Books
“I just started reading your book The Synergy Effect and it is awesome.”
Cody Foster, Founder, Advisors Excel
BUCKETS OF LEADS – The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Facebook – 107 illustrations and 169 pages of examples and step-by-step instructions.
Discover how to unleash the power of Facebook advertising to generate leads and promote attendance to your workshops. Why pay hundreds of dollars for leads that others use Facebook to generate? You’ll learn how to generate your own leads in this step-by-step guide, written specifically for insurance agents and financial advisors.
Bucket of Leads
BUCKETS OF LEADS – The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Facebook
107 illustrations and 169 pages of examples and step-by-step instructions.
Discover how to unleash the power of Facebook advertising to generate leads and promote attendance to your workshops. Why pay hundreds of dollars for leads that others use Facebook to generate? You’ll learn how to generate your own leads in this step-by-step guide written specifically for insurance agents and financial advisors.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Lessons From The World’s Greatest Lead Generator
Learn how an ordinary agent built an insurance empire by mastering the art of lead generation.
Chapter 2: Facebook Ads Manager
Step-by-step instructions for using your Facebook Ads Manager account to start running your ads.
Chapter 3: Setting Up Campaigns
Setting the right objective is an important first step for creating high performing Facebook campaigns.
Chapter 4: Saved Audiences: Finding Your Niche
How to target audiences based on the prospect’s geographic location, age, income, and other demographic criteria.
Chapter 5: Four Steps to Lead Generation
This chapter’s 22 illustrations will help you create your entire lead campaign strategy.
Chapter 6: Facebook’s Crown Jewels: Triggers, Retargeting and Custom Audiences
Unleash the power of Facebook by using if/then triggers to retarget your most interested prospects.
Chapter 7: Sequencing: Building Your Lead Machine
With sequencing, you can built an automated lead machine designed to convert prospects into actionable leads.
Chapter 8: Video: The King of Target Marketing
Video is a powerful lead format. This chapter shows you how to film effective presentations using the camera on your smartphone.
Chapter 9: Limits? It’s Always Either Budget or Audience Size
With the help of this chapter’s 19 illustrations, you’ll learn strategies for dealing with small audiences or too small of a budget.
Chapter 10: Building Your Workshop RSVP Machine
Follow this chapter’s step-by-step campaign example to see how to use Facebook to promote your workshops.
Chapter 11: You, the Lead Generating Mogul
Running your own Facebook ads allows the focus to be on you and how you help your clients.
Order Your Copy of Buckets of Leads!
This book is the easiest and best way for insurance agents and financial advisors to learn how to use Facebook to generate leads and promote workshops. With over 100 illustrations and step-by-step instructions, you’ll have your first campaign ready to test in no time. And there is no better time to get started than right now!
The Synergy Effect – The Advisor’s Guide: Traditional financial planning simply doesn’t address how the world has changed, and in fact, continues to reject the only products and methods that have a chance of providing tax-advantaged permanent income.
Only the life insurance and annuity professional who fully understands these products, plus Roth-Ira conversions, and the profound impact they can have on reducing Social Security taxation and boosting spendable income can do the job that millions of baby boomers need done. Read this book and you will learn about an innovative, integrated strategy that will make the insurance and annuity professional the most important member of the retirement planning team.
The Synergy Effect
A revolutionary strategy that connects and combines Social Security claiming strategies with IULs, Annuities, and Roth IRAs to boost spendable income in a way traditional planning can’t.
One of the newest and hottest topics in the financial services industry is helping clients understand and maximize their future Social Security benefits. This can be a great way to help clients boost “gross” retirement income. But what clients really want is a way to boost after-tax spendable income. As a life insurance agent and annuity professional, you are the only person with the right products that, when combined properly with the right Social Security strategy, can boost income and slash taxes.
Traditional Financial Planning is Broken
When clients seek retirement planning, they’re typically presented with “old school” concepts and tactics. Tax deferred savings. Asset allocation. And a so-called “safe” withdrawal rate. Start them up and retirement’s more secure, right?
Wrong. If the financial meltdown of 2008/09 proved anything, it was that clients aren’t protected by traditional planning. And even when traditional planning does increase retirement income, it attracts hugh problems in the process. Like higher taxation.
The result? After taxes the high-gross-income retiree is left with a spendable portion that can’t support his or her retirement dreams. If they withdraw more they increase taxes and run the risk of depleting their savings. The solution? “The Synergy Effect” that comes from your life insurance and annuity products when correctly combined with Social Security.
