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Ep143: Being a Trusted Partner with John Iannucci
Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with John Iannucci, a lawyer turned private wealth manager with offices in Pennsylvania and Florida, about his book The Peace of Mind Retirement Planner.
Originally known as a trusted legal partner, John shares how his early relationships led to the initial, unexpected success in the financial services world, and as his approach resonated with clients, referrals started flooding in. This approach eventually led to his book aimed at helping successful business owners transition their businesses.
John's experience with his business and how his book has become invaluable in following up with high-value leads is fascinating, and again, there is a lot to take away from this conversation.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
LINKS
John Iannucci
ILG Private Wealth - WeCanHelpYou.com
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/143
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart Bell
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today, great friend, join us, john Iannucci. John, how are you doing?
John Iannucci
Very well, Stuart. How are you doing today?
Stuart Bell
Really good. Thank you. I'm actually just back from a vacation, so it should be a Nice, a relaxed point. Let's start by sharing. This is going to be a slightly different one, in the sense that I usually talk to people who I've maybe interacted with from the book process, but I don't necessarily know personally. As such we've met before we know each other a little bit more, and in trying to bring too much assumed knowledge to the call and bring all the listeners along for the journey, so why don't we start with a bit of background about what you and the firm do, and then we'll jump off from now?
John Iannucci
Sure so, Stuart. I've been a practicing tax attorney, a state planning and business accession planning lawyer, for the last 37 years, but about 18 years ago my career really took a big left turn. I was practicing law and I was doing state planning and business accession planning for very successful families around the United States. I was working, primarily licensed, in Pennsylvania and Florida, and I had a client come to me to review a particular life insurance strategy as part of his overall state plan. And when I reviewed that plan, I didn't particularly like it. I didn't like the way it was designed. I was creating a trust to hold a life insurance policy, but this policy had some special features that I wanted to dig into and get to know a bit and ultimately, over a period of months, I revised the way that strategy was structured and my client closed on that life insurance policy and right after that, the insurance company that issued the policy reached out to me and asked if I had any interest in receiving referrals and, as every lawyer would love to have, I thought, sure, I'm licensed in Pennsylvania and Florida, I'd love to receive referrals, and they explained to me that they weren't so interested in me acting as a lawyer, as they were interested in me getting involved in financial services, initially in life insurance, and so I thought about it and after about 30 days I got my life insurance license and floodgates opened up.
I was getting referrals from life insurance companies, brokerages, life insurance agents who had stumbled upon a very significant case that they were having difficulty with, and so I was getting all these different strategies life insurance strategies referred to me to review, structure and help present typically to a client's sophisticated team of advisors. During that process, as I got to know those clients and I was doing this literally nationwide I would have clients invariably ask me if I would be interested in managing their investments as well. They got to know me, they got to understand my philosophy about investments and the financial services and the state planning, business accession planning, and I didn't know if I could do that or not. I wasn't interested in having a relationship with a broker dealer and being kind of controlled and constrained in which financial products I could recommend. And then, through a friend, I learned that I could create an independent registered investment advisory firm, which is what I did. I created ILG Private Wealth and again the floodgates opened up. I had so many clients and referrals from clients and other relationships that I had established over the years, that we started doing comprehensive, integrated financial planning for our clients.
And we quickly realized, Stuart, that in our opinion, the financial services industry was broken, that there was a lot of intentional confusion, we thought, being created by various banks and broker dealers who were trying to describe who was a fiduciary and who was not and what that meant. And, as you know, the industry got so wild that the Department of Labor suddenly decided it had to interject itself into that whole process to describe what we had to do as financial advisors, that what was considered to be in the best interest of clients, which was just astounding to me. At that time. I thought every financial advisor, just like every lawyer, should be operating under the fiduciary standard and doing exactly what was in the best interest of the client. So I didn't realize that there was all this argument and dissension and argument going on about who is and who isn't a fiduciary. But we realized that into the business was sadly broken and as a result of that, we formed a multifamily office that literally helps our clients with everything that touches their financial lives.
Stuart Bell
Now, let's say, interesting pivot from a almost coincidentally stumbling into a whole successful separate stream, as opposed to many people who are kind of intentionally trying to go into or dominate market Successfully had in the early days. How much of it was a combination of timing, of what you were doing was something different of the legacy of the relationships that you brought to it, versus kind of your approach not coming to it from the financial services with all the baggage that comes with it but almost going over the complete footage. Sherry, you think of it?
John Iannucci
That's a great question. I would say that you know, a very significant percentage of my early success was a result of the trust that I had earned and the relationships I developed over practicing law in Pennsylvania and Florida. So I had a number of clients and associates and friends who trusted me and knew they could trust me with their clients and with their friends and family. And so in the early days a very substantial portion of my success was the result of kind of that legacy of our standards, our fiduciary standard and dealing with clients. And then I think what happened was clients actually realized that we had a new paradigm when it came to overall management of investments. We integrated this thought process of asset protection planning being the core of everything we do. You know, we emphasize the fact that, first and foremost, with all of our successful families, we want to make certain that their assets are protected. We don't want them to lose what they worked so hard to earn over those years. And then obviously part of asset protection planning is to protect their assets against inflation and higher interest rates and those things. So we have to manage their investments in a way to outpace inflation and outpace interest rate hikes and so on, so that they don't lose money just by hoarding cash under their bed. Right, you have to be a good steward to those investments and manage them in a way to grow and continue to grow.
But, as a tax attorney, the other layer that we were able to put on was the importance of an active annual tax management strategy or program.
When you look at the statements of many broker dealers, for instance, you'll notice on the back of the statement it comes right out and says we do not provide you with tax advice. Well, oddly enough, finra, the organization that's tasked with governing broker dealers and the securities industry, says the biggest risk to retirement today is not market volatility, it's taxed. And so the largest wealth managers in the world can't provide their clients with any tax advice. It's on their statements. They tell you in writing that they can't do that. But as a tax attorney and an independent registered investment advisory firm, we provide tax advice to our clients as an integral portion of what we do for them on an annual basis. And so, as people realized that we were doing that in such a comprehensive fashion, we started to get referrals from clients who were happy with what we were doing, as well as other advisors who realized we were really creating a true multifamily office in that new paradigm of overall asset protection planning as the core of their wealth and estate plan.
Stuart Bell
It's interesting thinking about always kind of comes to these shows, thinking about how to A share kind of your story with people but B how to give people something that they can use and take away, being more comprehensive and not just shutting the things that traditional advisors don't deal with under the kind of the jail of jail free card of well, I'd love to, but the boss says that I can't type thing. We've spoken a little bit in the past about this idea of working and collecting together with other organizations On this successor. You guys have had been able to deliver that in-house. I have actually used to suggest that other people who don't have that skill look externally and try and bring it in under like a holistic banner of working partnership, rather than just sending it away, trying to bring for the issues Right.
