Bill Cates: Welcome to the Top Advisor Podcast brought to you by ProudMouth’s PodRocket Academy. I’m your host, Bill Cates, creator of the Cates Academy for Relationship Marketing. In each episode, I interview one of our industry’s top performers, getting them to pass on their secrets to success more lives and generate more income. Now, on to the show.
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Before I got into the important and rewarding business of Financial Services, I was a book publisher. I owned 2 book publishing companies. I sold one for a very nice profit, and I sold the other one to get out of the debt that I had incurred and let my partner take that on. But those are semi interesting stories for another time. After the sale of these businesses, I did self publish my first book Unlimited Referrals in 1996. Back then, self publishing was still around. It just wasn’t nearly as big and sophisticated as it is today.
So have you ever thought about having a book that you might use to boost your credibility demonstrate your expertise and that your clients and centers of influence would use as a way to introduce you. Heck, maybe you already have a book and maybe just maybe you’re not leveraging this tool to its fullest extent. You already know that more and more financial professionals are writing and publishing books for the reasons I’ve just stated. Well, I’m here to tell you that having your own book used as a business building tool has never been easier. Today’s show will be devoted to a discussion of the wise, the what’s in the house of you having your own book.
Today’s featured guest is Paul G McManus. He’s the founder of More Clients, More Fun, MC MF Publishing, creator of the $1,000,000 producer LinkedIn program and the host of the $1,000,000 producer show podcast, for which I was a recent guest. Paul is the author of 2 books, $1,000,000 Producer, The Secret Playbook for Financial Professionals, to land high value clients using LinkedIn and the short book formula, which I’m holding up to the video screen right now, if you’re on video. Paul resides in San Diego, California with his wife, Otsuko, and his 2 Boston terriers, moo, and potato chips. Those are 2 different kinds of names. Paul McManus, welcome the Top Advisor Podcast.
Paul McManus: Thank you so much for having me. As you mentioned, you were on my podcast recently. We had a fantastic discussion, and I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation.
Bill: Great. Thank you. So, Paul, I know that for the past 8 years or so, you’ve worked closely with over I think you’ve estimated about 500 financial advisers. CPAs, life insurance producers, and business advisers. Tell us a little bit about that work. What sort of things have you helped these varied financial professionals do?
Paul: Great question. So back in 2015, I decided to reinvent myself. Prior to that, I was running 3 generation family office products business. And as you might imagine, that was a very much dying industry. And so I got inspired at the time by online marketing. I took a course with a gentleman named Michael Porte, who’s the author of a book, a New York Times best selling book, called book yourself solid. Got certified in that as a coach and a trainer, and then I put up my shingle in the online world. One of the first lessons that Michael Porte taught me, which I really took to heart, was the ideal the idea of having a target market. So in other words, I don’t wanna be, you know, try to go after everybody because then I’ll likely appeal to nobody And, initially, what I thought my target market was would be coaches. I was surrounded by coaches. I was inspired by coaches. I wanted to be a coach, which I was becoming. Fast forward to 2016, and I got a a a message from a gentleman. His name is Shane Walls, and he was a financial adviser. And at that time, I I knew nothing about financial advisors. I didn’t have a financial adviser. I didn’t really understand what they did. he reached out, and he told me it was part of my program at the time and that he was interested in working with me more closely. And I initially wasn’t interested. I was happy with what I was doing, but I decided to take the call, and that relationship completely transformed my business going forward from that day forward. And so I like to say that my target audience, my target market found me. And since then, I’ve been working exclusively with what I call financial professionals, and I say financial professionals deliberately because inside of that category, and I think you mentioned this. I have financial advisors, wealth managers, life insurance producers, CPAs typically that do more proactive tax planning, others that do business advisory service such as business valuations and exits, tax attorneys. And so You know, to me to me, I’m fascinated by this because, again, I went from clueless to this world to now really at the center of this and working with an incredible incredible group of people. 1 of our common clients and friends is John Cutin. So John Cuton, you know, he does $8,000,000,000 of AUM. And, you know, he’s a new client and business partner of mine. And so it’s just fascinating to be part of this world.
Bill: Yeah. John, as I know in the one of the barons is top 100 list, if not multiple. And and what what have you been helping them with mostly? What is the nature of the work for the most part? Is it the LinkedIn? because that was the book, or is it other thing? And helping them publish a book or are there other things that you do as well? Yeah. Quick question.
