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Million Dollar Producer Show
058: The Advisor's Author Playbook: Anton J. Anderson's Book Writing Secrets Exposed
In this episode, I welcome Anton J. Anderson back to the show for the third time. Anton, CEO of Elite Resource Team and co-author of "The Art of Collaboration: When 2 Tribes Stop the War".
He shares his journey, the unexpected challenges he faced, and the valuable lessons he learned while writing his book.
Anton’s Journey
- Career Evolution: Anton discusses his decade-long focus on the team-based model and how it shaped his expertise in creating collaborative environments for financial advisors and CPAs.
- Author’s Challenges: He reveals the surprising difficulties he faced while condensing extensive knowledge into a concise, impactful book.
- Mindset Shifts: He emphasizes the importance of refining communication and mastering content through the process of writing.
he Power of the Book: Enhancing Professional Credibility
- Authority by Association: Anton highlights the strategic advantage of co-authoring the book with CPA Paul Latham and featuring forwards by well-respected professionals like John Kuttin and Jackie Meyer.
- Leveraging the Book: He discusses how the book serves as a cornerstone for various communication strategies, enhancing personal and professional branding.
Effective Marketing and Distribution Strategies
- Book Signings and Events: Anton shares the success of incorporating book signings at events, utilizing visual aids like branded table runners to maximize promotional opportunities.
- Media Recognition: The book’s release as an Amazon bestseller attracted attention from notable industry sources, leading to increased visibility and credibility.
- Niche Focus: Anton advises fellow advisors to write books on unique, niche topics to stand out in a crowded market.
- Collaborative Opportunities: He encourages leveraging the book to build stronger relationships with CPAs and clients, creating a synergistic effect in professional networking.
Key Takeaways and Future Directions
- Embrace the Power of Authorship: Anton underscores the substantial return on investment from writing a book, not just in financial terms but in enhanced status and opportunities.
- Continued Innovation: He hints at upcoming projects and initiatives that will further solidify the book’s themes and continue to promote collaboration and advanced planning in the industry.
About our Guest: Anton Anderson is the CEO of Elite Resource Team.
You can learn more about his work at:
https://elitert.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonjanderson/
https://www.antonjanderson.com/
Get a copy of his book: The Art of Collaboration: When 2 Tribes Stop The War
About Your Host: Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.
Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com
Welcome everybody to this webinar. My name is Paul McManus, If you haven't already met me. Two weeks ago I was at the Elite Growth Academy, which was fantastic. I am here with someone that I believe you all know, Mr Anton J Anderson, and Anton, you are currently on vacation, so I really appreciate you taking the time to join me for this. I am in Maine, about a block from the beach in, and Anton, you are currently on vacation, so I really appreciate you taking the time to join me for this.
Speaker 2:I am in Maine, about a block from the beach. My wife and kids and I were just down there playing. Thanks for letting me be a minute late here, as we were enjoying the sun, but I was looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1:So the first section that I'd like to jump into and this is really just open-ended questions for you, anton, so take it where you will A couple key thought prompts, if you will, which I'm calling the advisor-author journey, and just based on your own experience, I know you shared a lot in the conference but, for anyone that maybe missed that, were there any unexpected challenges faced? What were some of the key mind shifts and, just broadly, what were some of the things that you learned in that process of going from and becoming an author, in that process of going from?
Speaker 2:becoming an author Lots of good questions and immediately it brings up some interesting thoughts. So, in terms of the takeaways, for me this is a topic we've talked about for 10 years. This is our 10-year anniversary as a company and everything we've done has been focused on the team-based model over those 10 years. So I don't know how many webinars I've given and how many Q&A sessions I've done and all that stuff. So it's material that I give that context to say, it's material that I'm intimately familiar with and didn't really have to study because a lot of it was organically created.
Speaker 2:Over the last 10 years as a company and four years in my own practice working with CPAs in a virtual family office, I didn't anticipate there being much new or aha moments or anything that I would have, but I do think what ended up happening in the book and I've had a handful of people reach out to me Philip's on the line, I know he's been a member for a long time, tracy Kaufman, I saw your name and other guys that have been in the training and exposed to the material for years to say it actually really helped boil down some of the concepts into concise kind of takeaway points.