“It’s not how much retirement income your clients have, but how much they have left to spend”
~Doug Warren, CLU
Today, multiple forces are chipping away at spendable retirement income:
> Market losses and uncertainty
> Lower interest earnings on savings
> Higher taxation
> Higher medical and long term care costs
> Flawed social security claiming strategies
> Client risk aversion
To many planners, the solution is a piecemeal approach: patching up plans with 410ks, IRAs and CDs — while ignoring the flood of forces sweeping the financial world. More recently life insurance professionals have tried to help by positioning life insurance as a source of tax free retirement funds. But even planning that reduces taxes can’t succeed — by itself. In fact, these days, no single tactic can provide stable, lifelong spendable income.
To truly help clients, professionals need a double arsenal:
1. Integrated Know-How: Life insurance and annuity professionals need to fully understand IULs and income annuities, plus Roth IRA conversions — and the profound impact they can have on reducing Social Security taxation and boosting spendable income.
2. Integrated Tools: Life insurance agents have the exact combination of products, fine-tuned to deal with a changing financial world.
Clients want and need protection against market risk…“Indexing” delivers
Clients want and need protection against taxes destroying their futures as well as the legacies they leave their loved ones…Life insurance contracts deliver
Clients want and need guaranteed lifetime incomes…Income annuities deliver
Clients need greater spendable retirement income…
“The Synergy Effect” delivers by integrating IULs, Annuities, Roth IRAs and breakthrough Social Security claiming strategies — to do what no other planning system can.
Synergy Selling: Step by step to higher income for clients
“The Synergy Effect” book explains in detail a series of connected strategies for achieving greater spendable income. For instance, with the right “claiming strategy,” many clients could almost double their lifetime Social Security income. Instead of $23,000 a year, a married couple might be able to get $40,000 or more for life.
In Chapters 2 and 3 on Social Security you’ll learn:
> Why 70% of all Americans get only a fraction of what they could from Social Security
> How to find Uncle Sam’s “best offer” that will boost Social Security benefits by 60%, 80% of more.
> The concept of “trading IRA dollars for SSI dollars” and how it can save your clients a fortune in taxes
> How to use the “File and Suspend” strategy to get $30,000, $40,000 or more free money for your married clients
> Plus, these chapters alone contain over 40 links to articles and resources, ranging from the Wall Street Journal, The CPA Journal, and Forbes that you can use to show your clients that your strategies are sound.
But Social Security strategies alone may not boost spendable income enough. Before a client can enjoy this increased income, he or she must reduce the taxes on that income. And traditional financial planning doesn’t do the job. Most often, it combines Social Security income with distributions from traditional IRAs and 401(k)s that only make the tax problem worse. Worse still, income from these sources are often decimated by stock market swings.
In Chapter 4 and 5 you’ll learn strategies for combining Social Security with permanent life insurance to boost income and reduce taxation:
> The 3 tests used by the IRS to calculate SSI taxation and which will result in the lowest tax
> Why understanding the “provisional income” formula is key to reducing taxation during retirement
> The tax-slashing opportunities of combining SSI with cash value loans and Roth IRAs
> Plus 18 more links to articles and online papers, many from respected scholars whose view on the wisdom of deferring taxes may surprise you.
Chapter 6 and 7 provide an advance view of indexed universal life. In it you’ll learn:
> About the “Cash Value / Death Benefit Spectrum” and how it impacts your ability to optimize an IUL for maximum wealth accumulation and distributions
> An easy way to understand TEFRA, DEFRA and TAMRA and the other tax laws that must be followed in order to deliver on the promise of tax free access at retirement
> How to account for every penny of your client’s premium payments that go to cover the loads, fees and charges of an IUL
> Why your IUL’s loan provisions may be the most important part of the contract and how one can provide up to 16% or more income throughout retirement
Chapter 8 focuses on Roth IRAs and shows when and how to incorporate them into a retirement income plan. In it you’ll learn:
> The difference between qualified and non-qualified Roth IRA distributions
> When the 10% penalty may apply to Roth IRA distributions and how to avoid it
> When and why it may be better to use an IUL, or a Roth IRA, or a combination of the two to build retirement income streams
Chapters 9 and 10 are devoted to the tried and true annuity products that have been available for decades. What’s new, is the “how to” integration of annuities with other financial instruments to create “The Synergy Effect”. You’ll learn:
> Why “mortality credits” grow annuities income the way that no other product can
> How annuities can help to more safely grow the returns of other “riskier” investments in a portfolio
> How “sequence of returns risk” can decimate the most carefully constructed investment portfolio and why adding annuities is the best way to combat it
> Plus 13 more links to articles from sources like the U.S. Government Accountability Office, U.S. Dept. of Labor, Barrons, Wharton Center of Personal Finance and others that support a greater use of annuities in retirement planning
So far, so good. But “The Synergy Effect” strategy goes a step farther by showing how annuities can be combined with Roth IRA conversions and Social Security claiming strategies — to significantly grow guaranteed lifetime spendable income that’s tax free.