Paul: So originally, back in 2015, this is before I got into the publishing world. I decided not only to have a target market, but I decided to have a core service. And so I decided to make LinkedIn, the my my playground and I wanted to figure out how to know everything about LinkedIn and essentially help my clients use it successfully as a business development tool. And so what? I’ve been doing that ever since. Some of the challenge is that I’ve experienced. And so, you know, bite by nature, I’m an entrepreneur. I’m an innovator. I I like to I like to, in many ways, fail forward. I’ll I’ll people like you know, I I like to I like to see a challenge, and I like to figure it out, but oftentimes it’s just failing forward. And so in this process, while having lots of results, you know, Shane the the person I mentioned to you. And the reason I got so excited about this market is that he was one of my early success stories, and I helped him go from $200,000 of target premium and life insurance to over 2a half 1000000. So that, you know, really got my name on the radar with some pretty big companies. But there’s always a learning curve and LinkedIn’s constantly changing. You know, the rules change. Fast forward to, I wanna say, maybe, 2018, And I met another gentleman. Again, I think this might be a a a common acquaintance and client to both of ours, Matt Sigula, who I believe that you’ve done some work with. I do know Matt. Yes. Yep. And and Matt, you know, he’s an author, very successful guy. He had put out a book called Smart Retire and his his whole business model was working with advisers, and they would essentially buy copies of his book and use his book as the authority piece to leverage, to build their businesses. And so was my first introduction to using books as a business building tool for advisors. And so for 2, 3 years, I worked pretty closely with him. And, essentially, we just turned his book into a whole marketing campaign on LinkedIn, but we really hapt into his book, and that taught me a lot about marrying up LinkedIn with books. In that process, I found somewhat, you know, again, being that innovative thinker and always saying, okay. What’s working well? And that was a step up from what I had been doing. But okay. Where can we make this better? And we can get into that in more details or go forward, but that led me into launching my own small publishing company. And so since, I wanna say, 2019, 2020 half of my business now and the really the first step in working with clients is we help them write and publish their own book because we want the authority to be with them, not somebody else. And then once we have that authority piece in place, It almost becomes a business in a box or a business in a book, and that informs everything that they do on LinkedIn. as well as really just their broader marketing and how they go to market.
Bill: So that’s a nice segue into what I wanna talk about next. So we know that the the focus of today is about how financial professionals can author publish user book. But I know that the book publishing strategy is really part of a larger concept that you’ve labeled authority marketing. So what exactly is authority marketing and how can it play a role in helping advisors attract more ideal clients?
Paul: Authority marketing is a concept that I love. And really another word for it, I would say, is influence. Mhmm. would also maybe another synonym I might use for it, and you might you might chuckle at this as radical relevance. It’s how do you differentiate yourself from the other hundreds of thousands of people that your ideal prospects see largely as a commodity. You know? I want a financial adviser. Hey. Go online, you know, get some advice. You know? Unfortunately, many professionals and specifically financial professionals, CPAs, advisers, insurance people, or seen as commodities. And authority marketing is, to me, in my own experience, has been the key concept that allows people to break out from the herd and really shine and get out of this. I have to chase you down and you know, call you 5, 10 times and beg you to refer your people to me to really just flipping the script, where now, done right, and over time, the right people and the a very selective group of people that you really wanna work with are now coming to you and you’re putting up barriers to them. I mean, it it’s quite remarkable. You know? It’s like you go from chasing now to being the chased, so to speak. And I I learned, you know, just some of my influences, Dan Kennedy, who I’m sure you probably heard of. I’ve studied him a lot, so he’s he’s definitely impacted my thinking about authority marketing. Probably just a more on a practical level. I learned in the 2 or 3 years I worked closely with Matt Segula. I learned a lot from him because he he demonstrated it very well. But in short, authority marketing, and by extension a book, I think, is the easiest, fastest way to package that in a tangible way or concrete way is the fastest way to differentiate yourself, attract your ideal clients, and be able to raise your fees or get more referrals and just a ton of other benefits.
Bill: So you become an authority in a certain area. I know that it’s funny compliance departments won’t and they won’t usually let an advisor say I’m an expert. They can say I have expertise. They may not let you say I’m a specialist, but they’ll let you say I specialize in. But doesn’t that fit into the authority marketing? In other words, you have a an area of expertise. become a, quote, unquote authority in a specific area. And so, therefore, you attract the types of people that you want to attract because of that expertise.