John Iannucci
The difficult part there, Stuart, is the fact that typically advisors whether they be a CPA or a lawyer, an estate planning lawyer, a wealth manager typically what happens is they get so entrenched in their very narrow silo of what it is they do that there's very little interaction between those trusted advisors and so, as a result, everybody's kind of working in their individual lane without understanding and anticipating how what they do impacts everybody else. We regularly describe to our clients the fact that when you go to a physician and you get a medication, the first thing they should be asking you is what other medication are you taking? There's no perfect medication, there's no perfect answer, and every medication has a tendency to interact and have side effects caused by that interaction between two drugs. It's the same thing when it comes to having kind of disparate, broken, segmented advisors that are working within their lanes and not understanding how their individual services interact with one another. So oftentimes when we work with a new client, they already have an established CPA firm. That's wonderful, they have a great legal team, but they don't have a confidant that's sitting next to them helping manage that team to all pull in the same direction and not interpreting, if you understand what that team is doing.
I have very successful clients come to us with a stack of documents that says this is my state plan or my business succession plan. I don't have the faintest idea what it says. Can you help me understand what it is those documents do and what I can expect if I pass or my wife passes or if I sell my business? So they don't have that confidant to sit next to and kind of manage the team and interpret what that team is doing? And thank God thank God because my years have experienced, I've been blessed with the opportunity to interact with those people on a regular basis. So quite regularly I become that confidant, that trusted person that really manages the rest of the team and interprets what's going on to make sure that you know the boss is always in charge and understands what's happening and they're all pulling in the direction he or she has set.
Stuart Bell
It's the medical analysis, an interesting one because it's almost the same. In that scenario you almost need that confidant to be able to take in, or the medical advice again, because even in a scenario where you think he was much more holistically or joined together looking at the patient outcome, you see those siloed go to the specialist, wait for those people while they're dancing. So it's an analogy I think that will resonate with a lot of people.
John Iannucci
Right, you know, Stuart, it's funny that you bring that up because hospitals have actually created a position for a physician that manages the work of all the individual specialists, and I think some hospitals call them physiatrists, and really that's how we describe our practice. You know, we do what we do very well, but we understand that for our clients, we also have to manage what everybody else on his team or her team are doing, to make sure, again, that it's integrated and all working in a coordinated fashion.
Stuart Bell
Yeah, do you ever run into an issue where, ideally, if you could take over, take control of someone's situation and say leave it with me, just do exactly what I say for five years and we'll be in a good position down the road? But then it runs up against some of the resistance of what people bring to it. How much of a challenge is it, even quite a unique position in having such a broad sphere of influence. So how much of a challenge is it bringing people along with our journey and saying, no, we've got this and here's some guidance to follow through, versus the pushback of I'm used to this traditional model and I've got someone over here doing that.
John Iannucci
Right, you know, Stuart, it's really kind of a gradual process as they get to know us. When clients come to us and they say to me, I have somebody yet and they name a big broker dealer and I say, well, that's great, I mean, they're a wonderful broker dealer. What can I help you with? And they come to me because they feel like something's missing, something that they expect to get from a financial advisor or a state planning lawyer or a business succession team. Something they're expecting to get is missing. They know it's missing, but they can't really identify what it is. So they almost have this fear of missing out. Is there some secret that I don't know about that I should be incorporating in my planning process, right? And so they come to me with it with those kinds of questions, but a fair amount of skepticism, because most of those families are very successful and so they have alpha personalities. You can't tell them what to do.
It's really a process of educating them on the pluses and minuses of various strategies and helping them come to a conclusion about which strategy is right for them and their family, and then also convincing them of the importance of integrating their family into that process at some point as well, because all the best intentions of the world sometimes go completely sideways when a matriarch or patriarch passes, dies, and they never had a conversation with their family members about why they're doing what they're doing, and so we try to help them understand that we're going to educate them as part of the process.
We're certainly going to give them advice, because that's what they pay us for, but we make certain never to be in a position of kind of demanding they do certain things or strong arming them into doing certain things, because typically with those personalities they run away. They want to be in charge, they want to make their own decisions, and so ours is one of really kind of gently guiding them down the path they choose, after we've had the opportunity to really educate them on all the different options that they have.
Stuart Bell
That journey of kind of no-liking trust coming back and getting. A lot of the business, as you said, either comes from referrals from other people or referrals from existing clients, particularly now. Right, this was so long, so I think the door with a friendly recommendation makes that general a little bit smoother. But because the breadth of the region is so wide, I guess it is easy to take one step at a time and gradually bring people free. As always, going into a podcast like this, there's some questions in my mind and kind of leading the conversation back towards the book conversation. So this idea of educating and bringing people to a new way of thinking and helping them understand rather than just strong arming them into a set of things that they have to do, kind of changing the ties nicely to the book and the idea of why create that and what went into it. So share a little bit about the book, I guess what your early thoughts were. Go through kind of chronologically what the early thoughts were around creating it.
John Iannucci
Well, in my experience in private practice as a lawyer, what I realized, when I unfortunately had the experience to observe, was the number of very successful, closely held family businesses that, candidly, were destroyed by bad decisions about the transition, ultimately, of the business. And so I realized that it was vitally important, I felt, for successful business owners to understand at some level all the different options they have when it comes to transitioning their business. But I also wanted them to understand that, whether they cooperate in that transition or not, it's going to happen someday.
And so I thought it was very important for them to understand that you're better off steering that ship than being dragged behind it, even if you put your head in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen, there are several ways in which that transition will happen without your cooperation, death and disability being two of the big ones. You're suddenly disabled and can't run the company anymore, and suddenly that team isn't prepared, your team isn't prepared. So I really wanted to explain. Given the fact that there are literally tens of trillions of dollars in family-owned businesses transitioning over the next five to ten years, I thought it was critically important for them to understand hey look, I have options and I should be putting together a plan. Even if I don't want to transition my ownership of the business now or even in the foreseeable future. It's critically important to operate the business in a fashion that maximizes the value of that business in the marketplace. Right, because it's some point. Your business will either go to an executive team or family members or, ultimately, the market, and regardless of which direction it goes, operating your business in that paradigm to maximize the value to a third party is the best way to operate your business going forward, and there are very specific things that the market looks for to increase the value of your business, and so I wanted to highlight those I will tell you.
There was one other really important fact I wanted to talk to people about in this book and give them a you know, a quick 50,000 foot view. So many clients who have children, where one is in the business and two are outside the business, think that to make their estate plan fair between their children, they have to divide their business up equally between those or among those children. And when you have that dynamic, when you set up that dynamic as a part of your estate plan, you're creating an habit. You'll have one child running the business, making compensation out of the business, and you might have two children who are on the outside as passive shareholders, looking for dividend distributions, looking for their interest to be liquidated or bought out by their sibling.
You're creating a very bad dynamic between your children when you pass. And so I went to some limit to talk to people in the book, and I do in person, about the fact that fair isn't always equal. Giving one child a business that's worth 20 million dollars isn't necessarily worth 20 million dollars if that child can't turn around immediately and sell it for 20 million dollars. They have to work in that business, and so I like to develop strategies that minimize the opportunity for that acrimony between children when you pass with a successful business. In my view, that's the number one killer of businesses in the second and third generation for successful business owners when they try to distribute it equally among their children and some of those children aren't in the business.