Speaker 2:That's what it forced, I'd say, me, to do was one of the biggest challenges was I'm a storyteller and I use analogies and sometimes it drives my wife crazy, but it's how my brain works and I use analogies and sometimes it drives my wife crazy, but it's how my brain works and I could take 10 minutes to describe something, but when you're attempting to create a short book, you can end up with something that's 400 pages if you're not careful. And that was probably one of the main things. Is it forced me to refine my thinking and to communicate points in a more effective way that I didn't anticipate how much more comfortable I would become, I think, really mastering the topic?
Speaker 1:I'll expand upon that, just from my point of view, a little bit. A couple of things that I noticed when I work with new authors is that either they have one of two problems, I call it. They have a body of work and the question becomes how do I condense this down to what's most important for this book? And that's where we really help our clients get really focused. We also put in some constraints, right, so we have, you know, this needs to be within 25,000 words and I think you've got 25,062. So you went over a little bit. But it really focuses that laser focus on what is it that you want to communicate, focuses that laser focus on what is it that you want to communicate.
Speaker 1:And to your point, I don't believe and correct me if I'm wrong, but that there's anything necessarily new in the book that you haven't talked about on webinars and other podcasts and in person. But it is that takeaway and I think you said Philip said that is that it's the cliff notes. Right, it's been hours and years with you and they can absorb different things, but how nice is it to have a book that really has the key things that you believe, for the most part, are the most important things that you want to communicate, both to your internal members as well as, potentially, cpas, and maybe you can talk about that a little bit from an advisor's perspective. What are those things? That now they have a tool potentially to be able to more effectively have a conversation with a CPA, leveraging both you and Mr Paul Latham.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the goal to have it be co-authored, which was a lot more work than just either one of us doing it individually. Again, because, like myself, paul's been in this material for so long he has his own 400 page book that he could do. So we're attempting to take two 400 page books and boil it down to a one 100 and 125 or whatever page book. So the goal was always, from the beginning, create something that was valuable to both the advisor and the accountant alike, which is tricky because you're speaking to two different audiences, and we mirrored the approach of men are from Mars, women are from Venus, where it's let's not try to use one voice, let's actually highlight the difference between the voices.
Speaker 2:So the way we did it which some of you will recognize, but I think it's pertinent to the point that you're making is we had one narrative which was about the collective story or journey that advisors and accountants go through, and then we had my own individual voice, which was broken out, speaking as the advisor, and then Paul's individual voice speaking as the accountant the advisor and then Paul's individual voice speaking as the accountant. So ideally, when somebody's reading it, if they're an advisor, when they get to Paul's section, they're hearing from the advisor's perspective what it's like, why this resonated, why this didn't resonate, what mistakes most advisors make. Likewise, when the accountants are reading it, they're hearing same thing from my voice in terms of the advisors, but then they're also hearing from an accountant who's walked the walk, built the business, sold the practice for 45 million. So ideally, again, it is equally valuable to both groups. As a result of that, we can use it to educate our community. Our community can use it to educate accountants.
Speaker 1:Let me just underscore that last point again, which is I call this authority by association. If I'm an advisor and I want to build some impactful CPA relationships, I come to the table with a certain toolkit and skill set and experience that I can use, and I think that's naturally what people do no-transcript. And so when you give this to someone, it's not like hey, go watch my promotional video that wants to sell you into what we can do with you. It's more hey, this is something that you can do on your own time. Take your time. It's a relatively short rate. You can read it within, say, a couple hours and you tell me what do you think? Is this something that you'd like to explore and we can move on to the next section? Or, if you have any reaction or comment, love to hear it.
Speaker 2:Just one thought that comes up as you're saying that is it is interesting. Your spot on the book is books in general, I think even if they have a promotional edge, as long as you are doing it where you're truly trying to create value and educate the reader, it's not seen necessarily as a marketing piece, like a brochure would be seen. It's seen with a degree of respect or accomplishment. I can't tell you how many people have emailed, texted, called or came up at the EGA and the first thing they were saying is congratulations on the book. It was very surprising, and partly why it's surprising is people maybe underestimate the amount of work that goes into, for example, training videos or even a really good sales 10, 15 minute video, a good organic YouTube video.