Paul: It’s a 100%, and I and I I chuckle you were saying that because it’s so true. It’s like, you know, the idea behind a book is that when you write a book, you are commonly thought of as the expert and yet because of compliance departments, an adviser says, you know, writes a book about tax savings, but they can’t say that they’re an expert in tax savings. So it’s it’s kind of ludicrous.
Bill: Well, I’ll tell you one. When I when I wrote my first book unlimited referrals, which I think now is available on eBay for about three bucks or something, is A a gentleman, a colleague of mine said to me, says, look, Bill, even if you never published the book, just the act of writing the book, and getting your knowledge around a certain subject matter will make a huge difference for you, and and he was absolutely right. I mean, my confidence just soared in terms of what I thought just because I really got clear and organized around everything. And, of course, having the book itself makes a big difference too. So the full title yeah. Go ahead.
Paul: If I can, I love add 22 things there. So so I totally agree. When I first wrote my first book, I I started probably backwards. So before I even wrote the book, I came up with the cover, and there’s a great service called 99 designs, and they got it professionally created. And I just put the cover out in on on Facebook at the time. everyone’s congratulating me. They’re like, that’s so cool. You know what? And I could see my my status rising in real time. I’m like, you know, I’m I’m an important person now, and this is great. reality wasn’t I hadn’t even written the book yet. So it took me another 6 months or so to actually write the book. But but you’re a 100% right. In in just my most recent book, which I know we’re gonna get into the short book formula, I’ve been, you know, helping people with this, and so it’s kind of, you know, you think you have the knowledge. But when you have to sit there, and think, okay. What is it that I really do and go beyond maybe the 2 or 3 bullet points that you talk with someone on a daily basis and go deeper than that and think about stories and the real impact. And then conversely, now I do I mean, I do that with clients all the time. I I I see almost invariably people come to me primarily and initially to help them write and publish their book, but during that process, they it I mean, it’s it’s they transformed their their they become that much clear in their thinking, they gain that much more confidence through the process. And by the time we publish it, they’re a different person in many cases. And this is regardless if they start out, you know, with 20 years of experience, with 10 years of experience, if they’re just starting out, it it really happens across the board.
Bill: So to the book, the full title is the short book formula, a financial professional’s guide to writing a book in 6 weeks to attract ideal clients. So I let’s unpack that just a little bit little piece at a time. First, why a short book. What’s the thinking behind short book?
Paul: Yeah. So by short book, we aim at 12,000 words roughly. give or take, too. The way that we publish it, it ends up being roughly 100 pages. and it’s really from two points of view. What I find and and I’d love to get your take on this because you’ve published multiple books. what we find most of our clients are first time authors. And when they come into it, one of the biggest barriers they have is this is gonna take 6 months, a year, you know, I I it’s just too much, and we like to help them narrow their focus to this book is the first of what could be multiple books, but we’ll start with the first book. and this book needs to be focused on a specific audience or target market. And ideally, it’s really built around a specific core problem that they’re facing and by extension naturally leads them to need your services. So the book is very much a business card in that sense. Conversely, what we want is people they’re they’re ideal readers, prospects, clients, etcetera, to not just get a copy of the book and say, oh, that’s great. You know, you wrote a book. Congratulations. We actually and this is a radical thought. We actually want them and expect them to read the book. because when they take the time to read the book, it radically shifts and speeds up the whole sales process. And so in my case, whenever I’m speaking to a complete stranger that’s found me on a webinar or LinkedIn or even referral, part of my sales process, and this is the same thing I teach to my clients is that before either call the first call, which is typically 15 minutes or definitely before the second call, which is oftentimes 60 minutes, you want them to read the book. And you wanna set the expectation that they read the book. And if they just say, I don’t have time to read the book and say, great. Maybe we should hold off. And, you know, if when we see authority marketing, it’s not just, like, this buzzword that, yeah, you know, authority marketing. It’s actually living it. It’s saying, if you don’t have the time to invest in my process, then I’m not gonna spend my time trying to help you get to where that you’ve not shown you’re committed to doing. And again, if the book was 3 hours or 4 hours or 5 hours or 6 hours, it wouldn’t be a reasonable request to say, read this book before our next call. But when the book can be read or listened to in roughly 60 to 90 minutes, it is a very reasonable request. And that’s where you end up with a sales process that closes itself.