Stuart Bell
That as a conversation starts. I mean, one of the taglines that we use all the time is the book's not the product, the conversation is the product, the reason that we're trying to do it, but that as a conversation starts, based on the wealth of experience you've got. I imagine that for the majority of people that's not their expectation. They're thinking of the equal is fair paradigm and just helping structure it. So it's as simple as possible. That conversation is quite an eye-opener for people as you start getting deeper and deeper into it and almost the way of resolving the problem. It's easy to think about oh, cut something into thirds. It's like the parable of cutting a baby in half and so on. It's like that because it's such an easy way of thinking that I have to distribute things evenly.
The solution not to do that almost seems more complicated in the short term but then obviously more beneficial in the long term. It was interesting. It was a point that I'd never particularly thought about. One of the things that you mentioned that has come up before, though, with other clients that we've worked with, is this idea of transferring problems coming up at the point that the succession plan is implemented, so the person passes away. The next generation are potentially fighting over the remains, and because the desires have been communicated very well, the problem then hits at that point. We've worked with some management firms in the past to write books where the client will write the book as a story of their life.
John Iannucci
Absolutely.
Stuart Bell
Almost using it for the purpose of starting the conversation with the kids. Hey, we've been doing this work. Here's the story of the background. You want to know all these details. And using it at the point because people find it difficult just having those conversations in a friendly family environment, let alone where there's some inconvenience there already.
John Iannucci
You're spot on there, Stuart. I think that's a fabulous idea as an icebreaker, as a way to begin that conversation, because when you first suggest to a client who's successful that they start having what we call family governance meetings to have this conversation about why you're doing what you're doing and what you're thinking about, and kind of preparing people for that day, there's a lot of resistance to that. It's amazing how many spouses and children have no idea what the patriarch or matriarchs are estate plan is or even why they're dividing up their estate the way they are. And you know, once I'm able to convince them gradually, slowly, that we should be having these conversations and explaining and getting input from the family and how much that will work to save that family after that patriarch or matriarch's passing, we finally get them to that point. But I think, like you said, writing a book like that to begin that conversation about their life, their business, what they're thinking wow, what a great starter. Yeah.
Stuart Bell
It's the idea of the book being the conversation starts and not the product. It opens up so many doors. I think so many business owners are thinking about the book in a traditional sense of writing and it will help me become famous and then people will come knocking on my door. I mean the last probably pretty slim. It's difficult enough for best-selling authors to let loan professional business owners that have got the project into the gas.
But the idea of using that as a jumping off point when you were thinking about creating the book, your book that we're talking about, the piece of mind, retirements mind, retirement planner yes, I'm still in a whole day mode, my tongue isn't working quite as my head. So when you're thinking about writing that, there's two schools of thought when we're working with people, one is using it as a lead generation tool, so very much at the top of the funnel and introducing new people. And then the second one is as more of a conversion tool, and that conversion tool might be for warm introduction, so referral. So it's still a degree, but it's when that first no one knows me to someone who's aware of me either side of that fence. So do you see it more on one side of the fence or another more, introducing very cold people and using it in a lead generation sense? Or is a lead conversion tool? Someone's already knocked on the door and this is part of their education towards your way of thinking.
John Iannucci
Well, you know it's interesting. My experience is that with this book, what I was intending originally was I thought this would be kind of a cool piece that I could hand out, and you know, it would almost be like another business card to explain what I do and what I think and so on, to introduce people to my process and my thought process. But what's happened is that as I meet people in networking kind of or social circumstances and I see that they've got a very successful family business, I use it as a follow up where I say, hey, look, I've got something I think you might be interested in. I'd love to send you a little book that I wrote about, you know, succession planning for the successful business owner. Can I drop it in the mail for you? And it's amazing that favorable response I get. And if I add a little note inside with my cell phone number on it, it's incredible how many times I get a phone call from that person or from somebody that person spoke to saying, hey, I'd like to follow up, I'd like to learn a little bit more about what you described in your book.
And so it's been an excellent way to follow up with people I meet. It's not aggressive or offensive to them. It's actually educational. They appreciate it. They actually dropped me a note saying, wow, this is a great little read. It opened my eyes to the different options that I have available. I didn't realize I had so many options. So to me it's that great follow up after an initial interaction with somebody that I'd really like to get to know and see if we're appropriate for each other, see if it makes sense for us to consider working together, and that's how I use it. I don't think I intended to use it in that fashion before, but I can tell you that's worked out extremely well for me now as a follow up after that initial engagement.
Stuart Bell
The businesses where, like you and I well, we're actually meeting people you more than me, in fact. We're meeting people and having that human interaction. The disarming element of giving something first, that kind of leading of the content. All marketing could be good or evil depending on your intention, so it's a similar role on the good side, but to be able to give something that's disarming.
I'm such a huge fan of writing a personal note and folding a page over and not only giving something to begin with, but you've put the intentionality and the thought and the personal connection to make it individual for them. It's no one who else does that. Everyone else out there is thinking in terms of adds huge volume in. If people don't convert within a day, then they were deadly, move on to the next. But hold brain and jealousy which, for if you're selling widgets on Amazon, then that might be a valid strategy.
But for us, where we're dealing with individual people, there's lifetime value, there's relationships. It really serves to bridge the gap and start to make a connection With the content. Sometimes people have a almost a scarcity mentality of I don't want to put too much in there because it will give the game away, which obviously is the opposite of the truth. So not so much when we're giving too much away, but in terms of the breadth of what to include, because obviously, with what you're doing and the varying individuals, I imagine that you could have been still writing at 500 pages and still have enough information in that. So what was the thought process around? Okay, what makes sense to include and what makes sense to it.
John Iannucci
Yeah, see, for us, I think, as we were going through that process to determine how expansive we were in this book, what we really wanted to get across to our potential prospects and friends and potential clients, we wanted to make sure that we touched certain pain points that we knew they had. We knew they had certain things because of our experience that would wake them up at 2 am and cause them to have that racing you know the racing thoughts and what we wanted to do was make certain they understood from the book that first we understood what they were going through. We understood those problems and we understand them in great detail, that we've addressed those issues before to our client's satisfaction and that you know there is help. And so we wanted to provide them with enough education to help them understand that there is somebody out there that understands my issues, that has addressed my issues successfully in the past and that I could speak to right, that is willing to help me and talk to me about. Okay, we understand this is how we would see you addressing those issues, so that you have that kind of sleep through the night confidence, right. So we decided we wanted to give enough of the information away that they realized we knew what we were talking about and we knew their pain points and that we get address those pain points because ultimately, you know, writing a book at 500 pages for a client who's addressing these kinds of issues, they're not even going to finish the book because it would be so technical, right? You know they realize that they have to engage a team.
You know, I love the book that our buddy inspired. You know who, not how. You know, dean Jackson being the inspiration behind that book I always talk to my clients about. You know, when you're a successful businessman, it doesn't mean you can be successful in everything, businessperson in everything. You can't become a lawyer overnight. You can't become a tax secretary overnight. What you've got to become an expert at is determining who can help you, not how you can do it. This isn't a DIY project, right.
And so you know, I reference that book all the time because, to me, that was a real game changer for me, not only for how I present my business and what I do, but for how I think myself. Right, could I have sat down and tried to hire a publisher and do all these things to write this book? Sure, and do it myself? Sure. But what I learned in working with you and your team, working with Dean, was this is a who, not how. This is.