Speaker 2:There's so many hours that go into that and many of those projects I've had to spend exponentially more time on than I had to spend on the book, and many of those projects I've had to spend exponentially more time on than I had to spend on the book, and partly, obviously, that's working with somebody that knows what they're doing, which you guys do, but it's just the accomplishment of Catalyst. Creating Catalyst as an example was probably a thousand times more demanding in terms of the hours and the effort and yet nobody has said congratulations on like module number seven. It's the amount of work that went into. It was nothing compared to the amount of work that goes into some other projects that just don't get recognized at all. It's like the investment versus the reward is way skewed towards the reward.
Speaker 1:That, to me, is one of the amazing things of authorship, because I've experienced this myself. I published my first book I want to say 2019, 2020, I forget at the moment. I, literally before I even wrote my first book, I did the book cover, I published it on social media and I got all kinds of praise Wow, congratulations. I literally came up with a name. I hired a graphic designer to create a thing, I posted on social media and suddenly my status was elevated. It's interesting how our basically underscore what you're saying.
Speaker 1:It's interesting how our culture still respects authors more than as an expert, more than most anything else. There was a statistic I heard recently that you know, take your example which I completely agree with. There's also people that have PhDs. Guess which one the marketplace ascribes more value to? I have a PhD. I don't know what that means. That's ultimately what the person's thinking hey, I just did a new module on this. The market doesn't know how to react to that, whereas I'm an author and I think it's like public speaking, we're just trained as humans be like, really, wow, that's amazing. So, building off the conversation so far, and just one of the questions that people always ask me is that they come to me and they're excited about the idea of being an author for the reasons that we talked about. And then the next question, a really concern that they have, is once I publish it, what then? I don't want just my mom and my dad, hopefully, to read the book, and I do believe your mom and dad read the book, so congratulations on that.
Speaker 2:I believe they purchased one copy between the two of them.
Speaker 1:Yes, but what I loved observing is obviously we timed this to go right before the EGA and so that was intentional. Just you as an example, maybe taking your example and thinking through how an advisor might use their own book. What I saw was how you immediately took advantage and really leveraged the book for the event, and I have some observations, but I'd love to have you kick off in terms of what your thinking process was going into the event and how you wanted to leverage it.
Speaker 2:My thinking was you create not only a book but you use it then as a cornerstone for any type of communication that you have to clients or to the marketplace as a whole. So even everything from the colors, the title, the subtitle how many different plays can I run with this? And so it's seen as maybe. I went out to dinner last night with my wife and it was. They have four courses and the book is like one of those courses, but then the appetizer and the dessert and all like work together off of that. So the title of my presentation at the event was the Art of Collaboration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, opening with quotes from the book, using slides that tie back to the book, and then Lindsay, on any of our social media marketing is using exactly that right. It's material that has already been created and written in the book and now it's just being repurposed, has already been created and written in the book and now it's just being repurposed. So there's this flywheel with everything reinforcing essentially the brand, which is, if you think of collaboration I want you to think back to this and then from there it's team-based model, blue ocean. I'm thinking about it from an advisor's perspective or an accountant's perspective. I think the more you can have it reinforce your overall branding personal and business branding because everybody that knows me well knows I grew up in San Diego, I'm a big surfer and that's.
Speaker 2:It's not an accident that the blue ocean is weaved into all of these things because, from a selfish, I'll just let you in on my mindset. But it's like when people say, oh, I was in Hawaii and I saw surfing and I thought of you, I'm like fantastic, genuinely I love the ocean and so it's a compliment. But B it means my personal branding is working, like you see the ocean and you think of me. So I want that message. I guess the message to anybody listening is what are like the terms that you own, that, whether they're clients or the marketplace, when they see those, they think of you collaboration, team, virtual family office what's your version of that? And then how do you write a book that pulls those together? And then, off of the book, you do the webinar or the in-person presentation and you do the marketing emails. And there's a lot more that my team's working on right now that people will see coming out in the next three to six months that reinforces the same theme.
Speaker 1:I have to tell you I really liked the exercise you did where you and two other people and you were doing the ball exercise and you were collaborating. I've literally pulled that in as an example in some difficult conversations I've had since the event and to say, hey, collaborate, do you remember this? And we need to communicate more and not just pass the ball. This way, we need to all be passing the ball together.
Speaker 1:That's funny, and so I immediately now, think of collaboration, I think of you and I think of that exercise, and that's just one example of how it's now anchored into my brain.