Bill: Yeah. It it’s I was writing my book Radical relevance. and you you like the radical word, which is cool. I know. So I I started I started unconsciously repeating it. So yeah. Well, just be careful because I actually have trademarked, and I have circle are radical relevance. So I just had to do a cease and desist to defend my mark with a with a firm in Atlanta, but that’s another story again from time. So people may be thinking 12,000 words. Wow. Actually, it’s not that many. When I was writing radical relevance, I was a about 80,000 words, and I said, no. No. No one’s gonna read that book. I need a you know, I wanted to get it down under 40,000. It actually was tough to get it down. But what I ended up doing just as an aside is I created the radical relevance tool kit. And so all the material that I wanted to go in the book but didn’t put it in the book because then the book would do be too big and people would read it. I put into a tool kit that people can get so when they get the book, now they register the book and get the rest of the material. So there’s always ways to use that other material that you develop, and you’re right, could be one of many books. and I know you have some clients who’ve done that. So alright. Short book. And I know that some of our listeners are thinking write a book in 6 weeks. That’s the other part of your book title. They may be thinking, I hate writing or I’m not a good writer. or I don’t even know where to start. In 6 weeks, you gotta be kidding me. So I know you’re not kidding, and you’ve done it folks. So how in the heck can a financial professional write a book, a good book that’s worth reading in only 6 weeks?
Paul: Yeah. Great question. Our our process for our our paid services is literally designed to do just that we start with assumption that our client has stories, knowledge, and experience that we can tap into. We build it around meeting on Zoom once a week for an hour, and we essentially work on 2 during that Zoom call, we essentially work on 2 chapters at a time. A chapter is roughly 1500 words, so 2 chapters just 3000 words, but we don’t expect our clients to write. We don’t, you know, rarely do they say, hey. I I’m I’m a great writer, and I just wanna write. Usually, what happens is we say, what’s the chapter about? spend an hour or so, reflecting on this, thinking about this and come prepared to our Zoom call, to talk to us about this with all the relevant examples, and we give them a lot of structure for that. So in between calls, they’re spending roughly 2 hours during the week on their own, and then the Zoom call itself is roughly 1 hour. They don’t have to write a thing. From that, we record it, and we then write the first draft for them. So we take that off of their plate, and all the information we’re putting in, and this is where I think it’s very different from you know, a lot of people that may have, you know, tried to hire a ghost writer or or done different things, but weren’t happy with the quality of the results is that we do spend that 6 weeks, I mean, ultimately, we could do it in a shorter amount of time, but I find that it’s better to do it over 6 weeks because it gives our clients more time to think about it and really go on what I call that author journey because all the ancillary benefits and the clarity that they get as a result. we then give them the book for them to review. Most times, it’s, like, 95%, you know, great. I mean, you know, we we give instructions to edit. They can change anything that they want, and, usually, there’s, like, five words that are changing. It it’s good. And and so what I love about this process is that until now, we’ve just had great great relationships and stories and results for our clients taking them through this process.
Bill: So we’ve covered 2 parts of the subtitle or that the title, short book, 6 weeks. That’s kind of the product. Now in a minute, I wanna get to the results of having this product, which in your subtype who says, to attract and win more new ideal clients But first, I wanna take just a very brief pause to listen to a word from our sponsor, podrocketinfluenceacademy.com, brought to you by ProudMouth. First, they make this podcast possible, and their core business is helping financial advisers accelerate their influence through marketing activities like podcasting. And I would say that probably fits into authority marketing as well.
