This is a short update to my 2012 post Certified Financial Shammer, wherein I discussed an article by Roccy DeFrancesco, JD, CWPP™, CAPP™, CMP™ that appeared in a 2005 issue of the trade journal Financial Planning. At that time, Mr. DeFranseso advised his financial planner readership to buy a ghost-written financial advice book, the purpose of which was to impress prospective clients:
Most financial advisers buy ghost books simply for credibility… I can’t count how many times a month I tell clients, “I cover that topic in my book.”
Well, it seems the worm has turned, so to speak. I recently stumbled on this page on the Strategic Marketing Partners (marketing services for financial professionals) website:
“When I wrote my first book, I stopped handing out business cards. It became instantly clear that handing out a book with my name on the cover was a much better way to get someone’s attention than to give them a business card.”
“The days of doing ghost books are over. However, the days of writing the Foreword for books is here. Advisors who work with Strategic Marketing Partners have the ability to write the Foreword for four of my books. It’s one of the best marketing tools you can use and I strongly recommend you consider stepping up your game by doing so.” — Roccy DeFrancesco, JD, CWPP, CAPP, CMP
Some people cannot imagine that the person sitting across the desk, who looks so sincere, who may even live in their neighborhood, who is listening to them and offering to help them with their money issues, could be anything else but the modern incarnation of a financial Atticus Finch. Allow me to point out that the smell of money attracts sharks, and sharks try to conceal their presence. Remember this the next time your financial advisor invites you to read his or her Foreword.
• I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, the era of brands. My parents had a CBS, Pepsi and Miracle Whip house. Others lived in an NBC, Coke and Hellman’s mayonnaise house. Before I got married, I thought Miracle Whip was mayonnaise. It was the same color.
You cannot wait to get past me, I know that. I know that my doing seven miles over the speed limit isn’t enough for you — otherwise, you wouldn’t be showing me the filaments in your headlights. So you pass me, and then you move to the right lane to get around the next person, and then you zoom ahead until you are on the tail of yet another person, and when she moves aside, you speed past, then cut in front of her and exit the interstate.
You are not a driver — you are a person, responsible for your actions. Whatever your agenda is, I didn’t sign up for it, and neither of us want me to be part of it.
Since I am good at math, let me do some of it for you. I assume you have a 30-minute commute — 8 minutes on surface streets, 22 on the local interstate. The average speed on the interstate is 66 mph (vs a speed limit of 60) but you feel entitled to do 72 mph. If you maintain or beat that speed, you will shave two minutes from your 30-minute commute.
Two minutes. The length of two signal cycles. Two red lights.
I would like to put you, the person behind me whose nosehairs I could trim using my rearview mirror, on notice: saving two red-lights worth of your time does not justify the risk of a collision, for you or for me. So, as you race by, I ask you to think of our fleeting freeway encounter in terms of something closer to your heart: auto insurance premiums usually go up 40% after a claim is made. Sweetheart.