You guys made this process so enjoyable and easy that I didn't mind dedicating the resources in the time to it, because it was almost an interview process with me, right, and it helped me get the information out there quickly better done than thinking about it next week, right, or next year, or I should have done it two years later. But you know your team was that who for me, or that's right, that who for me, and I try to explain to my clients as well when they're thinking about all these complicated strategies. It's not how do I address this, it's who, what team can address this for me in a manner that I can manage and be comfortable with right?
Stuart Bell
The speed of gain it done. I mean, for the scope of what we do is relatively straightforward. I mean, walk isn't implementing a wealth management plan, it's got a divine work. But even the speed of gain it done and the learnings that we've gone through over a thousand times now right, more clients even more so I mean there's just no way it's practical for people to do it themselves. All the other sets of struggling through and trying to find all the individual players right, the book that starts the conversation, that introduces the idea, that gives them the certainty that there is an answer. The next question is then just are you the right people to execute the conversation that moves on? The book is the conversion tool in the sense of no one's going to sign on the dotted line just based on your book or anyone's book. But it is that start in the conversation, that analogy of kind of the lost knowledge of doing it yourself. When I was in the UK I imported a little Japanese sports car from Japan and a friend had done it a few times before. So I thought that sounds like a good idea, I'll admit it, and it must have taken months of just reminding one of the things that have to pass a test like inspection in the country and one of the things that it failed on five different occasions. It fails for different times. One of them was because the fog light was two inches far that way. So knowledge, now I know I'm never in the UK anymore, so I'm not going to import another sports car, but all of that headache, it's not the I could move, I could put it in different places. It's not that I can't do it, like you said. It's not that you can't write the book itself, it's just the efficient piece of time and to be able to create something that starts the conversation and helps people make the phone ring in a way that they're not so much predisposed, but at least there's a jump in up point for the conversation. It's really powerful.
I think what I like particularly about the book that you wrote is this friendly, friendly but authoritative. I guess is mainly or friendly but knowledgeable, maybe more than authoritative. So you brought to it. It is a broad subject, it is a complicated subject. There's the underlying, without necessarily explicitly saying it. There's an understanding written into it that this is a broad and complicated and varying. It's a very personalized service for each person. But we've got this and, as you said, we understand it. So it's something that I like about the way that we do the processing terms of interviewing people and trying to keep their language and their cadence and tone of voice, because it does Again, the book isn't designed to be. The book isn't the product, it's not a story that's romantically perfect and it's going to win some awards for literature. It's people, to who you are and your approach and that personal element comes through. I was asked people do you get that feedback as a explicitly or kind of inferred from people? That is more of a personal connection than academic piece.
John Iannucci
Absolutely. Yeah, I do get that feedback and I think that when you give something of value like a book as a part of the process of getting to know people, and that that book touches on subjects that are very personal to them, very troubling to them at times, I think what you find is that it establishes almost immediately a certain level of trust. This guy's like me, this person is like me, this person understands me, and there's a certain level of trust that you get. Now you've got to earn a lot more and you've got to demonstrate a lot more expertise, but it's that personal relationship and a book like this, I think, helps introduce that personal relationship and engender that personal relationship and, at the end of the day, it's all about personal relationships.
We tell clients that managing investments today is a commodity Managing your stocks and your bonds. If you have somebody who's a true fiduciary and is doing it at a fair fee, the results you're going to get over a 10-year period or plus or minus in, you know, in the irrelevant amount. What's really important is all these other ancillary services that are so important to you and your family in the growth and protection and transition of your wealth that you know that's kind of what we're getting across. That's the information we're getting across to people, and this relationship, my relationships with my clients are really based upon personal relationships and personal trust that we will lead no rock unturned to help them discover the answer to their issue Right, and this book helps us start that process.
Stuart Bell
I think it's a whole other series of podcasts afterwards, but in 2023, as we recorded this middle of 2023, this was really the year that AI hit mainstream in terms of availability and kind of passing that threshold of usefulness to the average person.
But, business owners across the board, the next five years are going to be game changing, because so much of the, so much of the nuts and bolts of the work is going to be commoditized. What isn't going to be commoditized, though, is that relationship and the trust that you, as a business owner, can build with someone so many people think of. I just want to get AI to build a book for me, and council is completely thinking about it. There's going to be a thousand other people that do that, but if you can create a process that gets your personal connection across your methodology, then mirrors the language that you use and the terms in which you talk, and then, with AI, by all means to amplify and leverage it and distribute it much further than you could have done two years ago. But, yeah, I think in the next few years, just to identify the relationships are going to be so much more key, because so much more than nuts and bolts will be commoditized.
John Iannucci
That's right. That's right. So much is being commoditized in every industry, including financial services. It's that relationship, ultimately, that will win the day. You know, I get amazed by the kinds of things my clients call me for, and what help. It has nothing to do with managing their investments. It's because I'm a confidant with respect to their business and their investments that I turn into a confidant and everything. And one of my clients likes to jokingly refer to me as Ray Dunovan. If you've seen that show on HBO, he was called the Fixer, and so my clients think of me as the Fixer. Whenever they have an issue, whether it's in relationship to their investments, their state plan or business succession plan, whatever it is, I get the first phone call.
Stuart Bell
So I'm the Fixer, I'm the financial Fixer Kind of pixely out of your face. These podcasts always go fast. Before we start recording I usually say to people we'll go for 30 minutes and then see how it goes. And we're at four already. So I see for a appreciate the time. I know that everyone listening is going to get a lot out of this. I want to make sure that people have got access to you and find out more. So where's a good place for people to go to learn more about?
John Iannucci
it. So we're really lucky. We have a great URL. It's we can help you, spelled out wecanhelpyou.com. If they go to wecanhelpyoucom, it refers them right over to our website. They can get a copy, by the way, of our book Happily to send them an autographed copy, and we'd love to talk to them about anything that's keeping them up at night, but that's the easiest way to get us. We can help youcom.
Stuart Bell
Fantastic. Well, we'll make sure we put links in the show notes so I'm sure people could remember anyway but podcast players there'll be a link in there or looking on the website the crossover of our clients, just the nature of what we do in our relationships. We've got a lot of people in the services space and they'll see business owners you send us directly. If they're thinking about wealth and succession plan, it's a no brainer to go and check out Other people who are in a similar space. Does it make sense for those guys if they've got clients that could be a good fit for you to reach out?
John Iannucci
Absolutely. We partner with other professionals all the time and so, whether they happen to be in the financial services business or they're a lawyer or CPA or whatever, we partner with other sophisticated, trusted advisors all the time, so we're happy to speak to any of them about anything we do, and you know we're built to serve, so we're here to help any way we can and look forward to any questions.
Stuart Bell
Fantastic. Well, thanks again. So much for your time, john. Always a pleasure speaking with you. I know we get a chance to talk about podcasts Everyone listening to. Highly recommend checking out the website. Like I said, we'll put a link in the show notes for you, and thanks for listening. We'll catch you in the next one.
John Iannucci
Thanks so much, Stuart.