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Bill: I need to take about 45 seconds to let you know that our newest and even better than before academy for relationship marketing is now online and waiting to help you move from incremental growth to exponential growth by multiplying your right fit clients. When you go to the katesacademy.com, you’ll see 4 leading edge state of the art courses. Course 1 will help you communicate your value more effectively There are almost an infinite number of places where you communicate your value, your website, LinkedIn profile, emails, and conversation with prospects, clients, and centers of influence. This course provides a process and a couple of proven formulas for communicating your value more effectively than ever before. Course 2 provides you with a clear path to becoming super referable. Following this path, we’ll generate more unsolicited referrals and clients increasingly willing to provide great introductions. Course 3 shows you that it truly is possible to be proactive for referrals and introductions without being pushy, needy, or feeling like that creepy referral guy that nobody wants to look like. And course 4 is about procuring that all important connection, meaning an effective introduction to your new prospect. This is a part of the referral process that often breaks down for many advisers. but it doesn’t have to be that way. Take the steps, demonstrate it in this course, and you’ll get more effective connections, introductions to prospects who will then respond and schedule your appointment. And I would say having your own book, as we’re talking about here today, can be part of that introduction process and probably should be. So and we’ll get back to that to in a second. gosh. There’s so much more I could tell you about our academy, but I wanna get back to the interview. So simply head over to the katesacademy.com. That’s thekatesacademy.com. and make sure to use the coupon code TCA 200. That’s TCA 200. to take $200 off of your investment. And when you go to katescademy.com and questions come up, there’s a form you can use to send me a message, and Together we’ll figure out if the Katz Academy for relationship marketing is right for you. Now back to my conversation with my future guest, Paul McManus. Paul has promised let’s delve into several specific situations, case studies, if you will, where advisers are using their books to create tangible results. I I believe you’ve come prepared with about 3 specific examples, and I wouldn’t mind chiming in with what I’ve seen and help advisors do as we go. Where would you like to start?
Paul: Yeah. So let’s start with case study number 1. Mark Miller. Mark Mark Miller is a very successful adviser. Easily can do a 1,000,000 plus, so he’s definitely in that range. Interestingly, he’s the president and CEO of Hilton Tax And Wealth Advisors, and that’s the same Hilton that who’s who’s who’s who hotels we’ve stayed at, the very successful guy. And he was introduced to me about 3 years ago or so, and we’re talking about his LinkedIn at the time. And what I suggested to him that really one of the reasons that LinkedIn has broken for so many people is that they don’t have the right collateral, the right marketing collateral to 1, attract the right people, and, b, once they’re attracted to be able to successfully and in a time in a time succinct way, moved the person from interest to new client. So we started by writing his book, and I have a copy of it here, if I can pulled up. So his book is if you can see it, the tax free business owner. How business owners can use the tax code to legally pay 0 taxes. And, of course, as as as you can see, and the audience can can guess from this, we’re targeting business owners specifically. And we’re making a very bold promise or a bold claim. How to pay 0 in taxes, which I know is myself as a business owner. Immediately, it’s okay. You know, I I need to know what’s in this book. So we wrote the book 2, 3 years ago, and since then, we’ve been managing his LinkedIn program for himself, we have we have him, we have his wife, we have another account that we manage, but it’s all geared towards tapping into LinkedIn specifically targeting business owners that are paying a minimum of $20,000 a year in taxes. So we do have a qualification there. And it’s it’s a completely done for you service where, you know, the first time that he’s really aware of what’s going on is when the person shows up and schedules on his on his calendar. I mean, he’s been using us for about 2 to 3 years now for that. What I love about a couple things. I’d love to get your take on this, Belle, Originally, I was a little bit hesitant to say, let’s go after business owners on LinkedIn because what is a business you know, if if you’re in a local community, it’s Business Centers. I get it. But if you’re online in a big community, I mean, the business owner from, you know, the the the the large enterprise to the Solar Panura. I mean, that’s quite a difference, different industries, and whatnot. So prior to him, I was a little bit hesitant to have people go after business owners. And I usually say attach it to a vertical, so business owners in health care, etcetera. But because of the bold promise, he’s been extremely successful, attracting people from a wide variety of industries and, you know, all who share that common pain point of paying 20,000 plus in taxes. And so His processes, he gets the first call, which is 15 minutes or 20 minutes. He essentially, you know, confirms qualifies, and then if it’s a good fit, he moves them to the next call, which is roughly an hour. And from his own you know, this is anecdotal. I’ve not verified these results, but he’s told me in video testimonial that we’ve done together is that he closes 80% of them in that next call. And to me, I’ve worked with enough advisers over the years to know that one of the biggest pain points that advisers have when they get into these different lead programs is that they get leads. They might get appointments, but the close rate, especially online, can dip quite significantly. And so to me, he’s just, you know, I would say, a poster boy of success when it comes to really being specific about who he wants to track successfully attracting them, and then most importantly, being able to convert them in a very time efficient way. Before I move on to the next one, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Well, it makes total sense. First of all, that he’s got a book that’s that’s clear pretty clear in the market. You’re right.