Speaker 2:The people that do this extremely well and have a lot of money to study it. Politics is probably the most extreme example, and what you'll see is politicians, because of their strategists, will lock in on a couple key terms and when you hear that word or you hear that phrase, you immediately think of that person. Right, and so mimicking that in our own little niche is, I think, just a smart way to recognize. You don't want people to think of you and think of two dozen different things and different paragraphs and all that. It doesn't need to be detailed.
Speaker 1:It's like you want anchor stories that immediately people recognize you for. Can you share a little bit of the backstory, the cover and the red versus the blue and just how we arrived at where we did you?
Speaker 2:had worked with A number of different options in terms of design with the front cover, back cover. We did a poll in the Catalyst community and the Fusion community to basically get feedback from individuals to see what resonated, and there was a mix between a very literal, like red ocean shifting into a blue ocean, and even some arrows that indicated like you're starting here and you're shifting there, and that would have been the more logical option. You're starting here and you're shifting there, and that would have been the more logical option. But I also felt like part of our branding and company is in a marketplace or in an industry that can be a little bit old and outdated and predictable, we're more of the disruptors, or at least we're attempting to be right.
Speaker 2:So I use the example all the time of, like the Marriott, the Hilton, why didn't they come up with VRBO or Airbnb? Because they're more established. So my argument would be why hasn't a big IMO or a big BD come up with like a really good, applicable training program for CPAs and attorneys to work together? And I think it's because they have their vested interests and they do what they do well. But it leaves this opportunity in the marketplace. So for me, I didn't want to go with as literal of a image of the ocean waves in the red and blue. It was just a little bit too predictable, whereas, like the cover that we went with, it's a little bit more modern, a little bit edgier, in a way cleaner, and obviously the title, the art of collaboration it's a little bit more artistic.
Speaker 1:Two observations, quick reactions to either one. One was just I loved how you took an hour to literally do a book signing at the event. This is a concept I always tell people about. Hey, when you get a book, make a big deal about it, have an open house, have an event. It's amazing how much leverage you can get from this, and so I love seeing you doing that. And then the other thing and we'll get into this more as we go forward in terms of some of the other aspects is I noticed in your introduction. I mean, everyone knows you and you have a lot of credentials and experience that I'm sure you've spent much more time on, but Amazon bestselling author always slipped into who you are. So this is Anton, the Amazon bestselling author, which is probably a fraction compared to all the experience that you've invested in different things. Any reaction to either one or thoughts?
Speaker 2:The book signing. Obviously you saw what we attempted to do there and I feel like it worked well. That little table runner right, there was $33 that Lindsay found on somewhere online and just ordered it, and that's for photos and such, which is anything that anybody on the line is doing. I would just always encourage you to think about, like, how do we repurpose this and how do we capture it, and so that $33 in that photo will show up in ads for the next five years on social media and such. And then there's other photos that show like more people that are lined up with their books waiting to be signed and such. So those will, I'm sure, show up too.
Speaker 2:The other part of what you're saying in terms of the bio and such yeah, it really just goes back to what I referenced at the beginning, which is the investment of time or capital either are so low compared to the return on that. It is funny, even people that aren't in the industry, like I referenced that. We're in Maine right now visiting my wife's family, my sister-in-law, who I haven't seen in a couple of years and she's a teacher. But literally, as we said hi and she gave me a hug, she said I can't believe you wrote a book Congratulations. That's a big deal and she's not in the industry at all. She'll never read a copy of it or anything, but in her mind that's what her sister's husband did.
Speaker 2:First I was just hosting an EGA event and we spent 10 months planning that thing. Again, it's just there's so much that goes into the work behind the scenes. I even remember like creating financial plans and such, and I know there's a number of advisors on right now. So sometimes it's like hours go into one financial plan for a client and who knows about that, the client? And what happens? Nothing. It's just there's so much work we do behind the scenes that never is recognized because people don't really understand what goes into it. And then this is the reverse it really gets recognized and it's not in. It's not at all as intimidating as I thought it would be or heavy of a lift.
Speaker 1:Building off the Amazon bestsellers and I guess maybe just from a couple questions and this is an insider crowd that we have attending this webinar, so you can, to the extent that you want you can reveal, you know, share some tidbits in terms of the process, but we almost didn't make it.
