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Ep145: Don't Leave Money on the Table with Michael Soos
Today on the Book More Show, we have a great conversation with Michael Soos, author of Don't Leave Money on the Table, and a consultant who helps financial advisors create more effective Social Security and Medicare solutions for their clients.
Michael has a wealth of experience and talks about the opportunities advisors have in partnering with a specialist to deliver more value for their clients and create larger income streams for their businesses.
His book is an excellent example of introducing a new idea to people rather than discussing a problem they want to solve. Financial advisors are what we refer to as 'visible prospects' because you can get a list or access that group directly compared with 'invisible prospects' who aren't identified in a list or group for us, for example, people feeling unsure about their Social Security options. Michael uses his book to introduce the idea they are leaving money on the table by not having the capability to offer more comprehensive services and, of course, offers a solution to help.
We also talk about Michael's 5x5x5 outreach strategy, something that can be amplified with a book and something I'd recommend everyone steal!
I really enjoyed this conversation & you'll get many ideas on how to use a book in your business, especially if you're talking with peers.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
LINKS
Michael Soos - LinkedIn
Soos Consulting Group
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/145
How does your book idea score against the 8 book building blocks we use here all the time: Book Blueprint Scorecard
Titles & Outline Workshops: 90MinuteBooks.com/Workshops
Ready to get started: 90MinuteBooks.com
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 Bookmore show. It's Stuart Bell here again in a rather hot Pennsylvania, so hopefully the lights and the closed windows and the AC off isn't going to make us perspire too much, but excited to share this one with you. We've got another guest author with us, michael Seuss. Michael, how you doing.
Michael Soos
I'm doing great, stuart. Thanks for having me on.
Stuart Bell
Pleasure. I'm excited this is going to be a slightly different take on a subject that perhaps has come up before in the podcast. So our client base, in part because of our relationship with Strategic Coach, crosses over with Financial Advisors a lot, which is the business that you're in. But the book takes a slightly different angle to that. It's not necessarily a consumer facing book, it's more of a peer to peer book. So why don't you start by giving a bit of background about you and the business and then we can transition to the book?
Michael Soos
Sure I would love to. You know I've spent 34 years in the financial services industry with a, you know, major Fortune 500 company. You know, in my tenure there I, you know what I realized very quickly was spending a lot of time with financial advisors, financial planners, cpas, attorneys. You know I don't want to say this in a negative way, but there was really a lack of knowledge and understanding around social security, claiming strategies, successful claiming strategies and their knowledge of Medicare. American College also did a study I think this was years ago where they found out that there was about 17% of financial advisors in the industry that actually felt comfortable talking about social security and Medicare with their clients.
So you know, I've been doing this for a long time. It actually started about 20 years ago with my father, who was 63 at the time and trying to make decisions on what to do with Medicare. There was no real guidance and there was nobody to help my dad and he was just asking neighbors and friends what you know, what they should do. Obviously it's not probably the best advice you should get. So you know, I saw that as a challenge and just really the reason I wrote the book was to provide some guidance and understanding to financial advisors about those claiming strategies so they can help their clients. It's really sort of a you know, a do it all book, you know do it yourself book, but for financial advisors to help their clients understand those strategies.
Stuart Bell
That's the thing understanding the audience of the book, making an assumption of what their baseline knowledge is, so that you're not having to. You can up the level of the content because you're positioning this out of the financial advisor, so it doesn't have to be quite as one-on-one level as it would be if you were writing it for your dad. I was always fascinated. There's a good friend, dale, a marketing guy in Australia. I remember him saying years and years ago there's no niche too small. And at the time the marketing example is around picking very small niches in order to market too, and it's always continued to go smaller than bigger. You can always go smaller than you think. The same goes with financial services. I mean Social Security, medicare is one of those pieces of the puzzle which I've seen that most customers out there think that all financial advisors know all there is to know about this subject. But it's not until you start looking at it that you realize how deep it goes.
Michael Soos
Yeah, it goes very deep and there's a lot of information. I mean, if you just Google Social Security and the Medicare, there's a lot of information out there and you just really don't know where to go or where to turn. But I'll give you a great point of reference. Most advisors don't feel as if they should lead with Social Security and Medicare, and when you think about the average client who may be approaching retirement, the number one thing on their mind is really not their investments per se. It's when do I start my Social Security benefits, how much does Medicare cost, when should I start Medicare and how does that tie into my overall financial plan? So there's a lot of complexities.
I think it's not just you just turn it on and start collecting it and it's that easy. I think it's for advisors. I think it's an overall part of an overall financial plan Sitting down with your clients and figuring out how much income do they need, when do they need it, what's their longevity in their household, what's their health history. There's a lot of different complexities or questions that they can ask and frankly, it leads to a lot of what we call product solutions maybe life insurance or annuities or other types of solutions that might tie in to help them if something happens. So I've taken a great passion at this because of what happened with my dad 20 years ago. But what I'm starting to realize is, through all the questions and all the calls I keep getting from financial advisors saying, can I pick your brain or can I ask you a question? That's why I wrote the book. I wrote it as a guide, really to help advisors help their clients make those important life changing decisions.
Stuart Bell
Right and those important life changing decisions. They are very real decisions. People coming to the conversation. Customers are coming to the conversation at the point in time where they're not 20, they don't have a long runway in order to make changes to decisions. It's this point in the journey, the decisions, that may now really make quite a substantial difference to what their outcome is. When the journey of coming to write the book you mentioned was coming from a lot of the questions that you were getting from other financial advisors, those questions were they just within a peer group and it was just peers asking peers, or was that in the more structured framework, you were going out and soliciting or become known as the go-to person around Social Security and Medicare for financial advisors?
Michael Soos
I actually didn't even know I was going to write a book or, to be honest with you, this came to me from another financial planner who had written a book with 90 minute books and suggested that with all my knowledge that I had on this topic, that I might want to consider that. So I'm not a writer, I'm a good speaker. I've done a lot of presentations before in front of people, but where I came to realize how important it was is that not only was I talking to financial advisors, but I was talking to CPAs attorneys and they were asking me questions and they were inquiring about these strategies and that just told me it's a much bigger issue beyond financial advisors. So if I can help them just understand sort of an encyclopedia of information and then they can consult with me or call me and then I can help them a little bit more, I think that's important.
But I want to make one point that I think is real important and that is if you looked like 20 or 30 years ago, the state of our retirement system is much different than it was today because many people that were retiring with a defined benefit pension plan you know probably 70, 75% of the people working were retiring from their company and they got a pension plan, which is a guaranteed paycheck for life, and then they had Social Security so that's another guaranteed paycheck that they could receive.
And then they had very smaller nest egg. 401ks weren't really even relevant back then, 20 or 30 years ago and they had a small nest egg that they really, you know, relied on. Well, if you think about today, back then there was about 16 workers for every retiree paying into the system and paying taxes. Today there's less than three workers per retiree. People aren't getting pensions anymore. I mean, just ask any company that's hiring. If you ask them what their benefits are, they'll say, well, we have a good, a nice lucrative 401k. And you say, well, what about the pension? And they say, well, we don't have a pension.
Our companies aren't hiring and younger folks today aren't retiring or won't retire with the pension, so they'll have Social Security. It's more of a reliance on that income and then they're going to have to rely on the money that they save or they invest. It was a much you know. Again, it's a much different model than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Social Security was never designed to be your only source of income when you retire. It was designed as a supplement to your existing retirement plan. So you have to look and engage with your advisor or your planner and find out. You know, what other sources of income do I have?