Bill: The narrower the better, generally speaking. So business owners in a vertical market could make a lot of sense. Sometimes it depends on the geography of where you are. Some if someone’s in a smaller town, maybe there’s not enough businesses in a particular type of market. So you have to be a little more generic. I’m not gonna say there’s one better way than the other. Best way is the way that’s working. And So, yeah, he’s his expertise, his authority is in this paying less to no tax, and it attracts the right people. and he’s converting them clearly at a very high percentage. That’s a remarkable percentage. And so, yeah, I have nothing to say that it it’s perfect other than it’s perfect.
Paul: And and he’ll and he’ll he’ll say a couple things. One is that that magic happens when they read the book. There you go. Right. When they read the book, and that’s why as part of the process, we send them a physical copy of the book when they schedule we don’t necessarily expect that they’ve read it then, but they have it in the mail. And then as part of the process to scheduling the next call, he does set the expectation that you need to read the book. And that’s why, you know, short book, hour or so is a reasonable request. And I find it interesting because, you know, work with enough advisers as obviously you have. And, you know, I think there’s, like, some limited thinking in terms of, you know, these affluent people. I mean, I can’t I can’t ask them to do anything. I can’t give them homework. It’s like, you know, when you embrace the authority marketing, you better be giving homework. You better be setting the expectation. You better be laying out the sales process saying, this is how we work. and this is what we do next. I I I heard you on another podcast talking about referrals, and it’s it’s not so much, you know, who’s good for for me or that self interested way, but this is our process in which who really fits our process. And that’s what people really want is they want guide They wanna know that they’re in good hands. They want confidence. And so when you can say, okay. Our next step is for you to read the book so that when you come next time, you’re gonna be, you know, educated so we can have a high level conversation about how we can really help you just magical.
Bill: My own adviser before people come into his office. He gives them a pretty robust survey Factfinder, if you will, that they do online or they do before. They come in. He says, the people that do the work by the time they sit down with him for the first time, 90% of those folks become clients. It’s almost a done deal. the folks who don’t do that work before they come into his office, it’s about 5050, whether they’re gonna work with him or not. So it’s a it’s a qualifier. and it’s a little bit of a hurdle they have to jump through. But if you’re at the place in your business where you really just wanna attract the right people, And it’s okay if you don’t attract the right people, the wrong people, I should say. Then then then it’s per If you’re brand new in the business, you know, you’ll be a little bit more flexible probably.
Paul: So let’s go into case study number 2. This is a gentleman. His name Alex Sonkin. I’ve been working with him for, I wanna say, the past 5 years. And, again, this is be started before I was helping people publish books, and so we started on LinkedIn, and he has a really interesting business model. He’s he’s he’s one of the most successful people that do it. His model is to work exclusively with CPAs, and by extension the CPAs have the affluent business owner clients. And so he he’s been doing this for a couple decades now. He’s perfected the system. He’s, you know, for anyone that’s looking at virtual family offices, probably you might have heard his name because he’s one of the few companies that do this really well. And so when we started, we we we started with LinkedIn as I did at that time with all my clients, and we built up a really nice community of CPAs for him. that we continue to build, and he has, I wanna say, over 10,000 CPAs it is connected to. I’ve helped him over this past 5 years. Every year, we do a summit. And so we’ve had 500 to a1000 CPAs attend these summits. They’re educational in nature. The most interesting thing that I find from him and I’ve learned and just really juxtaposed what I see and hear from other advisers is that a lot of advisers would love to work with CPA. because of the reasons that we can without even articulating, we can imagine. Except most of them are challenged in doing so because CPAs how do you get their attention? How do you get them to trust you? How do you get them to refer their best clients to, you know, just a whole host of issues? So, Alex’s case, but I’m what I so admire about what he’s done is that he’s flipped that script. And not only does he attract the CPA through multiple mediums, the book being 1 as a filtration device. But by the time you know, before they even get a chance to talk to him, they typically have to sign up and pay for his membership site. So he charges $200 a month to become part of his community, That’s not really meant to be a, you know, a a cost or a a profit center. It’s just really meant to be a filtration system so that only the right CPAs were really committed and interested in Qualo wide come through that, and it’s only then that he then whether it’s him or his team engages with the CPAs. And so the book has just become a great part of it. You know, he’s already doing webinars and different things. But what’s interesting, you know, same thing with Mark, even though he’s part of this Hilton tax and wealth. He has this great name and great brand, Guess what? He leads with his book. Same thing for Alex. You know, I I noticed when he does the webinar and he has, you know, 100 of CPAs listening. You know how he introduces himself? I’m the author of this bucket. And so the so the so the book just raises that authority and also gives people something that they can take away and consume and really convince themselves that this is the right opportunity for them.