Speaker 1:We did hit bestseller in the financial services industry, as you can see there we got number one new release in multiple categories and then, just for someone who doesn't know the difference, bestseller is a little bit more difficult to achieve, so number one new release is relatively easier to achieve, a little bit more difficult to achieve, right. So number one new release is it's relatively easier to achieve, a little bit more predictable best sellers a little bit more difficult. And I remember, from my perspective, we were texting back and forth and we're like send that, or I'm like text people send out another email, we need to get those numbers up, and there's a little bit of drama, unexpected drama, but by the end of the thing, we did hit it and so, just maybe, from your perspective, what was that like, as well as just any thoughts on how you plan on leveraging this now going forward.
Speaker 2:Amazon intentionally doesn't give you exactly what the calculation or the algorithm is going to be to hit bestseller. So you can't just say, oh, I need 300 people to buy a copy, or I need 50 people to buy 20 copies each, or something like.
Speaker 1:You can't game the system that, if I can just jump in and add to that and this is a takeaway for everyone is that you can't just buy 300 copies. That's what people want to do, right? Hey, I'll buy 300 copies on bestseller. No, you need 300 people to buy a copy of the book. Separate amazon accounts because amazon does not recognize bulk purchases as it relates to bestseller, so just wanted to share that please continue.
Speaker 2:There was a little bit of that where we just didn't have exact like you said.
Speaker 2:There was some drama because you don't know exactly how it will play out.
Speaker 2:My hope was that, although there's a marketing play to it, the purpose of the book really is to deliver value and to educate, and so I didn't want to just do something that was too salesy and that's what Paul Latham feeling was too.
Speaker 2:Let's do something we're proud of and if it hits bestseller, even better, but let's not just focus on that exclusively. So it was very exciting to see, and almost immediately I think I've heard from six or seven media outlet sources like the AICPA that basically said we look every day at new releases and new authors and what the books are and we see that your book just hit I think it was Amazon's number one release in accounting and we wanted to know if we could do an article on your book and quote you and reference the book and such, and I said, of course that's fantastic because you're getting the word out there and it's coming from the AICPA, which is endorsements for the CPA community, which is in a way more valuable than an endorsement from the financial services community because the accountants are harder to get their attention than advisors. Like I said, there's been another six or seven. Can you be on this podcast? Can we interview you about your book or these kind of discussions and opportunity?
Speaker 1:Amazing. Any final thoughts about how you are thinking about leveraging either just the book or the status that we haven't touched upon?
Speaker 2:One of the things we've been doing for the last six months is an introduction program where basically we've been reaching out to accountants and qualifying them and introducing them to advisors in the training that have reached a certain level of qualification. And the book then has helped with that, because now we can reference the book in Amazon number one bestseller and we can use it to help get the attention of new advisors and CPAs and then generate those introduction opportunities for the advisors in the community.
Speaker 1:I'm going to underscore another, I think, nugget there, which is you can do new marketing specifically around the book, and that's a great thing to do. At the same time, there's so much I'd call it low-hanging fruit Whereas if you look at, do a 360 of what you're currently doing in terms of your marketing, your funnels, your everything doing this currently, your sales approach, everything and you see where you can insert that book into the process and I can promise you it's going to create a noticeable increase in your ROI. I know I just emailed you a couple of days ago with an idea, but we haven't even talked about it yet. But I'm like hey, I think there's maybe a way to recoup some of those ad spend that you do in a way that gets the same result and radically reduces your expenses. And we literally haven't even talked about that. But I'm just like seeing these opportunities based on what you're doing, and this is where everyone's unique right.
Speaker 1:There's not a cookie cutter, publisher, book do X, find Z. There's maybe a couple of things that we can recommend, but really it's what is your situation? What are you currently doing? How can we amplify what you're currently doing? And that's where you see the most quick and immediate ROI. I'd like to maybe have you, anton, just think out loud you didn't come prepared for this, but maybe just brainstorm a little bit from an advisor's point of view. What are some of those opportunities for an advisor who decides to write and publish a book, how they can leverage it in tandem with everything that they already do vis-a-vis ERT.