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By 90-Minute Books
5
11 ratings
Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with John Iannucci, a lawyer turned private wealth manager with offices in Pennsylvania and Florida, about his book The Peace of Mind Retirement Planner.
Originally known as a trusted legal partner, John shares how his early relationships led to the initial, unexpected success in the financial services world, and as his approach resonated with clients, referrals started flooding in. This approach eventually led to his book aimed at helping successful business owners transition their businesses.
John's experience with his business and how his book has become invaluable in following up with high-value leads is fascinating, and again, there is a lot to take away from this conversation.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
LINKS
John Iannucci
ILG Private Wealth - WeCanHelpYou.com
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/143
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Titles & Outline Workshops: 90MinuteBooks.com/Workshops
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Questions/Feedback: Send us an email
Extra Credit Listening: MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart Bell
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today, great friend, join us, john Iannucci. John, how are you doing?
John Iannucci
Very well, Stuart. How are you doing today?
Stuart Bell
Really good. Thank you. I'm actually just back from a vacation, so it should be a Nice, a relaxed point. Let's start by sharing. This is going to be a slightly different one, in the sense that I usually talk to people who I've maybe interacted with from the book process, but I don't necessarily know personally. As such we've met before we know each other a little bit more, and in trying to bring too much assumed knowledge to the call and bring all the listeners along for the journey, so why don't we start with a bit of background about what you and the firm do, and then we'll jump off from now?
John Iannucci
Sure so, Stuart. I've been a practicing tax attorney, a state planning and business accession planning lawyer, for the last 37 years, but about 18 years ago my career really took a big left turn. I was practicing law and I was doing state planning and business accession planning for very successful families around the United States. I was working, primarily licensed, in Pennsylvania and Florida, and I had a client come to me to review a particular life insurance strategy as part of his overall state plan. And when I reviewed that plan, I didn't particularly like it. I didn't like the way it was designed. I was creating a trust to hold a life insurance policy, but this policy had some special features that I wanted to dig into and get to know a bit and ultimately, over a period of months, I revised the way that strategy was structured and my client closed on that life insurance policy and right after that, the insurance company that issued the policy reached out to me and asked if I had any interest in receiving referrals and, as every lawyer would love to have, I thought, sure, I'm licensed in Pennsylvania and Florida, I'd love to receive referrals, and they explained to me that they weren't so interested in me acting as a lawyer, as they were interested in me getting involved in financial services, initially in life insurance, and so I thought about it and after about 30 days I got my life insurance license and floodgates opened up.
I was getting referrals from life insurance companies, brokerages, life insurance agents who had stumbled upon a very significant case that they were having difficulty with, and so I was getting all these different strategies life insurance strategies referred to me to review, structure and help present typically to a client's sophisticated team of advisors. During that process, as I got to know those clients and I was doing this literally nationwide I would have clients invariably ask me if I would be interested in managing their investments as well. They got to know me, they got to understand my philosophy about investments and the financial services and the state planning, business accession planning, and I didn't know if I could do that or not. I wasn't interested in having a relationship with a broker dealer and being kind of controlled and constrained in which financial products I could recommend. And then, through a friend, I learned that I could create an independent registered investment advisory firm, which is what I did. I created ILG Private Wealth and again the floodgates opened up. I had so many clients and referrals from clients and other relationships that I had established over the years, that we started doing comprehensive, integrated financial planning for our clients.
And we quickly realized, Stuart, that in our opinion, the financial services industry was broken, that there was a lot of intentional confusion, we thought, being created by various banks and broker dealers who were trying to describe who was a fiduciary and who was not and what that meant. And, as you know, the industry got so wild that the Department of Labor suddenly decided it had to interject itself into that whole process to describe what we had to do as financial advisors, that what was considered to be in the best interest of clients, which was just astounding to me. At that time. I thought every financial advisor, just like every lawyer, should be operating under the fiduciary standard and doing exactly what was in the best interest of the client. So I didn't realize that there was all this argument and dissension and argument going on about who is and who isn't a fiduciary. But we realized that into the business was sadly broken and as a result of that, we formed a multifamily office that literally helps our clients with everything that touches their financial lives.
Stuart Bell
Now, let's say, interesting pivot from a almost coincidentally stumbling into a whole successful separate stream, as opposed to many people who are kind of intentionally trying to go into or dominate market Successfully had in the early days. How much of it was a combination of timing, of what you were doing was something different of the legacy of the relationships that you brought to it, versus kind of your approach not coming to it from the financial services with all the baggage that comes with it but almost going over the complete footage. Sherry, you think of it?
John Iannucci
That's a great question. I would say that you know, a very significant percentage of my early success was a result of the trust that I had earned and the relationships I developed over practicing law in Pennsylvania and Florida. So I had a number of clients and associates and friends who trusted me and knew they could trust me with their clients and with their friends and family. And so in the early days a very substantial portion of my success was the result of kind of that legacy of our standards, our fiduciary standard and dealing with clients. And then I think what happened was clients actually realized that we had a new paradigm when it came to overall management of investments. We integrated this thought process of asset protection planning being the core of everything we do. You know, we emphasize the fact that, first and foremost, with all of our successful families, we want to make certain that their assets are protected. We don't want them to lose what they worked so hard to earn over those years. And then obviously part of asset protection planning is to protect their assets against inflation and higher interest rates and those things. So we have to manage their investments in a way to outpace inflation and outpace interest rate hikes and so on, so that they don't lose money just by hoarding cash under their bed. Right, you have to be a good steward to those investments and manage them in a way to grow and continue to grow.
But, as a tax attorney, the other layer that we were able to put on was the importance of an active annual tax management strategy or program.
When you look at the statements of many broker dealers, for instance, you'll notice on the back of the statement it comes right out and says we do not provide you with tax advice. Well, oddly enough, finra, the organization that's tasked with governing broker dealers and the securities industry, says the biggest risk to retirement today is not market volatility, it's taxed. And so the largest wealth managers in the world can't provide their clients with any tax advice. It's on their statements. They tell you in writing that they can't do that. But as a tax attorney and an independent registered investment advisory firm, we provide tax advice to our clients as an integral portion of what we do for them on an annual basis. And so, as people realized that we were doing that in such a comprehensive fashion, we started to get referrals from clients who were happy with what we were doing, as well as other advisors who realized we were really creating a true multifamily office in that new paradigm of overall asset protection planning as the core of their wealth and estate plan.
Stuart Bell
It's interesting thinking about always kind of comes to these shows, thinking about how to A share kind of your story with people but B how to give people something that they can use and take away, being more comprehensive and not just shutting the things that traditional advisors don't deal with under the kind of the jail of jail free card of well, I'd love to, but the boss says that I can't type thing. We've spoken a little bit in the past about this idea of working and collecting together with other organizations On this successor. You guys have had been able to deliver that in-house. I have actually used to suggest that other people who don't have that skill look externally and try and bring it in under like a holistic banner of working partnership, rather than just sending it away, trying to bring for the issues Right.