Stuart Bell
And that's an interesting point, isn't it? The design of the system in the first place was never intended to be the sole purpose, because the understanding back then was there were large companies, corporations that were predominantly taking care of the short amount of time that you lived outside of once you'd retired. But the situation now where the responsibility is put back I mean it's not even put back on the individual, it's almost so. As you can tell from the accent, I'm not a local, but oftentimes you hear the this is going to open a can of worms.
I'm only very superficially touching on it, but one of the big things that you hear in the US is our Europeans socialist countries and we don't want socialism. It's the worst possible thing in the world. But in a number of cases, like healthcare and retirement and the two that spring to mind, there was previously a situation where there wasn't socialized care here, but corporations were expected to take care of it. Now we're in a situation where everyone fights against the socialization of it. It doesn't want to get companies, doesn't want to have government involved, but it's also either oblivious or quite happy that companies are no longer involved either. So where the gap falls on the individual, who is probably, out of the three, the least capable, except at the extremes, the least capable of doing anything about it.
Michael Soos
So Well, I'll simplify this for you if you don't mind. I mean and I talked to a lot of advisors about this too you know whether you're retired or you're working Um, it's pretty simple on how you spend your money. Okay, so you have discretionary and non discretionary spending, and I'll give you the example. Discretionary spending you know might be, you know the vacations or the golf, or you like to drink wine, or you know whatever you want to do. You know that's discretionary. That's up to you on how you spend that money.
Non discretionary is your. You know your mortgage, your car payment, your taxes, your bills, your utilities, all those things that you have to pay for. You know I call it the difference between you know the things you have to pay for and the things you want to pay for. Right, the difference. But if you think about the things you have to pay for that non discretionary spending, you need a guaranteed source of income and I can't stress that enough you need a guaranteed paycheck. You're not working anymore. Therefore you need a guaranteed paycheck coming in every month To pay your bills, pay your mortgage, pay your expenses. Even if your mortgage is paid off, you still have insurance, you still have taxes. You still have, you know, other expenses and upkeep.
So the way I just try to simplify it for a lot of folks is you know you need a sense of guaranteed income to cover your non discretionary Expenses, anything above and beyond that. If you don't have, if you have a gap or you need to pay for additional Cost, then you have to create either create your own annuity or create your own guaranteed source of income. You know, to complement that or supplement that. So I mean I try to simplify that because I think a lot of folks don't realize that they need A guaranteed source of income and there's only three. There's only three that folks can rely on Social security, a pension we talked about that before and you know their own nest egg which they can turn into an annuity Ensured by an insurance company that can give them a guaranteed source of income or guaranteed growth. So you know, again, it's education. I always say education without implementation is just entertainment. It's kind of a funny.
Stuart Bell
Yeah.
Michael Soos
You know, if you just tell somebody something and they don't do anything about it, or they don't do anything with the Information, you just entertain them for right.
Stuart Bell
It's not going to move the needle and they have their impending gap that's coming up Exactly this. So we often talk about writing a book, as the book's not the product. The product is the conversation that you're getting in with people. A number of people will write Specifically with a lead generation campaign in mind. I want to attract those outbound customers. That's not your situation. You're most filling a need that was there already, but I think this idea of the book is starting.
The conversation applies just as much, because you could write a textbook Three inches thick trying to cover absolutely everything, but what you've done is positioned it at the right level to give some knowledgeable people Further information. That takes them a step closer, but still it's pretty obvious if they want to really master the subject or go deep, there's more than could be contained in the pages of the book. So did you have, as you were thinking about pulling it together? Did you actually think about what that limit was? What makes sense to be in the book and what is? Maybe it's just going to get into the weeds?
Michael Soos
Yeah, you know, I sat down at you know again, not knowing how to write a book. You know I created the outline and figured out you know what were the most important chapters that I needed to focus on. So, yeah, you know, knowing that there's a lot of information out there, I wanted to simplify it. Give folks, you know, sort of the most important aspects of Social Security and Medicare without you know, without overwhelming them in the book, but also use it almost as a business card or a calling card to have folks call me directly or book a Consultation. Or, you know, give me a call or go to my website or go to my company site and say you know, I need more information or I'd like more information. I want to talk to you a little bit.
I don't expect people to read my book and become experts overnight. I mean, I didn't become an expert overnight. What I do expect them to do is to read it and say you know, can I take action on this? Can I? Is this giving me enough information to say it's important to me and my clients for me to contact Michael Right to have a conversation. It doesn't cost anything to have a conversation with someone. Have a conversation. If you want to go further, we can go further with that, but that's why I, you know that's I use the book, or, you know, I guess, creating the book in mind as an entree, you know, to my business, to open up the door for more people to contact me.
Stuart Bell
Which I think is the best approach that 99% of people and 100% of people listening to this can take. Because, just as you start off by saying in the call, you're not a writer. But we often say to people, if you were a writer, you'd already do this Right, not your business and your financial advisor. What you've got is a lot of good ideas based on all of your experience and all of the knowledge that you've gained over the years. So authoring that idea is separate from the task of having to write it and get it into a book. I think that holds up a lot of people. They do think that they need to be a writer in order to create Something bound together and have pages. But really, what social security, medical may be great examples of it. Even further, because All of the information, just the pure information, is available in government Panplates and books. It is, it's black and white, is what is. But the way that you've authored the idea and brought them together and structured it, and then how you take people when they do phone, through further steps and help them get to that next level, that's really authoring a good idea.
The financial services, the other financial services clients that you work with the other advisors. I'm guessing they're coming to you with all sorts of different levels of understanding In terms of converting a lead that you might get. Who's read the book and reached out for a call Into a client who's actually doing some work? Is your business set up? We've got a relatively formulaic program that brings people on it. They kind of buying a Michael product or is it more of like a service-based thing and you know generally what they're trying to get to?
Michael Soos
but it's very tailored for each individual person at the end of the day, they're buying me right because I'm the product, I'm the service Right. So at the end of the day, I'm leveraging a lot of the relationships I've had over 34 years, people that already know me. I'll give you a great example. My last name is a little bit unique. You mentioned about Europe. My, my name has the orientation in Hungary. That's pronounced shosh in Hungary, in Hungarian, but it means of salt, or of the ground or of salt.
But a lot of people know me by my last name. It's a unique name backwards, forwards, upside down. It's. A lot of people don't even know my first name, they just know my last I. So I created my company in mind. You know, with my last name, people that know me that can come to me and Ask me information or ask me you know anything about. You know social security, and these are folks that already I've already had a relationship with or they've put me in front of their clients or they put me in front of their CPA or their attorney. Obviously I'm trying to forge new relationships and you know the great way of doing that is with the book right.
Yeah get them to read the book. And I'm to understand that you know I am sort of a resident expert in this, in this field, and that if they want to continue going forward, I don't charge anything for my initial consultation or an initial group meeting. If they want me to come in and talk to a Group of advisors or folks, just to see you know, are you interested? Do I have value? And if you find value in what I do, then we can proceed forward. But that's pretty much how I set it up.