Bill: Interesting. I’m I’m the author of that’s that’s the way he starts, and that it creates that authority and doesn’t say I’m a financial adviser. I’m a financial planner. I’m the author of. So that’s that’s the that distinction, I guess, that when you take that position of authority, and then you have some something to back it up like a book, like a podcast, etcetera, then you can actually say that. So what what’s the 3rd example? 2 great ones. So what’s the third one?
Paul: 3rd one, gentleman named Michael Budnick, and I’ve been working with him for over a year now. And when we started, he had actually written a book, and he was looking for ways to market it. But it was it was too broad and too general, so it’s kind of aimed at everybody. And so we essentially redid his book, and we’ve helped him with a couple of books, but the the one that I’ll I’ll talk about now is that in that process, we discovered that he’s a very, I wanna call it, part centered person His influences are people like Louis Hay who’s, you know, very about I don’t know, describe it, just spiritual personal self development and growth. And so, really, we wanted to include not just the advisory side and the, you know, the, you know, the holistic side of that, the AUM, the annuities, and the life but we really wanted to really show people who he is as a person in the market that most clearly lines up with that. And so we decided that that would be nurses who he really relates to. And so the book that we wrote for that we helped him write is called The the prosperous nurse, and this is your road map to wealth, health, and happiness. And what I love about this approach is that, again, in attracting your ideal clients, it’s not just from a income and assets point of view, although that’s important and relevant, it’s really the kind of people that you want to work with because, you know, these are relationships. And, you know, if as you’re doing your best work and attracting the right people, guess what? They start referring. They start talking about. They start introducing their excited about the work that you do. So this has been one of the books that we’ve done. And now we’re moving on, and this is where another reason for the short books is that if you if you make it focused and relatively narrow, now suddenly you have ideas for additional books for additional specific targets. And so right now, we’re working on another book We don’t have a title yet, but this is very specifically geared towards business owners, hospital administrators, I’m really decision makers at organizations in the health care industry more broadly. And in this book, we’re really trying to throw target date funds under the bus and come at it with that’s bad, and what you really want and need is active money management but but the book is specifically geared towards those decision makers about their own personal finances and by extent, once we can get them, now they have a whole organization that can benefit from the same ideas. And so with both the nurses as well as this new book, we’ve carved out wanna say broadly the health care industry, but there’s multiple points that were, you know, lead ins for it.
Bill: And that’s what can happen with a target market is people often ask me, can you should you have more can you have more than one target market? and the answer is yes. You can. Usually, you wanna get a good grip and get your, you know, one solid before you work on another one. But if it’s related to the one, it’s a little easier, isn’t it? So if it was — It does. — nurses and then doctors or nurses and hospital administrators, they’re they’re related. They know each other. You’re not starting a whole new business. Now I know that there’s a little a bit of an interesting story around the title of the prosperous nurse. that I want you to tell, folks, because this is important to the title is important, and the title will make the difference as to whether people pick the book up, whether people read it, whether they resonate with it. So if you could tell that real quick, and then we’ll kinda wrap this up with a few things.
Paul: Yeah. So one of the strategies that I encourage people to do as part of the book writing process is to do something called Insights Interviews. So, you know, people, especially if you worked with people in a specific industry, you know, you tend to get to a degree their language and those things of affinity, but an insights interview is really to see if you can go deeper in terms of your understanding. as well as to confirm some of your assumptions. So as we were starting to write this book, one of the titles that we came up with as an idea was smart nurses smart nurses finish rich. And we thought that was a pretty clever title. It’s like, yeah. We know we’re, you know, we’re we’re we’re it’s the dream. Come we’re at, hey. And then he conducted, I wanna say, at least 3 I mean, a great student, and he conducted, I wanna say, 3 insights interviews, and even listened to these, and I didn’t hear one of them talked about getting rich because the Insights interview is all about, you know, just asking questions and finding out what’s in their head, their pain points, their concerns, their desires, things of that nature. Not one of them talked about getting rich. It was all about peace, stability, you know, family, all these, you know, things. And so immediately, that was like, ah, this is the wrong title. You know? This is not what that audience is looking for. I mean, we’re not opposed you know, no one’s opposed to becoming rich. Right? But it’s not it’s not what’s gonna appeal to them and the response that we’ve had since we’ve launched this book, and we now have a whole monthly event built around it on LinkedIn. I mean, we’re tracking 3, 400 nurses a month on LinkedIn into an event that’s of similar nature. but it’s really understanding your audience and being willing to go a level deeper to confirm that you truly understand your audience because the the payoff on that is huge.