John Iannucci
The difficult part there, Stuart, is the fact that typically advisors whether they be a CPA or a lawyer, an estate planning lawyer, a wealth manager typically what happens is they get so entrenched in their very narrow silo of what it is they do that there's very little interaction between those trusted advisors and so, as a result, everybody's kind of working in their individual lane without understanding and anticipating how what they do impacts everybody else. We regularly describe to our clients the fact that when you go to a physician and you get a medication, the first thing they should be asking you is what other medication are you taking? There's no perfect medication, there's no perfect answer, and every medication has a tendency to interact and have side effects caused by that interaction between two drugs. It's the same thing when it comes to having kind of disparate, broken, segmented advisors that are working within their lanes and not understanding how their individual services interact with one another. So oftentimes when we work with a new client, they already have an established CPA firm. That's wonderful, they have a great legal team, but they don't have a confidant that's sitting next to them helping manage that team to all pull in the same direction and not interpreting, if you understand what that team is doing.
I have very successful clients come to us with a stack of documents that says this is my state plan or my business succession plan. I don't have the faintest idea what it says. Can you help me understand what it is those documents do and what I can expect if I pass or my wife passes or if I sell my business? So they don't have that confidant to sit next to and kind of manage the team and interpret what that team is doing? And thank God thank God because my years have experienced, I've been blessed with the opportunity to interact with those people on a regular basis. So quite regularly I become that confidant, that trusted person that really manages the rest of the team and interprets what's going on to make sure that you know the boss is always in charge and understands what's happening and they're all pulling in the direction he or she has set.
Stuart Bell
It's the medical analysis, an interesting one because it's almost the same. In that scenario you almost need that confidant to be able to take in, or the medical advice again, because even in a scenario where you think he was much more holistically or joined together looking at the patient outcome, you see those siloed go to the specialist, wait for those people while they're dancing. So it's an analogy I think that will resonate with a lot of people.
John Iannucci
Right, you know, Stuart, it's funny that you bring that up because hospitals have actually created a position for a physician that manages the work of all the individual specialists, and I think some hospitals call them physiatrists, and really that's how we describe our practice. You know, we do what we do very well, but we understand that for our clients, we also have to manage what everybody else on his team or her team are doing, to make sure, again, that it's integrated and all working in a coordinated fashion.
Stuart Bell
Yeah, do you ever run into an issue where, ideally, if you could take over, take control of someone's situation and say leave it with me, just do exactly what I say for five years and we'll be in a good position down the road? But then it runs up against some of the resistance of what people bring to it. How much of a challenge is it, even quite a unique position in having such a broad sphere of influence. So how much of a challenge is it bringing people along with our journey and saying, no, we've got this and here's some guidance to follow through, versus the pushback of I'm used to this traditional model and I've got someone over here doing that.
John Iannucci
Right, you know, Stuart, it's really kind of a gradual process as they get to know us. When clients come to us and they say to me, I have somebody yet and they name a big broker dealer and I say, well, that's great, I mean, they're a wonderful broker dealer. What can I help you with? And they come to me because they feel like something's missing, something that they expect to get from a financial advisor or a state planning lawyer or a business succession team. Something they're expecting to get is missing. They know it's missing, but they can't really identify what it is. So they almost have this fear of missing out. Is there some secret that I don't know about that I should be incorporating in my planning process, right? And so they come to me with it with those kinds of questions, but a fair amount of skepticism, because most of those families are very successful and so they have alpha personalities. You can't tell them what to do.
It's really a process of educating them on the pluses and minuses of various strategies and helping them come to a conclusion about which strategy is right for them and their family, and then also convincing them of the importance of integrating their family into that process at some point as well, because all the best intentions of the world sometimes go completely sideways when a matriarch or patriarch passes, dies, and they never had a conversation with their family members about why they're doing what they're doing, and so we try to help them understand that we're going to educate them as part of the process.
We're certainly going to give them advice, because that's what they pay us for, but we make certain never to be in a position of kind of demanding they do certain things or strong arming them into doing certain things, because typically with those personalities they run away. They want to be in charge, they want to make their own decisions, and so ours is one of really kind of gently guiding them down the path they choose, after we've had the opportunity to really educate them on all the different options that they have.
Stuart Bell
That journey of kind of no-liking trust coming back and getting. A lot of the business, as you said, either comes from referrals from other people or referrals from existing clients, particularly now. Right, this was so long, so I think the door with a friendly recommendation makes that general a little bit smoother. But because the breadth of the region is so wide, I guess it is easy to take one step at a time and gradually bring people free. As always, going into a podcast like this, there's some questions in my mind and kind of leading the conversation back towards the book conversation. So this idea of educating and bringing people to a new way of thinking and helping them understand rather than just strong arming them into a set of things that they have to do, kind of changing the ties nicely to the book and the idea of why create that and what went into it. So share a little bit about the book, I guess what your early thoughts were. Go through kind of chronologically what the early thoughts were around creating it.
John Iannucci
Well, in my experience in private practice as a lawyer, what I realized, when I unfortunately had the experience to observe, was the number of very successful, closely held family businesses that, candidly, were destroyed by bad decisions about the transition, ultimately, of the business. And so I realized that it was vitally important, I felt, for successful business owners to understand at some level all the different options they have when it comes to transitioning their business. But I also wanted them to understand that, whether they cooperate in that transition or not, it's going to happen someday.
And so I thought it was very important for them to understand that you're better off steering that ship than being dragged behind it, even if you put your head in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen, there are several ways in which that transition will happen without your cooperation, death and disability being two of the big ones. You're suddenly disabled and can't run the company anymore, and suddenly that team isn't prepared, your team isn't prepared. So I really wanted to explain. Given the fact that there are literally tens of trillions of dollars in family-owned businesses transitioning over the next five to ten years, I thought it was critically important for them to understand hey look, I have options and I should be putting together a plan. Even if I don't want to transition my ownership of the business now or even in the foreseeable future. It's critically important to operate the business in a fashion that maximizes the value of that business in the marketplace. Right, because it's some point. Your business will either go to an executive team or family members or, ultimately, the market, and regardless of which direction it goes, operating your business in that paradigm to maximize the value to a third party is the best way to operate your business going forward, and there are very specific things that the market looks for to increase the value of your business, and so I wanted to highlight those I will tell you.
There was one other really important fact I wanted to talk to people about in this book and give them a you know, a quick 50,000 foot view. So many clients who have children, where one is in the business and two are outside the business, think that to make their estate plan fair between their children, they have to divide their business up equally between those or among those children. And when you have that dynamic, when you set up that dynamic as a part of your estate plan, you're creating an habit. You'll have one child running the business, making compensation out of the business, and you might have two children who are on the outside as passive shareholders, looking for dividend distributions, looking for their interest to be liquidated or bought out by their sibling.
You're creating a very bad dynamic between your children when you pass. And so I went to some limit to talk to people in the book, and I do in person, about the fact that fair isn't always equal. Giving one child a business that's worth 20 million dollars isn't necessarily worth 20 million dollars if that child can't turn around immediately and sell it for 20 million dollars. They have to work in that business, and so I like to develop strategies that minimize the opportunity for that acrimony between children when you pass with a successful business. In my view, that's the number one killer of businesses in the second and third generation for successful business owners when they try to distribute it equally among their children and some of those children aren't in the business.