Stuart Bell
That's that idea of having a hook around the name and anyone watching the video can see it on their shirt there. That idea of having the hook around the name, it's almost disarming. I used to say when I was in and out of the I've been permanently in the US since 2018, it's 23 as we record now. Prior to that, I was in and out for a number of years and in a number of meetings when I was following up with people, I'd always put in the signature or the British guy with the beard, because in a room full of Americans, when you're meeting 10 new people, they might remember the guy with the weird accent and the beard as opposed to everyone else who was there. So I really love the idea of having a hook because it just kind of gets the conversation going. There's a little bit of history around the name and what it means and it's easy for people to ask questions and start the conversation.
The thought of now that the book is complete, you've got the existence, free of influence and the people who know you, like you, entrust you already. You've got the opportunity when meeting people you can hand it out or follow up with people afterwards. But the idea of now that the book is created, it's the flagpole around which a lot of other content can be created. One of the things I really like to talk to people about, particularly where they've got a very targeted market, is the idea of, for example, linkedin marketing.
Unless we're a champion addict, which most of us aren't, it's always a bit of a headache to think it's something they have to remember to do. But having the book created now in a way that you can just excerpt individual lines or sentences or the key phrase and then elaborate and illuminate it with hey, if this was interesting, there's more. Just get a copy of the book here. Have you thought about that level of not LinkedIn necessarily, but that level of using the content to get out there? Are there any ways that you're excited to try or have tried and have got some traction?
Michael Soos
Yeah, like I think we were speaking personally before, I've done a podcast ready in Atlanta, georgia, with a really good friend of mine who's a mortgage broker and wanted to interview me. He's got a pretty wide audience. So I went down to his home. He's got a video studio in his home and we did a podcast probably a 45 minute podcast on social security and Medicare. But what he also taught me was to create these little snippets of video clips, and so what I did is create sort of a mini video studio in my home.
I don't know much about it, but doing little clips on excerpts and from my book and just simply doing the excerpts and then getting them out on social media, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or whether it be LinkedIn. I have a pretty large network of contacts on my LinkedIn as well and I find that reaches a lot of folks. I'm getting a lot of people messaging me back saying, hey, can I get a copy of your book? Hey, when it comes out, can you send me a copy of it? And it hasn't even come out yet and they want it. So I think using social media today, versus maybe what we did 20 years ago when we didn't have it. I think I'm leveraging that as a tool to get in front of a lot more people.
Stuart Bell
And in a very amplifying and efficient way. I mean, when you think about it, a weekly message, 52 messages to go out. Okay, triple that three times a week. You want to send out a message three times a week 152. No one's going to remember the content even halfway through that cycle. So you could even cut that back to 75 messages, repeat them and no one's going to point out and say, hey, I remember on July the 27th you said exactly the same thing. What's going on? I mean that just doesn't happen.
So there's the opportunity. You've gone out to amplify the book and just take those excerpts, even if you did it like lay the track as you go for the first six months, but now you've got 10 years worth of perpetual content all tied around this one main asset that you become known for and it's self-supporting. I like the idea of this. I think it's a persuasion. It's in persuasion. Robert Chaldini's book, where talks about kind of laying the track three or four steps ahead, often talk about this idea of imagine the customer journey a year down the track. So they've seen a piece of media. They didn't know you before. They've seen a piece of media that resonates with them. They've requested to copy the book and the language is mirrored, in that you're sending them an email sequence to try and engage them in the first instance, and the language is mirrored again. Then they'll reach out to schedule something and the person that's scheduling the thing, or the text on the page where they're scheduling a meeting, again represents or reflects the same language.
Now they eventually, after all of these stages, they're either sat down in front of you or, like we are on zoom, and you start talking to them and saying, okay, the key thing about social security is this idea of needing an annuity, you need a fixed income because you've got all these non-discretionary things that you don't want to stay up at night. They're not hearing that for the first time. It's not getting on a call with Susan. It's the first time that you're hearing it, it's the eighth time. They've heard it in all sorts of different ways.
And the likelihood of them taking action the point you made before we're not doing this for entertainment, we're doing it for education and movement, all of these persuasion things with all of the authority that books brings to it and all of the authority that social media at presence brings to it. But the fact that when they sit down in front of you. You know eight, nine, ten steps down the process. That, I think, is something that is so undervalued, because people think about writing a book, because they want to write a book, they don't necessarily think about all that. They want something to have in a campaign, they don't necessarily think of all of it. But yeah, that idea of really reinforcing your approach is a game changer.
Michael Soos
I'll give you a great example, and I've been using this for 20 plus years now, even with the evolution of social media. I called it my five by five campaign and essentially what that meant was is if I wanted to reach, let's say, 125 people, I could obviously take 125 copies of my book and send it out today. But I would also challenge you that if all 125 of those people picked up my book and said they want to reach Michael Seuss and called me, I don't have the capacity to follow up with 125 people. So I created this concept of five by five, which simply breaks it into three parts. It breaks it into an email, sending it out directly through the mail, and then follow up with a phone call. So email send it out and then a phone call, and I do five people a day, five days a week, times five weeks. At the end of those five weeks I measure what my results are or what the progress was at the end of those five weeks.
Now, if you think about that, if I send out five on Monday and they receive five copies of my book and I follow up with them, let's say, on Wednesday or Thursday, I only have to make five phone calls. If I make five phone calls, I follow up with those five people. When I might get two or three of them that are interested the next day, I just do it all over again. Follow up with five. Again, I have the capacity to do five. I don't know if I have the capacity to do 125 right and the overwhelm.
Stuart Bell
I mean going into it thinking, okay, I've got, I just need to do these five things today and I'm only going to do it for five weeks and then, if I hate it, I can never touch it again. But it's a commitment that's doable. Going into something with a list of 125 names, I mean that's overwhelming. Even generating the list in the first place, that's an interesting question actually. So this idea of reaching out to those five, or to get the 5555 in terms of the names that you reach out to, is that for someone listening thinking, hey, that's a great idea. I'm not a financial advisor, I'm not in Michael's neck in the woods, but I want to steal it. But where do you typically get those names from? Are they existing clients you're re-engaging with, or lists that you're buying, or well, it's really dependent on your market.
Michael Soos
Really depending, stuart. You know, in my market I have a network of financial advisors. I mean I can go down my street here and there's, you know, 30 financial advisors up and down my street. So you know, you could either go in, you know, go and look up financial advisors in your area and if there's somebody with a different market or a different business, they can do the same thing or they can use their existing network. I mean I'll challenge everybody on this call.
I mean I'm sure if I asked you and I said you had to do it, in order to write your book you have to come up with a list of 125 names, you would write down 125 names, whether you knew them personally or you didn't. You would come up with those names and that's where you really start with that list. Scratch them off if you don't really want them, but you know, create the list and then figure out. There's no importance over who are the first five, who are the second five, it doesn't matter, it's just having a process. Yeah, and most people they start marketing and they don't measure their progress, they don't measure how successful that marketing is. That's why it did the five by five, because after five weeks I can sit down and study it, observe it, understand it. You know, did I have success with it? Do I need to do ten a day? Do I need to do three a day? Do I need to switch it up a little bit? You know I can change it if I want to do that right, but I think you know, not just to give you a plug on 90 minute books, but, going back to what we said before, I'm not a writer, I'm a speaker, I'm an educator. I've been in the business a long time. I know what I know and I know how I want to communicate it, but I didn't know that I could actually write a book before.
