FINANCIAL ADVISORS · By Steve Gordon, Founder, Million Dollar Author · 8 min read · Updated 2026
One advisor brought his book to every meeting. The yeses skyrocketed.
Advisors win on trust, and trust usually comes after the first meeting. These advisors earned it before.
The book on the table
Curt Radetich is a financial advisor, and he does one small thing in every client meeting.
He puts his book on the table.
Right there, where the person across from him can see it and pick it up.
The book is Future-Proof Wealth Strategies.
Then he told us what happened.
"I've been showcasing this book in every meeting, and my conversion rate skyrocketed. 75 to 85%. The yeses just skyrocketed. It brought really complicated investment strategies into layman's terms, which was my ultimate goal, and it wasn't small dollar amounts."
Read that last line again.
"It wasn't small dollar amounts."
These were people deciding who to trust with serious money.
And more of them said yes.
Let me show you why, with a few advisors we've worked with.
"Would this work in my field?"
If you're an advisor, that's a fair thing to ask.
A lot of the stories I tell are about consultants and coaches. Their clients hire them to fix a sales team or grow a company.
Your clients hand you their retirement. Their kids' college money. The check from selling the business they spent 30 years building.
That's personal.
Nobody hands that over because they liked a post on LinkedIn.
The hard part comes before you ever meet.
A prospect has to decide whether to trust you with their money before they've ever seen how you think.
And from the outside, most advisors look alike. The same letters after the name. The same smiling team photo on the website. The same promise to plan for your future.
The prospect can't tell who's really good. Not until after they've picked someone.
A book solves that. They get to sit with your ideas at their kitchen table, on their own time, with nobody selling them anything.
By the time they meet you, they already know how you think. Most of the hard part is done.
I learned this with my own first book, years before I worked with a single advisor. That book changed my own firm first. The full story is here.
The only author in the room
Rob Ibrahim is a financial advisor and one of our clients. He runs his practice with his son, Chris. Rob puts it this way:
"I've been in the business for 30 years. Chris and I have been together 10. People like that longevity."
Thirty years is a real edge.
But plenty of advisors have been around a long time. Years alone don't make a prospect pick you.
When Rob decided to write a book, the pushback came from inside his own office. From Chris.
"Dad, why do you want to spend all that money? Then he came back wanting to co-author it. I go, get out of here!"
I love that one.
The skeptic in the family turned into the guy who wanted in.
Rob likes to point out that most of his prospects already have an advisor.
Picture a prospect sitting across from Rob.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he's comparing. The advisor he has now is probably a nice guy. Probably knows his stuff.
But he never wrote any of it down.
Rob did.
Referrals that show up already sold
Most advisors I talk to built their practice on referrals.
Good. Keep them.
But think about what a referral usually brings you. A name. A phone number. Maybe a line like, "You should talk to my guy."
Then you start from zero on the first call.
One of our clients, John Curry, is a financial advisor. He once gave two signed copies of his book to the man who came to quote his roof. The roofer asked for an appointment before the weekend was over.
His meetings look different now, too.
Prospects walk in with sticky notes all through his book. Pages marked.
They already know how John works before they sit down.
And every copy John signs carries the same line:
"I wish you a secure retirement. Let me know if I can be of service."
That's it. No pitch.
So when one of John's clients passes a signed copy to a friend, the friend isn't getting a name and a number. He's getting John's whole approach, plus a note in John's own words.
"My topic is too dry"
Some advisors tell me nobody wants to read about money.
I get why you'd think that. Retirement income and insurance policies aren't beach reading.
John Curry didn't let that stop him.
After his book came out, he sent two emails.
52 people wrote back.
37 of them showed up to his webinar.
11 booked appointments.
And he sold policies.
Two emails.
So now, when an advisor tells me his topic is too dry, I tell him what I learned from John: "If they'll read a life insurance book, they'll read yours."
When the book is about their own money, people read it.
The math for an advisor
Now the question you've been waiting to ask.
Is it worth the money?
Rob wondered too. So did his son and partner, Chris, out loud. Rob landed here:
"I found out it's peanuts compared to getting one new $2 million client, which is kind of what we're doing."
For an advisor, one good client can mean years of fees.
One of our clients, M.C. Laubscher, a wealth advisor, covered his whole investment within two weeks of launch. It came from one deal with a client he already had.
Most of the people we work with need one to three new clients to cover the cost.
The guarantee is simple. If your service sells for $10,000 or more and you finish 80% of the launch steps, you'll have your investment back within 90 days of publishing. If not, I stay with you until you do.
We've never had to.
You won't write a word of it
In the first week, you'll talk with us for about eight hours.
Over the next couple of months, you'll spend 12 to 15 hours marking up drafts.
Start to finish, it takes about 90 days.
Then comes the part most publishers and ghostwriters skip. They hand you a finished book and wish you luck.
We build the plan that gets your book into the hands of the people you want as clients. For an advisor, that means the way trust already travels: referrals, introductions, and sitting across the table.
Is this for you?
It's a good fit if:
- You've built an established practice, with staff behind you
- Each new client is worth $10,000 or more to your practice
- Your clients love you, and not enough of the right people have heard of you
- You'd rather have prospects arrive already trusting you
If that sounds like you, the next step is small.
It's a 20-minute call with my team. They'll ask about your practice and your ideal clients. From there, you'll talk with one of our book strategists.
By the end of the second call, you'll know:
- Whether your practice is ready for a book right now
- Which topic your book should take on
- How it can make you the advisor people in your market think of first
- How many clients it could bring you, and what one of them is worth to your practice
- Where to put it first, so it starts working in meetings you already have
And if a book isn't the right move for you yet, we'll say so.
Next time a prospect sits across from you, picture your book on the table between you.
They pick it up. They turn it over. They start reading the back while you pour the coffee.
By the time the coffee's poured, they already know how you think.
Steve "bring the book" Gordon
P.S. Curt's move wasn't complicated. He put his book on the table in meetings he was already having. If your calendar has meetings on it, you already have a place for your book to go to work. Book your 20-minute call