Stuart Bell
That as a conversation starts. I mean, one of the taglines that we use all the time is the book's not the product, the conversation is the product, the reason that we're trying to do it, but that as a conversation starts, based on the wealth of experience you've got. I imagine that for the majority of people that's not their expectation. They're thinking of the equal is fair paradigm and just helping structure it. So it's as simple as possible. That conversation is quite an eye-opener for people as you start getting deeper and deeper into it and almost the way of resolving the problem. It's easy to think about oh, cut something into thirds. It's like the parable of cutting a baby in half and so on. It's like that because it's such an easy way of thinking that I have to distribute things evenly.
The solution not to do that almost seems more complicated in the short term but then obviously more beneficial in the long term. It was interesting. It was a point that I'd never particularly thought about. One of the things that you mentioned that has come up before, though, with other clients that we've worked with, is this idea of transferring problems coming up at the point that the succession plan is implemented, so the person passes away. The next generation are potentially fighting over the remains, and because the desires have been communicated very well, the problem then hits at that point. We've worked with some management firms in the past to write books where the client will write the book as a story of their life.
John Iannucci
Absolutely.
Stuart Bell
Almost using it for the purpose of starting the conversation with the kids. Hey, we've been doing this work. Here's the story of the background. You want to know all these details. And using it at the point because people find it difficult just having those conversations in a friendly family environment, let alone where there's some inconvenience there already.
John Iannucci
You're spot on there, Stuart. I think that's a fabulous idea as an icebreaker, as a way to begin that conversation, because when you first suggest to a client who's successful that they start having what we call family governance meetings to have this conversation about why you're doing what you're doing and what you're thinking about, and kind of preparing people for that day, there's a lot of resistance to that. It's amazing how many spouses and children have no idea what the patriarch or matriarchs are estate plan is or even why they're dividing up their estate the way they are. And you know, once I'm able to convince them gradually, slowly, that we should be having these conversations and explaining and getting input from the family and how much that will work to save that family after that patriarch or matriarch's passing, we finally get them to that point. But I think, like you said, writing a book like that to begin that conversation about their life, their business, what they're thinking wow, what a great starter. Yeah.
Stuart Bell
It's the idea of the book being the conversation starts and not the product. It opens up so many doors. I think so many business owners are thinking about the book in a traditional sense of writing and it will help me become famous and then people will come knocking on my door. I mean the last probably pretty slim. It's difficult enough for best-selling authors to let loan professional business owners that have got the project into the gas.
But the idea of using that as a jumping off point when you were thinking about creating the book, your book that we're talking about, the piece of mind, retirements mind, retirement planner yes, I'm still in a whole day mode, my tongue isn't working quite as my head. So when you're thinking about writing that, there's two schools of thought when we're working with people, one is using it as a lead generation tool, so very much at the top of the funnel and introducing new people. And then the second one is as more of a conversion tool, and that conversion tool might be for warm introduction, so referral. So it's still a degree, but it's when that first no one knows me to someone who's aware of me either side of that fence. So do you see it more on one side of the fence or another more, introducing very cold people and using it in a lead generation sense? Or is a lead conversion tool? Someone's already knocked on the door and this is part of their education towards your way of thinking.
John Iannucci
Well, you know it's interesting. My experience is that with this book, what I was intending originally was I thought this would be kind of a cool piece that I could hand out, and you know, it would almost be like another business card to explain what I do and what I think and so on, to introduce people to my process and my thought process. But what's happened is that as I meet people in networking kind of or social circumstances and I see that they've got a very successful family business, I use it as a follow up where I say, hey, look, I've got something I think you might be interested in. I'd love to send you a little book that I wrote about, you know, succession planning for the successful business owner. Can I drop it in the mail for you? And it's amazing that favorable response I get. And if I add a little note inside with my cell phone number on it, it's incredible how many times I get a phone call from that person or from somebody that person spoke to saying, hey, I'd like to follow up, I'd like to learn a little bit more about what you described in your book.
And so it's been an excellent way to follow up with people I meet. It's not aggressive or offensive to them. It's actually educational. They appreciate it. They actually dropped me a note saying, wow, this is a great little read. It opened my eyes to the different options that I have available. I didn't realize I had so many options. So to me it's that great follow up after an initial interaction with somebody that I'd really like to get to know and see if we're appropriate for each other, see if it makes sense for us to consider working together, and that's how I use it. I don't think I intended to use it in that fashion before, but I can tell you that's worked out extremely well for me now as a follow up after that initial engagement.
Stuart Bell
The businesses where, like you and I well, we're actually meeting people you more than me, in fact. We're meeting people and having that human interaction. The disarming element of giving something first, that kind of leading of the content. All marketing could be good or evil depending on your intention, so it's a similar role on the good side, but to be able to give something that's disarming.
I'm such a huge fan of writing a personal note and folding a page over and not only giving something to begin with, but you've put the intentionality and the thought and the personal connection to make it individual for them. It's no one who else does that. Everyone else out there is thinking in terms of adds huge volume in. If people don't convert within a day, then they were deadly, move on to the next. But hold brain and jealousy which, for if you're selling widgets on Amazon, then that might be a valid strategy.
But for us, where we're dealing with individual people, there's lifetime value, there's relationships. It really serves to bridge the gap and start to make a connection With the content. Sometimes people have a almost a scarcity mentality of I don't want to put too much in there because it will give the game away, which obviously is the opposite of the truth. So not so much when we're giving too much away, but in terms of the breadth of what to include, because obviously, with what you're doing and the varying individuals, I imagine that you could have been still writing at 500 pages and still have enough information in that. So what was the thought process around? Okay, what makes sense to include and what makes sense to it.
John Iannucci
Yeah, see, for us, I think, as we were going through that process to determine how expansive we were in this book, what we really wanted to get across to our potential prospects and friends and potential clients, we wanted to make sure that we touched certain pain points that we knew they had. We knew they had certain things because of our experience that would wake them up at 2 am and cause them to have that racing you know the racing thoughts and what we wanted to do was make certain they understood from the book that first we understood what they were going through. We understood those problems and we understand them in great detail, that we've addressed those issues before to our client's satisfaction and that you know there is help. And so we wanted to provide them with enough education to help them understand that there is somebody out there that understands my issues, that has addressed my issues successfully in the past and that I could speak to right, that is willing to help me and talk to me about. Okay, we understand this is how we would see you addressing those issues, so that you have that kind of sleep through the night confidence, right. So we decided we wanted to give enough of the information away that they realized we knew what we were talking about and we knew their pain points and that we get address those pain points because ultimately, you know, writing a book at 500 pages for a client who's addressing these kinds of issues, they're not even going to finish the book because it would be so technical, right? You know they realize that they have to engage a team.
You know, I love the book that our buddy inspired. You know who, not how. You know, dean Jackson being the inspiration behind that book I always talk to my clients about. You know, when you're a successful businessman, it doesn't mean you can be successful in everything, businessperson in everything. You can't become a lawyer overnight. You can't become a tax secretary overnight. What you've got to become an expert at is determining who can help you, not how you can do it. This isn't a DIY project, right.
And so you know, I reference that book all the time because, to me, that was a real game changer for me, not only for how I present my business and what I do, but for how I think myself. Right, could I have sat down and tried to hire a publisher and do all these things to write this book? Sure, and do it myself? Sure. But what I learned in working with you and your team, working with Dean, was this is a who, not how. This is.
