened to be a client of mine. And she sat down, helped him develop an outline and then began to have a conversation around their kitchen table. She had a tape recorder going and recorded everything and created a transcript which became the chapters of his book.

What I did is I had an editor from Advantage Publishing in Atlanta, Georgia. This would have been in North Carolina and they provided an editor for me. Didn’t live there, lived in another place but spent eight hours with me over the phone. And asked those same questions and recorded it. And put that together in a transcript. That took about six months. And then the editing process took another three months and then printing process took another three months. So it was about a year long process for me. But that’s where you start, with your outline. You record your thoughts. You hire an editor if you want. I would recommend that. It could be somebody that you know. It could be a hybrid publisher. Advantage, for example, and they don’t pay me anything to say this, this is just who I use. But they helped me write it. I get to keep the contents of my book. I get to write it in different languages if I want. Sell it all over the world if I want to. And then they help announce the book and they help get it in digital format and sell it through Amazon and other sources like that.

You can self-publish it and do it all yourself. I believe Guy Baker has done that with his books. He’s written books like “The Box.” Has anybody here written a book? A couple of you. I’d like to hear from you at the end like what did you write and maybe that will inspire some other people here today.

And you can use different marketing ideas. One of the marketing ideas we did is Marianne helped me wrap books up with a little gift card on them for right around the holiday season. In America, we have a Christmas brunch that we celebrate as a firm and we invite our clients in for. We have a gourmet chef make omelets and we have a breakfast buffet, a really nice spread. We have Christmas carols playing in the background, somebody singing. I give a presentation mid-morning and people can come and go as they please. But I asked them to take a book as they left for family members, for friends, to give away as Christmas presents. And they did, they took hundreds of the books at that event.

You could have clients sit down and write a sticky note. So, Frank, you may have a friend that you want to give a book to. I might ask you this values conversation. “Frank, what’s been the value of working with Welshire Capital over all these years?”

And you may come up with something like, “Well, it makes me feel better, Brent, when you do the reviews with me.” Or you might say, “I’m glad you’re handling this because I don’t like to handle money, I’d rather spend time with grandkids.” Or whatever it is that a client may say.

And then I would ask you, “Imagine the value that we could share if we shared that value with other people just like you. Here’s what I’m thinking. Let me send a copy of the book to someone you know who may be retiring, who may be in a position just like you’re at. Then if you could give them a call and let them know the book is coming, I’ll follow-up. I’ll just ask them what they thought of the book or if they had any questions or wanted to talk about the concepts in the book. It’s just that simple. Are you comfortable with that?” And the client may be and then we could just have him write a sticky note on the book and we would mail it out and create a referral system that way. Thank you, Frank, for helping me with that.

Centers of influence, CPAs and attorneys, can help win business. We’re in the planning stages to do a CPA-attorney charity mailer event to invite the CPA’s clients and the law firm’s clients, the charity’s clients and then we’ll send invites to about 2,500 people to bring them in. And I think the book helps in that process as well. In fact, on the back cover is an attorney, his promotion of the book or his opinion, his insight into the book, his quotes were put onto the back of the book.

My dad was 85 years old when he wrote his book. The name of his book is “Up From Ashes, How to Rise from Failure to Success in Business and Life.” When he was my age, he lost everything in a devastating fire in his business. He had a homebuilding company where he manufactured homes, like three a day. And shipped them out to about five different states in 17 semis. He had over 100 employees. And all of it burned to the ground and he didn’t have enough insurance to cover it. He ended up having to liquidate all of his assets. Had nothing and started over. And now he’s 85 and he’s doing fine. So, he wrote about that for other people who are going through very difficult times, that there’s hope to rise up out of the ashes.

One of the stories he told is, as he walked into the smoldering ashes after his fire, he was looking for anything. He noticed that all of his accomplishments, all of the plaques on the wall had burned and melted to the ground. He went to his desk. He lifted up a piece of insulation that had fallen from the roof and underneath was a Bible that was unburned. It wasn’t scorched or anything, didn’t even smell like smoke.

One of the life things he put into the book was that “things of the earth pass away, but my word will never pass away.” So that was important to him. And he put it in there much like the true wealth part. I put that in my book so I’d feel really good about talking to people about business and mission in life, all intersecting. So, it’s a motivation for me to make sure I get the word out about my business.