I mean, I thought it was a very complicated process. I have to give 90 minute books a lot of. I know you didn't ask me to do this, but I have to give them a lot, a lot of praise because they made the process very simple, very easy. And doing the transcription, you know, interviewing you and just going through. You know that was a lot easier for me than sitting down and writing my own book on my own. You know, just going through and editing the transcription and then, once we edit it, you realize it's actually, and now and now it's a book or the contents of a book, and then you can add to it, delete from it, take away from it. You know whatever you want to do. It made the process so much easier for me. But, as you know, you have to invest in yourself and invest in your business. So if you're not, then you're not going to get anything out of it. But I give I give 90 minute a lot of credit. I would have never done it if I had not engaged with your company.
Stuart Bell
Appreciate it. I mean, this is when, just before we started to recording, I was kind of giving you the background and saying that we're doing more guest interviews now with authors because, if nothing else, people for the first hundred or so episodes, I can only say you should write a book so many times. But one of the I guess, not surprising but certainly unanticipated benefits of doing it was the enthusiasm that people bring to the calls and the real life stories and examples of how people are using or plan to use it, the fact that it's done, it being a thing that they would never get around to doing. So I mean, I don't often think about the kind of world-changing opportunity that we've got, but now, having done over a thousand books, that's a thousand ideas that the majority of them wouldn't have got out there, and definitely not out there in that way and not by that person, were it not for, like I said, the straightforward process that we've got in taking what is perceived to be a big, difficult process and just stripping it down into the most kind of like lean, effective version to be able to use in something like the five by five funnel and just go back to that. I'm going to credit you when I steal this idea and share it with people in the future.
But I often have strategy calls with people as they've got to them in the process and I've got five things which are low hanging fruit that everyone can do, which stem from a number of calls, but this isn't on that list. I'm going to add it now. How straightforward is it? Like I say, anyone can create that list. When we were talking mentally, that immediately came up as a block for me oh yeah, that's that I could do that. That definitely sounds like something I could and should do.
Oh, but the list, the list. But you immediately got rid of that barrier because if I was forced to write down 125 names, I could do it. If I didn't want to do that, I could give it to one of the team and they could do it. If they didn't want to do it, I could give it to someone on up desk, or I work, work rather and outsource it and probably in July 2023, I could go to chat TTP and get chat TTP to give me a reasonable first draft. So just to be able to get that done and then reaching out becomes straightforward. And what a benefit. It'll be interesting once the books. Like you mentioned, we're just in the final stages of wrapping up the book, but it'll be really interesting to check back in six months or 12 months and say okay, you've got the stats from a five by five three years ago, when you were using something else. What differences it made now that, on the delivery stage, you're actually delivering your own book. That'll be really interesting to hear.
Michael Soos
Well, and think about it. You know, in order for me to do five by five, I have to order 125 copies of my book. That's investing in my business, right, and so if I don't, if I don't commit to that, then it's not going to work. So otherwise it's just money, money that I've spent that's lost. So it almost forces you. You know, a lot of times we don't think about the simple things, but you have to master the simple things and what I just said about five by five. Anybody can do that, and you anyone, any business. You don't have to be in financial services to do it. If you have any, if you're a baker or you're, you know, whatever it might be, you're in the stationary business, whatever. You know 125 people. There's a lot of people that need stationary, a lot of people that like to eat cookies and you know baked, baked items. So there's a lot of folks out there that need our services and need our ideas, and just simplifying those and mastering the simple things I think is important.
Stuart Bell
Yeah, I'm excited to check back in down the track and pinch this as an idea to share with other people and then feedback to you how they're doing with it, because oftentimes we get to the finish line less so now, but in the early days at least we get to the finish line of getting someone's book created and then it's, everyone reads aside relief and that's it, whereas really having the book done is the first step of everything. It's really the point zero, the base camp then, because the book's not a product, it's the right rules, everything else. So, in sharing with people okay, I'm getting to be finished Now what I can do now, what can I do? Rather, this is definitely getting handed to the list of what you can and should do and definitely, when I share this with people, I'm credit crediting you.
We've got I mentioned before we've had large footprint with financial advisors, just in part from our history and in part from relationship with coach. As people are listening to this and perhaps financial advisors are there thinking I've got a great business here, but some specialization in social security medical would really move the needle. What's a good place for people to find out more about what you do and, ultimately, what you offer?
Michael Soos
Well, they could just go to. I mean, if they want to just go to my website, I have the information on there. The book obviously is not out yet, but it says coming soon and there's my podcast and I'll probably put this podcast on there as well. They can go to soosconsultinggroup.com that's my last name, s o o s consulting groupcom very easy. Go there and they can find out a little bit about me, my bio or company, and what we do in our services. They want to book an initial consultation. They can do so.
Like I said, I don't charge anything for an initial consultation or just have a conversation with someone to find out a little bit about them and their clients and what they need. And then, more importantly, I would just say it's just like going to a doctor. If you went to a doctor and you had a problem with your heart, you know your general practitioner doesn't operate on your heart. He sends you to a cardiologist or a cardiothoracic surgeon. So you know I see myself as a specialist in our industry and so, rather than doing it yourself, if you want to utilize my services, have me come out and speak in front of your clients or speak in front of a group. I'll be happy to do so.
I've been doing that for 30 plus years, so that's really how they can get information for me. They can go to my website. There's even a chat function, stuart, where they can just chat. Click the chat button on the bottom of my website. So they don't want to contact me, they can just send me a question, or you know something that they want to say and then I'll respond back to them.
Stuart Bell
So so much more accessible.
Yep, this idea you mentioned being a specialist and I think, no matter which industry you're in, there's this idea that we've got in the beyond the book element of leveraging the book.
One of the things I talk about a lot is this idea of complementary, non-competing businesses, so reaching out to those people who aren't direct competitors. But really in this day and age, that idea of who is non-competing it's very close. I think in the old days if there were two CPAs in town and they're literally competing for the same clients because their footprint is the same, 300 businesses within 20 miles. The days of that are long, long gone and the reality is again take a strategic coach, game changer, free zone, frontier, amplifying technique or idea. The reality now is, even if you're thinking competing with someone and even if you're concerned about talking to a Medicare or social security expert because you're a CPA or your financial advisor and you should know it, the reality is the clients are going to get way more benefit and you'll make way more money by talking to a specialist and finding that one thing that has 5, 10% across the board. It's yeah, we're in a different world.
Michael Soos
Well, and the way I look at it is, there's no harm in just talking to me about social security and Medicare. It's not like I'm going to go out and write you know, mutual funds or annuities or life insurance and take business from you. You're using me as a almost an extension of your business or a part of your business. You know a valuable partner, someone who's part of our business, that I can go to, I can pick up the phone and I can call if I have a question. That's a very valuable service in today's day and age.
In the financial services business.
Stuart Bell
Yeah, it evidences the team and the capability way more than the clients. The advisors have the relationship with the clients. That's fine. Keep that. We want to be there behind the scenes providing the capability to amplify everything. The good thing about the podcast being video as well is that people can actually see your face and realize that you don't have two heads or horns. Nice to talk to.
Time goes fast, I say at the end of every episode, but time flies by. It will be really great to check back in in a few months time after another five by five, five by five sequence of views in the book, because I think that will be an eye opener for people and definitely one worth checking back into. So we'll make sure that we put the links to the website and connecting with you in the show notes and our website where the show is hosted so, as people are listening to this, they can just click through and get directly. But again, I just want to say thanks to you time. We've really enjoyed catching up and look forward to hearing more on the next one. Thanks, stuart, I appreciate it. Thanks for the time today, fantastic. Thanks everyone for listening and, as always, we'll catch you in the next one.