Bill: That’s great. The prosperous nurse I have 2 more questions, pretty quick questions for you. One is before we go any further, how how can our listeners learn more about you or how do they contact you? What’s the best way for them to get into your world?
Paul: Yep. Easiest way is to go to more clients morefun.com, and then that will redirect you to my main site, which is the short book formula dotcom. But easy way to remember, more clients, more fun.com, and I’m also active on LinkedIn. Just make sure you use the middle initial or if you google me, make sure you use the middle initial g. Because if you take out the g, I suddenly come across as an axe murderer out of Ireland, but you stick the g in I’m a reasonably nice guy and, you know, reasonably respect respectable.
Bill: Max murdered her in Ireland. Well, there’s a specific target. Let’s see. So I guess my last question is, you know, what’s important for financial professionals to consider when deciding get help to create an expert status book like this?
Paul: I would say the sooner the better, and I say that for a few reasons. Number 1, is that it’ll transform your whole practice and your whole business. I’ve been a student of marketing since, I wanna say, 2014, and I’ve looked at all the different that people do marketing primarily for myself. And the best investment of time, energy resources that I’ve ever made was in my first book, and it’s transformative to everything else. And what I love about a book is the the value is inherent, and it’s long lasting. So as as contrast, you you do a Facebook campaign, and you spent $2000 and suddenly it’s did I make money? Did I lose money? That’s pretty much the assessment. A book can be used in all of your business marketing, sales, referrals, and everything. And so you can oftentimes by publishing the book and sharing it with your existing client base, make the investment back immediately, and then some if you simply use it as a tool, and then you say, okay. How can I further this? How can I tap into LinkedIn? How can I tap into other opportunities?
Bill: And I think it’s important for people to get that this is not a book you’re selling online through Amazon. You could and you’ll make a little money, but you really make money by having the book. You make money by being the author of the book. There are some books that you can just sell you know, some people sell millions of books and they make the money that way. This is a little different model. This is you have the book and you make money because of it because your clients give it to others, your centers of influence, give it out to others, and say, read this, and I’ll then I’ll hook you up with this guy, right, with this gal. So — And, Paul,
Paul: yeah, please. One one thing there. Yeah. So so in in terms of publishing, you know, we recommend just you know, we help our clients publish to Amazon just because, you know, that really is the default printer. And to your point, our pricing model is just to price it at the minimum that Amazon allows, which tends to be about $3.50. But the reason for that is that twofold 1, you can literally print a book on demand, so you don’t have to buy hundreds of copies of books. You can print on demand. And if you have a Prime account, which most people do, you can literally send it for free in 2 to 4 days. And so imagine $3.50, and whether it’s a referral or your, you know, prospect whomever you can get your book into their hands and put that as part of the whole sales process, which completely transforms
Bill: everything that you do, frees up time and all those good things. There’s another reason for a a shorter book. It costs less to print, and so your your purchase price is gonna be low, so it’s easy to give it away. It it it is. Yeah. Yeah. I I anyone that shows interest I’m sending you a buzz. Exactly. Exactly. Paul McManus, book publishing coach to many advisors. Thanks for being a featured guest on top adviser podcast.
Paul: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Bill: You bet. To you, the listener of this podcast, may I ask you a small favor? If you like, this episode or like the podcast in general, please leave a 5 star review on the platform you’re listening to the show. Not all the platforms have a place for reviews, but if yours does, I’d be grateful. Thank you. If you haven’t already, head over to referralcoach.comforward/resources to sign up for our weekly tips and access a ton of free guides, scripts, etcetera. And do yourself a favor and check out the cates academy.com. I’m committed to making sure you produce great results through our proven processes. And don’t forget to use the coupon code TCA 200. What do you think that stands for? The Katz Academy. TCA 200 to save $200 off your investment in membership of the Katz Academy. This is Bill Katz reminding you that ideas do not make you more successful. Only acting on those ideas will bring you the success that you desire. Thanks for stopping by today. Thank you for listening to the top advisor podcast brought to you by Proud Mouse Pod Rocket Academy. I encourage you to visit my website referralcoach.com for links to my books, online courses, and to register for the Cates Academy.