And I just want to tell you, if my dad was 85 and could do it, you can too.

So, on behalf of Top of the Table and Welshire Capital and all of you future book writers, I just want to say thank you for listening about how writing a book can help you ace your process through building greater authority, celebrity and exclusivity in your practice and in your life. Thank you.

Moderator

We still have some time. Questions?

Welch

And I’d like the folks who have written books, if you wouldn’t mind sharing what you wrote and why you wrote it. Would that be all right with you if we started with you two? Pass the mic to Alphonso.

Alphonso Franco

My book is on critical illness insurance. I was very good friends with the creator of critical illness insurance, Marius Barnard, who was like a father to me. So, we took that product around the world. Got countries that had never had that kind of a product with insurance for the living. We thought we were on a mission because we thought it was something that everybody needed. It became quite interesting to see from countries that had sold zero policies to what has taken off now where it’s millions and millions of people around the world have received the coverage. And hundreds of thousands of people have received the claim money to afford them the ability to live a life after an illness. That became the focus point.

I didn’t set out to write a book but, because the cause is great, I thought I could actually share that information on why we need it and how it works. So, the book was one thing. But also then I wrote a manual about, almost 20 years ago, and insurance companies around the world started using it and coming up with how they priced the product, the need for the product and they had not taken into account occupational illnesses. But we know that certain occupations carry illness risk. Pilots for example, cancer. Shift workers, cancer. Various things that were not researched, and yet an insurance person, an MDRT member actually did it. It was quite interesting to see that now it’s spread around the world and people are actually using it. So, there’s something that came out of it. Those were my contributions in writing.

David Ethell

So I wrote a book called “From Under the Table to Top of the Table” several years ago. It was really after getting established and then we were going to speak in Singapore. I would encourage anybody who has not written a book, that it also, and everything you’ve said, could help launch you into being able to speak and use as a cornerstone for the topic. Ours is basically on five P’s, principles, philosophies, procedures, planning. That’s strategy.

Frank Creaghan

I wrote a book. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But Helen here is the one who really saved me by correcting my English. Anyway, what happened is my market was selling to professionals, small businessmen. I was at an MDRT meeting and I was 54 at the time. A person there was Russ Gills and he explained about selling to wealthy business family owners. His income went up from $80,000 to $800,000, so I immediately made the decision that I would move into this new market.

Well, what happened is that moving into this market was very, very difficult. It couldn’t have been any more difficult, because these business owners are extremely busy. People try to describe them differently than they are. But they’re not any different; they’re just very, very busy. So, you can get a referral from a brother or a wife or anyone, they don’t see you. They’re just that busy. And just one thing in that area, I was talking to the son of one of these owners. This was the owner that became a client. He said that he was a pretty good hockey player growing up. And his father never had time to attend one of his games. So just to explain the difficulty.

So, I did cold calls, just knocking on doors and that’s how I broke into that market. The book came around because my grandfather, I never met him, but he had a very successful business. We, the third generation, were responsible for selling that business which was a very sad thing to do. Because a business is much more than a business, it’s a family that rotates around that.

My uncles and then my cousins were sort of blamed for the failure of this business. But immediately, the more I dug into it I found the problem was my grandfather. And what these people are noted for is they leave no written instructions on what should happen. So this is what the book was, “Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Three Generations.”

Welch

That’s the problem, the third generation, where the shirtsleeves happen again.

Frank Creaghan

But it’s not their problem. It’s the grandfather’s problem for not having left directions. Our goal, when we see a business family owner, is not to sell insurance at all but to get them to write a plan for the future of the business. And the sale of life insurance is inevitable after that happens. It’s very interesting.

Welch

I’m glad we had this conversation. Who else?

D. Kyle Atkins

From Spartanburg, South Carolina, and I agree with what’s been said earlier, Frank. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. I’ve been trying to write a book for maybe 10 years. Finally had a coach, a coaching program to get us further along, so we are now almost ready to get the final copy published. And reading everybody else’s books, I didn’t have an epiphany. We didn’t meet anybody world famous. A lot of people start off by saying well, I met Mother Theresa which is a wonderful thing. And then they go through the list of how it changed their life. They did all this stuff. I got to looking back and I hadn’t met anybody famous. But I remembered the lessons of all the family members so the title of this book is “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lessons.”