Speaker 1:I'm going to share one example just to kind of tee things off. So, pavan, ever since we published his book, he's been doing all kinds of super cool things. I was literally at the table not the booth, the table that I was at the EGA, and I was eavesdropping on him talking to the people next to me and he was telling them about one of the things that he's doing with his book, which is he has a COI, which is a banker, and he was telling them the story that the banker has someone come into the office and they're sitting there reading Pavan's book and of course the person naturally was like oh, what's that you're reading? And they'll start having a conversation about it. And then the banker kind of says I know the author. And they're just like this subtle, would you like and there's just like this subtle would you like to borrow the book? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then at some point I know the author, I could actually introduce you. Wow, really, and it's just it's subtle, but it's. That goes back to that. Yeah, I'm gonna get the words wrong, but it's like there's this status or cachet about being an author where suddenly it's not like I have a guy that can help you with your insurance or what have you, it's like this is his book, he's a bestselling author, I know him. So that's my one example. But just if you could share some ideas that you have maybe for advisors in terms of how they might be able to leverage, potentially, a book if they were to decide to write and publish one, or if they already have one.
Speaker 2:My thought would be you could write a book on anything and it will help to a degree with that status that you're referring to because of just the perception of the community on it being an author, like we've discussed. But I think a much more powerful way to do it is write a book on something that's unique and you want to like stake your flag in the ground. That's the image that has come to mind and I've referenced before is when you say, whatever your like description is and what you do and who you help, and you reference that you've written a book on it. You're continuing to build your credibility around that topic. And if you wrote a book on helping people baby boomers retire, it's okay. You have some credibility and everything on that.
Speaker 2:But there's thousands of advisors that help baby boomers retire. You can do that. And then there's probably there's tens of thousands, there's probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people that have written a book on helping baby boomers retire. So the more unique you can get in what you're writing the book on, I think the more you put your flag in the ground and be like I own this space versus I'm one of 500 people that own this space. So where I'm going with. That is, I think, the whole team-based model concept and virtual family office. It's new enough still and, I think, unique enough where, if I was an advisor, I would write a book really on that, incorporating that language and that topic into it, and so it would be something like the difference between secure retirement for baby boomers. There's a lot there, there's a lot of people that have done that and still be a helpful book, I'm sure, from a marketing perspective, but something more of it's a red ocean.
Speaker 2:It's a red ocean? Yeah, so you're advancing your red ocean space? Yeah, so if you can write a book in the blue ocean, then what you're doing is you're taking advantage of the natural perception of being an author and you're taking advantage of a blue ocean concept. Right, so that's more like advanced planning for wealthy business owners using a virtual family office, or that's too long for a title, but maybe it's a subtitle. My point is get niched and then leverage the blue ocean uniqueness of the model that everybody is here I'm assuming, if they're on the line right now to integrate.
Speaker 1:How about, in terms of leveraging a book someone's own book for the purpose of either A building CPA relationships or, b once they have a CPA relationship, getting the introductions to the relevant clients not only faster, but also in a way that they're positioned in such a way that they have that additional cachet?
Speaker 2:If I was an advisor, I absolutely would. I think, and again, you would really create some divisiveness or some polarity between what typically the marketplace does and and what you do. Actually, I didn't even think about this, but I saw an ad for VRBO two weeks ago or something. It was like a husband and wife and their kid in a hotel room and they're traveling with your kids and you don't want your bedtime to be their bedtime. Consider getting a house rather than a hotel room. It was creating polarity between hotel small, you don't have freedom house, you get to stay up with your husband or your wife while your kids sleep in the other bedroom.
Speaker 2:Because you used VRBO and now you're happy, so I would look towards ways to use that in my book. So if I'm an advisor and I'm writing towards a CPA, it would be all about outdated referral model All the other advisors that are sending you referrals outdated, inefficient, lacks. Leverage just basically makes your problem worse. That's the referral model. Here's what my book's about team-based model or basically leveraging the uniqueness of something they haven't heard as much before.
Speaker 1:Adding on to that, you have not one, but two, four words in your book. That's Jackie Meyer, CPA, and John Cutton, barron's Hall of Fame advisor. Why did you ask the two of them to write a forward? And through that thought process, what would you recommend to an advisor? Consider in terms of choosing someone to write a forward?
Speaker 2:Obviously, because it was a book for advisors and accountants, we wanted to have a voice for each. So Jackie is a well-known accountant, cpa, thought leader, owner of TaxPlan IQ, and I think her career trajectory is going upwards as well. So I think Jackie in two, three years will be more recognizable than Jackie today, and same with John. He's 51, obviously Barron's Hall of Fame and such, but he's doing more and more today than he did at any point in the past. So his trajectory will continue to go up, meaning their names will bring value or credibility to the book, and that was the whole purpose. Was just who do I feel like would speak to the ideal audience member that is going to read this?