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By 90-Minute Books
5
11 ratings
Today on the Book More Show, we have a great conversation with Michael Soos, author of Don't Leave Money on the Table, and a consultant who helps financial advisors create more effective Social Security and Medicare solutions for their clients.
Michael has a wealth of experience and talks about the opportunities advisors have in partnering with a specialist to deliver more value for their clients and create larger income streams for their businesses.
His book is an excellent example of introducing a new idea to people rather than discussing a problem they want to solve. Financial advisors are what we refer to as 'visible prospects' because you can get a list or access that group directly compared with 'invisible prospects' who aren't identified in a list or group for us, for example, people feeling unsure about their Social Security options. Michael uses his book to introduce the idea they are leaving money on the table by not having the capability to offer more comprehensive services and, of course, offers a solution to help.
We also talk about Michael's 5x5x5 outreach strategy, something that can be amplified with a book and something I'd recommend everyone steal!
I really enjoyed this conversation & you'll get many ideas on how to use a book in your business, especially if you're talking with peers.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
LINKS
Michael Soos - LinkedIn
Soos Consulting Group
Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/145
How does your book idea score against the 8 book building blocks we use here all the time: Book Blueprint Scorecard
Titles & Outline Workshops: 90MinuteBooks.com/Workshops
Ready to get started: 90MinuteBooks.com
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 Bookmore show. It's Stuart Bell here again in a rather hot Pennsylvania, so hopefully the lights and the closed windows and the AC off isn't going to make us perspire too much, but excited to share this one with you. We've got another guest author with us, michael Seuss. Michael, how you doing.
Michael Soos
I'm doing great, stuart. Thanks for having me on.
Stuart Bell
Pleasure. I'm excited this is going to be a slightly different take on a subject that perhaps has come up before in the podcast. So our client base, in part because of our relationship with Strategic Coach, crosses over with Financial Advisors a lot, which is the business that you're in. But the book takes a slightly different angle to that. It's not necessarily a consumer facing book, it's more of a peer to peer book. So why don't you start by giving a bit of background about you and the business and then we can transition to the book?
Michael Soos
Sure I would love to. You know I've spent 34 years in the financial services industry with a, you know, major Fortune 500 company. You know, in my tenure there I, you know what I realized very quickly was spending a lot of time with financial advisors, financial planners, cpas, attorneys. You know I don't want to say this in a negative way, but there was really a lack of knowledge and understanding around social security, claiming strategies, successful claiming strategies and their knowledge of Medicare. American College also did a study I think this was years ago where they found out that there was about 17% of financial advisors in the industry that actually felt comfortable talking about social security and Medicare with their clients.
So you know, I've been doing this for a long time. It actually started about 20 years ago with my father, who was 63 at the time and trying to make decisions on what to do with Medicare. There was no real guidance and there was nobody to help my dad and he was just asking neighbors and friends what you know, what they should do. Obviously it's not probably the best advice you should get. So you know, I saw that as a challenge and just really the reason I wrote the book was to provide some guidance and understanding to financial advisors about those claiming strategies so they can help their clients. It's really sort of a you know, a do it all book, you know do it yourself book, but for financial advisors to help their clients understand those strategies.
Stuart Bell
That's the thing understanding the audience of the book, making an assumption of what their baseline knowledge is, so that you're not having to. You can up the level of the content because you're positioning this out of the financial advisor, so it doesn't have to be quite as one-on-one level as it would be if you were writing it for your dad. I was always fascinated. There's a good friend, dale, a marketing guy in Australia. I remember him saying years and years ago there's no niche too small. And at the time the marketing example is around picking very small niches in order to market too, and it's always continued to go smaller than bigger. You can always go smaller than you think. The same goes with financial services. I mean Social Security, medicare is one of those pieces of the puzzle which I've seen that most customers out there think that all financial advisors know all there is to know about this subject. But it's not until you start looking at it that you realize how deep it goes.
Michael Soos
Yeah, it goes very deep and there's a lot of information. I mean, if you just Google Social Security and the Medicare, there's a lot of information out there and you just really don't know where to go or where to turn. But I'll give you a great point of reference. Most advisors don't feel as if they should lead with Social Security and Medicare, and when you think about the average client who may be approaching retirement, the number one thing on their mind is really not their investments per se. It's when do I start my Social Security benefits, how much does Medicare cost, when should I start Medicare and how does that tie into my overall financial plan? So there's a lot of complexities.
I think it's not just you just turn it on and start collecting it and it's that easy. I think it's for advisors. I think it's an overall part of an overall financial plan Sitting down with your clients and figuring out how much income do they need, when do they need it, what's their longevity in their household, what's their health history. There's a lot of different complexities or questions that they can ask and frankly, it leads to a lot of what we call product solutions maybe life insurance or annuities or other types of solutions that might tie in to help them if something happens. So I've taken a great passion at this because of what happened with my dad 20 years ago. But what I'm starting to realize is, through all the questions and all the calls I keep getting from financial advisors saying, can I pick your brain or can I ask you a question? That's why I wrote the book. I wrote it as a guide, really to help advisors help their clients make those important life changing decisions.
Stuart Bell
Right and those important life changing decisions. They are very real decisions. People coming to the conversation. Customers are coming to the conversation at the point in time where they're not 20, they don't have a long runway in order to make changes to decisions. It's this point in the journey, the decisions, that may now really make quite a substantial difference to what their outcome is. When the journey of coming to write the book you mentioned was coming from a lot of the questions that you were getting from other financial advisors, those questions were they just within a peer group and it was just peers asking peers, or was that in the more structured framework, you were going out and soliciting or become known as the go-to person around Social Security and Medicare for financial advisors?
Michael Soos
I actually didn't even know I was going to write a book or, to be honest with you, this came to me from another financial planner who had written a book with 90 minute books and suggested that with all my knowledge that I had on this topic, that I might want to consider that. So I'm not a writer, I'm a good speaker. I've done a lot of presentations before in front of people, but where I came to realize how important it was is that not only was I talking to financial advisors, but I was talking to CPAs attorneys and they were asking me questions and they were inquiring about these strategies and that just told me it's a much bigger issue beyond financial advisors. So if I can help them just understand sort of an encyclopedia of information and then they can consult with me or call me and then I can help them a little bit more, I think that's important.
But I want to make one point that I think is real important and that is if you looked like 20 or 30 years ago, the state of our retirement system is much different than it was today because many people that were retiring with a defined benefit pension plan you know probably 70, 75% of the people working were retiring from their company and they got a pension plan, which is a guaranteed paycheck for life, and then they had Social Security so that's another guaranteed paycheck that they could receive.
And then they had very smaller nest egg. 401ks weren't really even relevant back then, 20 or 30 years ago and they had a small nest egg that they really, you know, relied on. Well, if you think about today, back then there was about 16 workers for every retiree paying into the system and paying taxes. Today there's less than three workers per retiree. People aren't getting pensions anymore. I mean, just ask any company that's hiring. If you ask them what their benefits are, they'll say, well, we have a good, a nice lucrative 401k. And you say, well, what about the pension? And they say, well, we don't have a pension.
Our companies aren't hiring and younger folks today aren't retiring or won't retire with the pension, so they'll have Social Security. It's more of a reliance on that income and then they're going to have to rely on the money that they save or they invest. It was a much you know. Again, it's a much different model than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Social Security was never designed to be your only source of income when you retire. It was designed as a supplement to your existing retirement plan. So you have to look and engage with your advisor or your planner and find out. You know, what other sources of income do I have?