You guys made this process so enjoyable and easy that I didn't mind dedicating the resources in the time to it, because it was almost an interview process with me, right, and it helped me get the information out there quickly better done than thinking about it next week, right, or next year, or I should have done it two years later. But you know your team was that who for me, or that's right, that who for me, and I try to explain to my clients as well when they're thinking about all these complicated strategies. It's not how do I address this, it's who, what team can address this for me in a manner that I can manage and be comfortable with right?
Stuart Bell
The speed of gain it done. I mean, for the scope of what we do is relatively straightforward. I mean, walk isn't implementing a wealth management plan, it's got a divine work. But even the speed of gain it done and the learnings that we've gone through over a thousand times now right, more clients even more so I mean there's just no way it's practical for people to do it themselves. All the other sets of struggling through and trying to find all the individual players right, the book that starts the conversation, that introduces the idea, that gives them the certainty that there is an answer. The next question is then just are you the right people to execute the conversation that moves on? The book is the conversion tool in the sense of no one's going to sign on the dotted line just based on your book or anyone's book. But it is that start in the conversation, that analogy of kind of the lost knowledge of doing it yourself. When I was in the UK I imported a little Japanese sports car from Japan and a friend had done it a few times before. So I thought that sounds like a good idea, I'll admit it, and it must have taken months of just reminding one of the things that have to pass a test like inspection in the country and one of the things that it failed on five different occasions. It fails for different times. One of them was because the fog light was two inches far that way. So knowledge, now I know I'm never in the UK anymore, so I'm not going to import another sports car, but all of that headache, it's not the I could move, I could put it in different places. It's not that I can't do it, like you said. It's not that you can't write the book itself, it's just the efficient piece of time and to be able to create something that starts the conversation and helps people make the phone ring in a way that they're not so much predisposed, but at least there's a jump in up point for the conversation. It's really powerful.
I think what I like particularly about the book that you wrote is this friendly, friendly but authoritative. I guess is mainly or friendly but knowledgeable, maybe more than authoritative. So you brought to it. It is a broad subject, it is a complicated subject. There's the underlying, without necessarily explicitly saying it. There's an understanding written into it that this is a broad and complicated and varying. It's a very personalized service for each person. But we've got this and, as you said, we understand it. So it's something that I like about the way that we do the processing terms of interviewing people and trying to keep their language and their cadence and tone of voice, because it does Again, the book isn't designed to be. The book isn't the product, it's not a story that's romantically perfect and it's going to win some awards for literature. It's people, to who you are and your approach and that personal element comes through. I was asked people do you get that feedback as a explicitly or kind of inferred from people? That is more of a personal connection than academic piece.
John Iannucci
Absolutely. Yeah, I do get that feedback and I think that when you give something of value like a book as a part of the process of getting to know people, and that that book touches on subjects that are very personal to them, very troubling to them at times, I think what you find is that it establishes almost immediately a certain level of trust. This guy's like me, this person is like me, this person understands me, and there's a certain level of trust that you get. Now you've got to earn a lot more and you've got to demonstrate a lot more expertise, but it's that personal relationship and a book like this, I think, helps introduce that personal relationship and engender that personal relationship and, at the end of the day, it's all about personal relationships.
We tell clients that managing investments today is a commodity Managing your stocks and your bonds. If you have somebody who's a true fiduciary and is doing it at a fair fee, the results you're going to get over a 10-year period or plus or minus in, you know, in the irrelevant amount. What's really important is all these other ancillary services that are so important to you and your family in the growth and protection and transition of your wealth that you know that's kind of what we're getting across. That's the information we're getting across to people, and this relationship, my relationships with my clients are really based upon personal relationships and personal trust that we will lead no rock unturned to help them discover the answer to their issue Right, and this book helps us start that process.
Stuart Bell
I think it's a whole other series of podcasts afterwards, but in 2023, as we recorded this middle of 2023, this was really the year that AI hit mainstream in terms of availability and kind of passing that threshold of usefulness to the average person.
But, business owners across the board, the next five years are going to be game changing, because so much of the, so much of the nuts and bolts of the work is going to be commoditized. What isn't going to be commoditized, though, is that relationship and the trust that you, as a business owner, can build with someone so many people think of. I just want to get AI to build a book for me, and council is completely thinking about it. There's going to be a thousand other people that do that, but if you can create a process that gets your personal connection across your methodology, then mirrors the language that you use and the terms in which you talk, and then, with AI, by all means to amplify and leverage it and distribute it much further than you could have done two years ago. But, yeah, I think in the next few years, just to identify the relationships are going to be so much more key, because so much more than nuts and bolts will be commoditized.
John Iannucci
That's right. That's right. So much is being commoditized in every industry, including financial services. It's that relationship, ultimately, that will win the day. You know, I get amazed by the kinds of things my clients call me for, and what help. It has nothing to do with managing their investments. It's because I'm a confidant with respect to their business and their investments that I turn into a confidant and everything. And one of my clients likes to jokingly refer to me as Ray Dunovan. If you've seen that show on HBO, he was called the Fixer, and so my clients think of me as the Fixer. Whenever they have an issue, whether it's in relationship to their investments, their state plan or business succession plan, whatever it is, I get the first phone call.
Stuart Bell
So I'm the Fixer, I'm the financial Fixer Kind of pixely out of your face. These podcasts always go fast. Before we start recording I usually say to people we'll go for 30 minutes and then see how it goes. And we're at four already. So I see for a appreciate the time. I know that everyone listening is going to get a lot out of this. I want to make sure that people have got access to you and find out more. So where's a good place for people to go to learn more about?
John Iannucci
it. So we're really lucky. We have a great URL. It's we can help you, spelled out wecanhelpyou.com. If they go to wecanhelpyoucom, it refers them right over to our website. They can get a copy, by the way, of our book Happily to send them an autographed copy, and we'd love to talk to them about anything that's keeping them up at night, but that's the easiest way to get us. We can help youcom.
Stuart Bell
Fantastic. Well, we'll make sure we put links in the show notes so I'm sure people could remember anyway but podcast players there'll be a link in there or looking on the website the crossover of our clients, just the nature of what we do in our relationships. We've got a lot of people in the services space and they'll see business owners you send us directly. If they're thinking about wealth and succession plan, it's a no brainer to go and check out Other people who are in a similar space. Does it make sense for those guys if they've got clients that could be a good fit for you to reach out?
John Iannucci
Absolutely. We partner with other professionals all the time and so, whether they happen to be in the financial services business or they're a lawyer or CPA or whatever, we partner with other sophisticated, trusted advisors all the time, so we're happy to speak to any of them about anything we do, and you know we're built to serve, so we're here to help any way we can and look forward to any questions.
Stuart Bell
Fantastic. Well, thanks again. So much for your time, john. Always a pleasure speaking with you. I know we get a chance to talk about podcasts Everyone listening to. Highly recommend checking out the website. Like I said, we'll put a link in the show notes for you, and thanks for listening. We'll catch you in the next one.
John Iannucci
Thanks so much, Stuart.