Speaker 1:Any advice for an advisor considering someone for a forward?
Speaker 2:I would say it really depends again on who the book is for and what the book's communicating. And then you find somebody, ideally, that has a voice that would resonate with that niche market. The way I would think about it is not just like a noteworthy name, but does their experience resonate with the individual reading the book? Or even if the person doesn't read the book, it's just they see the book, they see the forward name does the name resonate.
Speaker 1:That's something that we did very intentionally in your book is not only be able to forward, but, if you think about the book cover, we very specifically call out forwards by John Cutton and Jackie Meyer.
Speaker 1:So just to add one little bit of observation, there is what I love about that approach is that now you have four people at a minimum that are invested in this book, meaning that it's your book and so you're obviously invested in it. Paul Latham it's his books, he's obviously invested, he's the co-author. But now you have John Cutton and Jackie Meyer who can easily say, hey, because literally they wrote the first chapter. People are going to read what they said before they get to what you said, and their name is on the cover of the book as well, and so the dynamic that happens is that now they're out there sharing the book because they feel ownership of it. John Cutton just texted me or emailed me the other day and he's like, yeah, can you send me 25 copies of Anton and Paul's book? I want to give it to all my interns, right, but he's doing that, he's doing that?
Speaker 2:I didn't know he did that, but I was on a text exchange with him yesterday, yeah, and they said all the interns were walking around the office with my book and the psychology behind that is that.
Speaker 1:Would he do that if his name wasn't on the forward right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:But it's more likely and by extrapolation this is the point I was making earlier is that imagine if you have a CPA that you're working with the forward, it's your book, but a CPA partnership writes the forward. Guess what's going to happen? They're that much more invested spreading the word about how awesome you are because now they feel a sense of ownership of the book.
Speaker 2:I think that's spot on. If you have a good CPA partner, I'll write the forward. Or if it's a really good partner, consider co-authoring a book with them. I think that's certainly a play that should be strongly considered, because then it resonates with your clients that you co-authored a book with the CPA and it resonates with the CPA's clients that they co-authored a book with you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to talk about our program in terms of how we help financial advisors and CPAs write and publish a book, and so I'm just going to walk everyone through what that looks like, and as I'm doing so, anton, feel free to add any commentary that you think is appropriate. It's called the Short Book Formula Author Program. The key point that I like to make to people is that the Short Book Formula Program difference it's not about creating a book to sell. It's about creating a book that sells you even if you're not a writer and would you expand upon that at all in terms of just your own experience in terms of that? It's not about a book to sell. It's about creating a book that sells you even if you're not a writer.
Speaker 2:I had two conversations that I think highlight this that people don't necessarily understand that. One was a buddy of mine who, when the book came out and he saw it on social media, he's like how much money do you think you'll make a year off that book? And I was like when you say that, are you talking about royalties from Amazon? He's like, oh yeah, I don't know. Like literally, it's not the purpose, it won't even be measurable. I don't have any anticipation. It might make some few thousand bucks or something, but that's not the goal of the book. The goal is to further reinforce master of a topic, thought leadership and obviously create a communication piece that exposes more people to your message. So if you're asking how much money I'll make off that part of the book, it should be millions. What the book sells will be.
Speaker 1:I have good news for you. The order replaced the 25 books we sent to John Cutton, I think, made you roughly $100 in royalties, so congratulations.
Speaker 2:All right. And then actually just two days ago I was talking to my mom and she's like when I was a young professor, I published a book and I think your dad and I made $73 over the next few years. So if you can beat $73, then like you beat the family record or something and I was like that's cute, I'm not doing it for the $73.
Speaker 1:My first book and this is what got me to make this kind of the cornerstone of what I do for myself as well as my clients is my first book made me over a million dollars and I can tell you it was not the royalties, it was all the opportunities that it opened up as a result. I know we're a little bit limited on time, but maybe just in a minute or two. The point that, even if you're not a writer, from that perspective, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:I shared this with people in the past. I attempted to write a book when I was 27. I spent so much time actually writing and creating and interviewing people for stories and all of this, and it turned out to be a terrible experience because by the very end of it, the publisher changed what they said originally on how it would be listed and whether I'd be a contributing author, I think. At least at the time it wasn't recognized by Amazon and Barnes, noble and such, so I was pretty burnt out on the idea of writing a book. I didn't anticipate ever doing that again.