Just going through the 12 different things I picked up from father, grandfather, mother, various people in our lives. I think this is important for my children. My grandchildren will be able to look at it and read. Because those truths never change.

Welch

I bet it will pass compliance department, too.

D. Kyle Atkins

It should be able to, although they have to give the approval.

Craig Palfrey

From the U.K. I was at MDRT session at the annual conference, MDRT Speaks. And someone spoke about writing a book. I read a book called “Celebritize Yourself,” which I think is an American book. I can’t remember the author’s name.

I didn’t write it myself. I had a ghostwriter. I would encourage anyone who is struggling to do that. It costs a couple thousand dollars. I gave him the concept of what I wanted. We had eight steps to help create and protect your wealth and we called the book “The Wealth Secret.”

The biggest challenge I’ve had and I wanted to ask you, Brent, what you actually did with the book. We launched it a year ago. Gave it out to our clients. We had a launch party. We really struggled to get the media interested at all. I’m not sure what to do with it now. It feels looking back like maybe it was more of a vanity project than anything else. We can accumulate a few new clients to the book where they’ve looked online. I don’t know what you have over here but there is a Trip Advisor for financial planners in the U.K. We’ve had people say they picked us because they saw we were authors. So it has helped with the credibility and authority. But I still don’t think it’s done enough as it should have done. I’m actually having book two written as we speak. It should be ready by the end of the month. And to do exactly what Frank said and target financial planning that’s changed the world type book and leave my legacy. And actually target it as an aggressive marketing tool. Because I think the first book was almost a failure from that point of view. I’d like to know what you actually did with the book when you wrote it and maybe what Frank did to actually get those people to then agree to have a chat with you because that was the sole purpose, to have the book because it was nice to leave it with clients. My main aim was to generate more activity for business and I don’t feel it’s done that.

But I’ve managed to get a number of the financial planners in the U.K., we split the cost between us so we’ll all be credited as authors.

Welch

That’s a great idea too. I’ve collaborated on some books with other professionals like attorneys and accountants. I was in an estate planning book with them. And that was helpful.

The question was: How do we actually get clients to become prospects? I’m not very bold in asking people to do business, but I love to educate people. So, in a room like this, this is my domain. I love to teach people about how to manage money, how they can make better decisions, better choices, educate them about different financial avenues and then have them make choices. We’ll invite 7,500 people to a restaurant in a certain geographic area that are age 55 to 67 who have $100,000 of income and $500,000 or more of investable assets. They’ll come in. We might have four nights that we have a room like this. And then we’ll have 30 percent to 40 percent, maybe a third of the people come in and see us. Of those we’re seeing, about 80 percent become clients. The last seminar we did brought us some really good clients. We had several million-dollar clients who were working on and some of them we’re working with already. We just need to do more of them now.

That’s how we do it and so I’m just adding the book on the things I was already doing and it just helps create additional credibility and authority. I don’t know about the celebrity so much. We heard at the Ten X talks today that celebrity can be built in the minds of the clients through your public platform. And I think the book is one of those mind-shifters for a prospective client.

Brian

We do a lot of online content. In the U.S. at least there are a couple of organizations. One is called Haro. It stands for help a reporter out. It’s a website you can go to and register for. Every day there are 50, 60, 70, 100 requests sometimes of reporters looking for subject matter experts on specific things. And one of the things that helps you stand apart is the fact that you can say I wrote the book on critical illness and so, obviously, you’re going to get selected as the reference point for that. I’ve ended up being in many publications simply because that exists and I was able to respond back and say, “Here’s a recent article we published about that.” They will select you as a subject matter expert and that kind of grows your celebrity or your status.

Welch

We’re just about wrapping up with our talk. We have time for a couple of questions? The question is, what’s the most difficult part of writing a book. I would say it has to do with what I opened up with. That is boiling down all of the subject matters into a linear path. The hardest part of the book is taking lots of thoughts and squeezing them into just a few sentences. It’s the economy of words. I said in the highlighting about this workshop, the ancient Greeks used to say that the goal of oratory is a sea of information in the drop of language. It’s that condensing of information down into a few words and then into a book that has helped. Kind of revolutionized the way I present things. That was the hardest part.