Stuart Bell
And that's an interesting point, isn't it? The design of the system in the first place was never intended to be the sole purpose, because the understanding back then was there were large companies, corporations that were predominantly taking care of the short amount of time that you lived outside of once you'd retired. But the situation now where the responsibility is put back I mean it's not even put back on the individual, it's almost so. As you can tell from the accent, I'm not a local, but oftentimes you hear the this is going to open a can of worms.
I'm only very superficially touching on it, but one of the big things that you hear in the US is our Europeans socialist countries and we don't want socialism. It's the worst possible thing in the world. But in a number of cases, like healthcare and retirement and the two that spring to mind, there was previously a situation where there wasn't socialized care here, but corporations were expected to take care of it. Now we're in a situation where everyone fights against the socialization of it. It doesn't want to get companies, doesn't want to have government involved, but it's also either oblivious or quite happy that companies are no longer involved either. So where the gap falls on the individual, who is probably, out of the three, the least capable, except at the extremes, the least capable of doing anything about it.
Michael Soos
So Well, I'll simplify this for you if you don't mind. I mean and I talked to a lot of advisors about this too you know whether you're retired or you're working Um, it's pretty simple on how you spend your money. Okay, so you have discretionary and non discretionary spending, and I'll give you the example. Discretionary spending you know might be, you know the vacations or the golf, or you like to drink wine, or you know whatever you want to do. You know that's discretionary. That's up to you on how you spend that money.
Non discretionary is your. You know your mortgage, your car payment, your taxes, your bills, your utilities, all those things that you have to pay for. You know I call it the difference between you know the things you have to pay for and the things you want to pay for. Right, the difference. But if you think about the things you have to pay for that non discretionary spending, you need a guaranteed source of income and I can't stress that enough you need a guaranteed paycheck. You're not working anymore. Therefore you need a guaranteed paycheck coming in every month To pay your bills, pay your mortgage, pay your expenses. Even if your mortgage is paid off, you still have insurance, you still have taxes. You still have, you know, other expenses and upkeep.
So the way I just try to simplify it for a lot of folks is you know you need a sense of guaranteed income to cover your non discretionary Expenses, anything above and beyond that. If you don't have, if you have a gap or you need to pay for additional Cost, then you have to create either create your own annuity or create your own guaranteed source of income. You know, to complement that or supplement that. So I mean I try to simplify that because I think a lot of folks don't realize that they need A guaranteed source of income and there's only three. There's only three that folks can rely on Social security, a pension we talked about that before and you know their own nest egg which they can turn into an annuity Ensured by an insurance company that can give them a guaranteed source of income or guaranteed growth. So you know, again, it's education. I always say education without implementation is just entertainment. It's kind of a funny.
Stuart Bell
Yeah.
Michael Soos
You know, if you just tell somebody something and they don't do anything about it, or they don't do anything with the Information, you just entertain them for right.
Stuart Bell
It's not going to move the needle and they have their impending gap that's coming up Exactly this. So we often talk about writing a book, as the book's not the product. The product is the conversation that you're getting in with people. A number of people will write Specifically with a lead generation campaign in mind. I want to attract those outbound customers. That's not your situation. You're most filling a need that was there already, but I think this idea of the book is starting.
The conversation applies just as much, because you could write a textbook Three inches thick trying to cover absolutely everything, but what you've done is positioned it at the right level to give some knowledgeable people Further information. That takes them a step closer, but still it's pretty obvious if they want to really master the subject or go deep, there's more than could be contained in the pages of the book. So did you have, as you were thinking about pulling it together? Did you actually think about what that limit was? What makes sense to be in the book and what is? Maybe it's just going to get into the weeds?
Michael Soos
Yeah, you know, I sat down at you know again, not knowing how to write a book. You know I created the outline and figured out you know what were the most important chapters that I needed to focus on. So, yeah, you know, knowing that there's a lot of information out there, I wanted to simplify it. Give folks, you know, sort of the most important aspects of Social Security and Medicare without you know, without overwhelming them in the book, but also use it almost as a business card or a calling card to have folks call me directly or book a Consultation. Or, you know, give me a call or go to my website or go to my company site and say you know, I need more information or I'd like more information. I want to talk to you a little bit.
I don't expect people to read my book and become experts overnight. I mean, I didn't become an expert overnight. What I do expect them to do is to read it and say you know, can I take action on this? Can I? Is this giving me enough information to say it's important to me and my clients for me to contact Michael Right to have a conversation. It doesn't cost anything to have a conversation with someone. Have a conversation. If you want to go further, we can go further with that, but that's why I, you know that's I use the book, or, you know, I guess, creating the book in mind as an entree, you know, to my business, to open up the door for more people to contact me.
Stuart Bell
Which I think is the best approach that 99% of people and 100% of people listening to this can take. Because, just as you start off by saying in the call, you're not a writer. But we often say to people, if you were a writer, you'd already do this Right, not your business and your financial advisor. What you've got is a lot of good ideas based on all of your experience and all of the knowledge that you've gained over the years. So authoring that idea is separate from the task of having to write it and get it into a book. I think that holds up a lot of people. They do think that they need to be a writer in order to create Something bound together and have pages. But really, what social security, medical may be great examples of it. Even further, because All of the information, just the pure information, is available in government Panplates and books. It is, it's black and white, is what is. But the way that you've authored the idea and brought them together and structured it, and then how you take people when they do phone, through further steps and help them get to that next level, that's really authoring a good idea.
The financial services, the other financial services clients that you work with the other advisors. I'm guessing they're coming to you with all sorts of different levels of understanding In terms of converting a lead that you might get. Who's read the book and reached out for a call Into a client who's actually doing some work? Is your business set up? We've got a relatively formulaic program that brings people on it. They kind of buying a Michael product or is it more of like a service-based thing and you know generally what they're trying to get to?
Michael Soos
but it's very tailored for each individual person at the end of the day, they're buying me right because I'm the product, I'm the service Right. So at the end of the day, I'm leveraging a lot of the relationships I've had over 34 years, people that already know me. I'll give you a great example. My last name is a little bit unique. You mentioned about Europe. My, my name has the orientation in Hungary. That's pronounced shosh in Hungary, in Hungarian, but it means of salt, or of the ground or of salt.
But a lot of people know me by my last name. It's a unique name backwards, forwards, upside down. It's. A lot of people don't even know my first name, they just know my last I. So I created my company in mind. You know, with my last name, people that know me that can come to me and Ask me information or ask me you know anything about. You know social security, and these are folks that already I've already had a relationship with or they've put me in front of their clients or they put me in front of their CPA or their attorney. Obviously I'm trying to forge new relationships and you know the great way of doing that is with the book right.
Yeah get them to read the book. And I'm to understand that you know I am sort of a resident expert in this, in this field, and that if they want to continue going forward, I don't charge anything for my initial consultation or an initial group meeting. If they want me to come in and talk to a Group of advisors or folks, just to see you know, are you interested? Do I have value? And if you find value in what I do, then we can proceed forward. But that's pretty much how I set it up.