Speaker 2:John Cutton originally introduced you to me, paul.
Speaker 2:Then I watched one of your videos or presentations and you talked about essentially the way you use technology and you schedule. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here, but you schedule meetings on Zoom and you record the meetings and essentially it's an interview and so I'm talking and then you're taking that and you're using technology and AI to formulate essentially the like 90% of the book based on a series of six one hour conversations, and I'm like, oh, that's what it is. You just wanted me to talk. If you want me to tell stories, you want to ask me questions, get on Zoom for an hour, like for one hour, or six weeks in a row, like no problem, that's easy. And then typically I think then you have a draft that comes back and you look and work and refine and make sure you're comfortable. But yeah, it was such a different writing experience that I don't think I would ever do another book the way I first tried to do that one. I don't think and I know I will do now multiple books with you moving forward.
Speaker 1:Just to be clear, we use AI as an editing tool, but what we're not doing is going to chat to PT and saying, write me a book about the virtual family office and say, hey, I just wrote a book about the virtual family office. The key difference that Anton just articulated is that it's 100% what you tell us, it's the stories. If you can talk and you have a story and you have a point of view, that's where the magic happens is that we capture it. We have a human writer, slash editor that spends anywhere from 20 to 40 hours in the background taking all of that and using tools like AI to massage it and make sure it comes out really good. And we also send it to our client and want them to review it, make sure it's in their voice and it hits the points that are important to them.
Speaker 1:I know in your case, I think you had multiple people going through it, giving feedback, editing, et cetera, just as part of the process, but the end product is your book. I don't know that anyone would know that AI as part of the process, but the end product is your book. I don't know that anyone would know that AI is part of the process, even though that's one of the things that we do behind the scenes to help facilitate the process. And so, just to wrap up and again I want to finish on time, I'm just going to get into what our programs are.
Speaker 1:And so we have now three, anton, you forced us to create a third level and of course we're calling it Elite, right, and I've already got some people signing up for Elite, and so you're starting to set a trend for us. This is on this website. I'll probably follow up with an email's a few but one of the key things is the word count, and so standard is $8,000, $12,000. Premium, which my own book the short book formula is an example of, is $12,000 to $15,000. And then elite is for the person that wants to expand a little bit more, such as Anton's book. So his book, I believe, is literally 25,063 words, and so Anton's book is a version of Elite.
Speaker 1:My book is a version of Premium, so you get a sense of how much content and the look and feel of the book there, and so I would encourage you, if you're considering doing this, reach out to me. You can either email me at paul at moreclientsmorefuncom, or you can schedulea call with me. Click on that link and you get on my calendar and ideally that's what I prefer because I want to. Typically it's a 15 to 30 minute call. You get to know me a little bit better and we determine okay, is this a good fit? We have a rapidly growing number of people in the ERT community starting to work with us in addition to the ones we've already been working with, and we're excited for that. We're very excited to be working with Anton on his first book and looking to do multiple books with him. Anton, in the final two minutes I'll give you any closing comments that you have for this webinar.
Speaker 2:It's probably what I touched on earlier, without preparing at all that language. It's probably what I touched on earlier, without preparing at all that language. But it's just the investment compared in the investment of time and the investment of capital are both so small compared to the benefit received. I think it really is a outweighed or it's not an even ratio from my perspective benefit of doing it. And if you can do it on the back of your other efforts, then you create that flywheel or that ecosystem. So doing the book in conjunction with the model, leveraging the unique language, using it to build your credibility with CPAs, using it to more effectively communicate with CPAs clients, a little bit of creativity goes a long way. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Anton, for taking the time out of your vacation more effectively. Communicate with CPA's clients. A little bit of creativity goes a long way. Thank you, Anton, for taking the time out of your vacation. I really appreciate it. I'll let you get back to your vacation.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. I got sandy toes that are from the beach, so I think I'll head right back. Thank you so much, Paul, for all your help with this. Absolutely could not have done it without you and I look forward to seeing everybody in the community soon.