Stuart Bell
That's that idea of having a hook around the name and anyone watching the video can see it on their shirt there. That idea of having the hook around the name, it's almost disarming. I used to say when I was in and out of the I've been permanently in the US since 2018, it's 23 as we record now. Prior to that, I was in and out for a number of years and in a number of meetings when I was following up with people, I'd always put in the signature or the British guy with the beard, because in a room full of Americans, when you're meeting 10 new people, they might remember the guy with the weird accent and the beard as opposed to everyone else who was there. So I really love the idea of having a hook because it just kind of gets the conversation going. There's a little bit of history around the name and what it means and it's easy for people to ask questions and start the conversation.
The thought of now that the book is complete, you've got the existence, free of influence and the people who know you, like you, entrust you already. You've got the opportunity when meeting people you can hand it out or follow up with people afterwards. But the idea of now that the book is created, it's the flagpole around which a lot of other content can be created. One of the things I really like to talk to people about, particularly where they've got a very targeted market, is the idea of, for example, linkedin marketing.
Unless we're a champion addict, which most of us aren't, it's always a bit of a headache to think it's something they have to remember to do. But having the book created now in a way that you can just excerpt individual lines or sentences or the key phrase and then elaborate and illuminate it with hey, if this was interesting, there's more. Just get a copy of the book here. Have you thought about that level of not LinkedIn necessarily, but that level of using the content to get out there? Are there any ways that you're excited to try or have tried and have got some traction?
Michael Soos
Yeah, like I think we were speaking personally before, I've done a podcast ready in Atlanta, georgia, with a really good friend of mine who's a mortgage broker and wanted to interview me. He's got a pretty wide audience. So I went down to his home. He's got a video studio in his home and we did a podcast probably a 45 minute podcast on social security and Medicare. But what he also taught me was to create these little snippets of video clips, and so what I did is create sort of a mini video studio in my home.
I don't know much about it, but doing little clips on excerpts and from my book and just simply doing the excerpts and then getting them out on social media, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or whether it be LinkedIn. I have a pretty large network of contacts on my LinkedIn as well and I find that reaches a lot of folks. I'm getting a lot of people messaging me back saying, hey, can I get a copy of your book? Hey, when it comes out, can you send me a copy of it? And it hasn't even come out yet and they want it. So I think using social media today, versus maybe what we did 20 years ago when we didn't have it. I think I'm leveraging that as a tool to get in front of a lot more people.
Stuart Bell
And in a very amplifying and efficient way. I mean, when you think about it, a weekly message, 52 messages to go out. Okay, triple that three times a week. You want to send out a message three times a week 152. No one's going to remember the content even halfway through that cycle. So you could even cut that back to 75 messages, repeat them and no one's going to point out and say, hey, I remember on July the 27th you said exactly the same thing. What's going on? I mean that just doesn't happen.
So there's the opportunity. You've gone out to amplify the book and just take those excerpts, even if you did it like lay the track as you go for the first six months, but now you've got 10 years worth of perpetual content all tied around this one main asset that you become known for and it's self-supporting. I like the idea of this. I think it's a persuasion. It's in persuasion. Robert Chaldini's book, where talks about kind of laying the track three or four steps ahead, often talk about this idea of imagine the customer journey a year down the track. So they've seen a piece of media. They didn't know you before. They've seen a piece of media that resonates with them. They've requested to copy the book and the language is mirrored, in that you're sending them an email sequence to try and engage them in the first instance, and the language is mirrored again. Then they'll reach out to schedule something and the person that's scheduling the thing, or the text on the page where they're scheduling a meeting, again represents or reflects the same language.
Now they eventually, after all of these stages, they're either sat down in front of you or, like we are on zoom, and you start talking to them and saying, okay, the key thing about social security is this idea of needing an annuity, you need a fixed income because you've got all these non-discretionary things that you don't want to stay up at night. They're not hearing that for the first time. It's not getting on a call with Susan. It's the first time that you're hearing it, it's the eighth time. They've heard it in all sorts of different ways.
And the likelihood of them taking action the point you made before we're not doing this for entertainment, we're doing it for education and movement, all of these persuasion things with all of the authority that books brings to it and all of the authority that social media at presence brings to it. But the fact that when they sit down in front of you. You know eight, nine, ten steps down the process. That, I think, is something that is so undervalued, because people think about writing a book, because they want to write a book, they don't necessarily think about all that. They want something to have in a campaign, they don't necessarily think of all of it. But yeah, that idea of really reinforcing your approach is a game changer.
Michael Soos
I'll give you a great example, and I've been using this for 20 plus years now, even with the evolution of social media. I called it my five by five campaign and essentially what that meant was is if I wanted to reach, let's say, 125 people, I could obviously take 125 copies of my book and send it out today. But I would also challenge you that if all 125 of those people picked up my book and said they want to reach Michael Seuss and called me, I don't have the capacity to follow up with 125 people. So I created this concept of five by five, which simply breaks it into three parts. It breaks it into an email, sending it out directly through the mail, and then follow up with a phone call. So email send it out and then a phone call, and I do five people a day, five days a week, times five weeks. At the end of those five weeks I measure what my results are or what the progress was at the end of those five weeks.
Now, if you think about that, if I send out five on Monday and they receive five copies of my book and I follow up with them, let's say, on Wednesday or Thursday, I only have to make five phone calls. If I make five phone calls, I follow up with those five people. When I might get two or three of them that are interested the next day, I just do it all over again. Follow up with five. Again, I have the capacity to do five. I don't know if I have the capacity to do 125 right and the overwhelm.
Stuart Bell
I mean going into it thinking, okay, I've got, I just need to do these five things today and I'm only going to do it for five weeks and then, if I hate it, I can never touch it again. But it's a commitment that's doable. Going into something with a list of 125 names, I mean that's overwhelming. Even generating the list in the first place, that's an interesting question actually. So this idea of reaching out to those five, or to get the 5555 in terms of the names that you reach out to, is that for someone listening thinking, hey, that's a great idea. I'm not a financial advisor, I'm not in Michael's neck in the woods, but I want to steal it. But where do you typically get those names from? Are they existing clients you're re-engaging with, or lists that you're buying, or well, it's really dependent on your market.
Michael Soos
Really depending, stuart. You know, in my market I have a network of financial advisors. I mean I can go down my street here and there's, you know, 30 financial advisors up and down my street. So you know, you could either go in, you know, go and look up financial advisors in your area and if there's somebody with a different market or a different business, they can do the same thing or they can use their existing network. I mean I'll challenge everybody on this call.
I mean I'm sure if I asked you and I said you had to do it, in order to write your book you have to come up with a list of 125 names, you would write down 125 names, whether you knew them personally or you didn't. You would come up with those names and that's where you really start with that list. Scratch them off if you don't really want them, but you know, create the list and then figure out. There's no importance over who are the first five, who are the second five, it doesn't matter, it's just having a process. Yeah, and most people they start marketing and they don't measure their progress, they don't measure how successful that marketing is. That's why it did the five by five, because after five weeks I can sit down and study it, observe it, understand it. You know, did I have success with it? Do I need to do ten a day? Do I need to do three a day? Do I need to switch it up a little bit? You know I can change it if I want to do that right, but I think you know, not just to give you a plug on 90 minute books, but, going back to what we said before, I'm not a writer, I'm a speaker, I'm an educator. I've been in the business a long time. I know what I know and I know how I want to communicate it, but I didn't know that I could actually write a book before.
I mean, I thought it was a very complicated process. I have to give 90 minute books a lot of. I know you didn't ask me to do this, but I have to give them a lot, a lot of praise because they made the process very simple, very easy. And doing the transcription, you know, interviewing you and just going through. You know that was a lot easier for me than sitting down and writing my own book on my own. You know, just going through and editing the transcription and then, once we edit it, you realize it's actually, and now and now it's a book or the contents of a book, and then you can add to it, delete from it, take away from it. You know whatever you want to do. It made the process so much easier for me. But, as you know, you have to invest in yourself and invest in your business. So if you're not, then you're not going to get anything out of it. But I give I give 90 minute a lot of credit. I would have never done it if I had not engaged with your company.
Stuart Bell
Appreciate it. I mean, this is when, just before we started to recording, I was kind of giving you the background and saying that we're doing more guest interviews now with authors because, if nothing else, people for the first hundred or so episodes, I can only say you should write a book so many times. But one of the I guess, not surprising but certainly unanticipated benefits of doing it was the enthusiasm that people bring to the calls and the real life stories and examples of how people are using or plan to use it, the fact that it's done, it being a thing that they would never get around to doing. So I mean, I don't often think about the kind of world-changing opportunity that we've got, but now, having done over a thousand books, that's a thousand ideas that the majority of them wouldn't have got out there, and definitely not out there in that way and not by that person, were it not for, like I said, the straightforward process that we've got in taking what is perceived to be a big, difficult process and just stripping it down into the most kind of like lean, effective version to be able to use in something like the five by five funnel and just go back to that. I'm going to credit you when I steal this idea and share it with people in the future.
But I often have strategy calls with people as they've got to them in the process and I've got five things which are low hanging fruit that everyone can do, which stem from a number of calls, but this isn't on that list. I'm going to add it now. How straightforward is it? Like I say, anyone can create that list. When we were talking mentally, that immediately came up as a block for me oh yeah, that's that I could do that. That definitely sounds like something I could and should do.
Oh, but the list, the list. But you immediately got rid of that barrier because if I was forced to write down 125 names, I could do it. If I didn't want to do that, I could give it to one of the team and they could do it. If they didn't want to do it, I could give it to someone on up desk, or I work, work rather and outsource it and probably in July 2023, I could go to chat TTP and get chat TTP to give me a reasonable first draft. So just to be able to get that done and then reaching out becomes straightforward. And what a benefit. It'll be interesting once the books. Like you mentioned, we're just in the final stages of wrapping up the book, but it'll be really interesting to check back in six months or 12 months and say okay, you've got the stats from a five by five three years ago, when you were using something else. What differences it made now that, on the delivery stage, you're actually delivering your own book. That'll be really interesting to hear.
Michael Soos
Well, and think about it. You know, in order for me to do five by five, I have to order 125 copies of my book. That's investing in my business, right, and so if I don't, if I don't commit to that, then it's not going to work. So otherwise it's just money, money that I've spent that's lost. So it almost forces you. You know, a lot of times we don't think about the simple things, but you have to master the simple things and what I just said about five by five. Anybody can do that, and you anyone, any business. You don't have to be in financial services to do it. If you have any, if you're a baker or you're, you know, whatever it might be, you're in the stationary business, whatever. You know 125 people. There's a lot of people that need stationary, a lot of people that like to eat cookies and you know baked, baked items. So there's a lot of folks out there that need our services and need our ideas, and just simplifying those and mastering the simple things I think is important.
Stuart Bell
Yeah, I'm excited to check back in down the track and pinch this as an idea to share with other people and then feedback to you how they're doing with it, because oftentimes we get to the finish line less so now, but in the early days at least we get to the finish line of getting someone's book created and then it's, everyone reads aside relief and that's it, whereas really having the book done is the first step of everything. It's really the point zero, the base camp then, because the book's not a product, it's the right rules, everything else. So, in sharing with people okay, I'm getting to be finished Now what I can do now, what can I do? Rather, this is definitely getting handed to the list of what you can and should do and definitely, when I share this with people, I'm credit crediting you.
We've got I mentioned before we've had large footprint with financial advisors, just in part from our history and in part from relationship with coach. As people are listening to this and perhaps financial advisors are there thinking I've got a great business here, but some specialization in social security medical would really move the needle. What's a good place for people to find out more about what you do and, ultimately, what you offer?
Michael Soos
Well, they could just go to. I mean, if they want to just go to my website, I have the information on there. The book obviously is not out yet, but it says coming soon and there's my podcast and I'll probably put this podcast on there as well. They can go to soosconsultinggroup.com that's my last name, s o o s consulting groupcom very easy. Go there and they can find out a little bit about me, my bio or company, and what we do in our services. They want to book an initial consultation. They can do so.
Like I said, I don't charge anything for an initial consultation or just have a conversation with someone to find out a little bit about them and their clients and what they need. And then, more importantly, I would just say it's just like going to a doctor. If you went to a doctor and you had a problem with your heart, you know your general practitioner doesn't operate on your heart. He sends you to a cardiologist or a cardiothoracic surgeon. So you know I see myself as a specialist in our industry and so, rather than doing it yourself, if you want to utilize my services, have me come out and speak in front of your clients or speak in front of a group. I'll be happy to do so.
I've been doing that for 30 plus years, so that's really how they can get information for me. They can go to my website. There's even a chat function, stuart, where they can just chat. Click the chat button on the bottom of my website. So they don't want to contact me, they can just send me a question, or you know something that they want to say and then I'll respond back to them.
Stuart Bell
So so much more accessible.
Yep, this idea you mentioned being a specialist and I think, no matter which industry you're in, there's this idea that we've got in the beyond the book element of leveraging the book.
One of the things I talk about a lot is this idea of complementary, non-competing businesses, so reaching out to those people who aren't direct competitors. But really in this day and age, that idea of who is non-competing it's very close. I think in the old days if there were two CPAs in town and they're literally competing for the same clients because their footprint is the same, 300 businesses within 20 miles. The days of that are long, long gone and the reality is again take a strategic coach, game changer, free zone, frontier, amplifying technique or idea. The reality now is, even if you're thinking competing with someone and even if you're concerned about talking to a Medicare or social security expert because you're a CPA or your financial advisor and you should know it, the reality is the clients are going to get way more benefit and you'll make way more money by talking to a specialist and finding that one thing that has 5, 10% across the board. It's yeah, we're in a different world.
Michael Soos
Well, and the way I look at it is, there's no harm in just talking to me about social security and Medicare. It's not like I'm going to go out and write you know, mutual funds or annuities or life insurance and take business from you. You're using me as a almost an extension of your business or a part of your business. You know a valuable partner, someone who's part of our business, that I can go to, I can pick up the phone and I can call if I have a question. That's a very valuable service in today's day and age.
In the financial services business.
Stuart Bell
Yeah, it evidences the team and the capability way more than the clients. The advisors have the relationship with the clients. That's fine. Keep that. We want to be there behind the scenes providing the capability to amplify everything. The good thing about the podcast being video as well is that people can actually see your face and realize that you don't have two heads or horns. Nice to talk to.
Time goes fast, I say at the end of every episode, but time flies by. It will be really great to check back in in a few months time after another five by five, five by five sequence of views in the book, because I think that will be an eye opener for people and definitely one worth checking back into. So we'll make sure that we put the links to the website and connecting with you in the show notes and our website where the show is hosted so, as people are listening to this, they can just click through and get directly. But again, I just want to say thanks to you time. We've really enjoyed catching up and look forward to hearing more on the next one. Thanks, stuart, I appreciate it. Thanks for the time today, fantastic. Thanks everyone for listening and, as always, we'll catch you in the next one.