Chapter 11 of “The Synergy Effect” is titled “The Great 401(k) Catastrophe” for good reason. In it you’ll learn:
> The facts that prove that the do-it-yourself investing nature of 401(k)s have failed so many participants
> The fallacy of the so-called “safe withdrawal rate” and why many experts are taken a much different view of the problems associated with using 401(k)s to provide retirement income
> How excessive fees have taken poor performance and made it worse
> Plus 7 more links to articles and online papers that cast doubt on the wisdom of postponing taxation
“The Synergy Effect” strategy eliminates many of the problems of traditional planning by connecting IULs, strategic Roth conversions and annuities to build tax advantaged, predictable sources of income — sources that, when combined with Social Security, can dramatically grow spendable retirement income.
In Chapter 12 you’ll find 65 pages devoted to detailed case studies proving how “The Synergy Effect” can boost spendable retirement income. You’ll learn:
> How the “file and suspend” strategy was used in one study to generate an extra $71,146 of free additional SSI payments in only four years
> Strategies for integrating a client’s existing retirement accounts with IULs and annuities
> Examples of coordinating Social Security with all other income streams to boost lifetime spendable income
> The potentially devastating impact of the tax risk, sequence of returns risk, longevity risk and inflation risk and how the right combination of IULs, annuities, Roth IRAs and Social Security can help manage them all
The Ultimate “How-to”
“The Synergy Effect” book not only contains step-by-step instructions and detailed case studies, it’s also packed with over 80 links to supporting articles and research papers that you can refer to as you help your clients plan for retirement.
A System for the Seasoned Pro, Too
As an experienced advisor, you may already know the advantages of permanent life insurance, Roth IRA conversions and Social Security claiming strategies. But after you read “The Synergy Effect”, you’ll see how to draw all of these elements together to help your clients manage risk — and significantly boost spendable retirement income.
An Opportunity to Grow Your Prospect List
Most advisors box themselves in by thinking, “I market annuities” or “I recommend IULs.” Or maybe “Because I work with older prospects I have to focus on annuities.” Or “I work with younger prospects so life insurance is my product of choice.” “The Synergy Effect” proves these stereotypes wrong. Annuities can be a great option for a younger client with an IRA or other qualified plan. IULs can be perfect for the older client that needs upside potential with safety and tax advantages.
By leveraging the interaction of annuities and IULs, “The Synergy Effect” allows advisors to capitalize on their current strengths — while cultivating a much broader field of prospects.
It’s all here in a new ground breaking 309-page book with detailed strategies, case studies, over 80 third-party resources that allow you to help more clients, build your practice, and much more….
Indexed Universal Life Unleashed: The book that rattled retirement funding forever! The agent’s complete guide to unleashing the power of the greatest wealth accumulation vehicle of our time.
In this book Doug simplifies complex strategies to show you how to unleash the wealth building power of IULs to help your clients enjoy the retirement with dignity they deserve. It’s all here and more in a 168 page quick read that gets you up to speed fast and gives you the confidence to start showing your clients why IULs just might be the perfect product for our uncertain times.
Indexed Universal Life Unleashed
Boomers are retiring at the clip over 10,000 a day, and need to max their savings to make it through retirement–especially in the face of huge looming tax hikes. Now–just in time–they (and you!) have the greatest wealth accumulating vehicle of our time in IULs, and Doug simplifies complex strategies to unleash its full wealth building power and make it a cakewalk to show clients the advantages…
The 4 huge advantages of a properly structured IUL
• The biggie!…A tax-wise source of retirement income
• Higher cap rates mean potentially far greater returns—100% free of the risk of market based losses!
• Acceleration of death benefit to help pay for long-term care! Finally a long-term care solution that’s acceptable! Most IUL carriers now offer LTC riders that accelerate the death benefit in case of catastrophic medical expense. Boomers and seniors always wanted LTC …they just didn’t want to lay out 3-4 thousand a year for something they may never use.
PLUS…answers to all the possible “stumble” questions clients may raise
Q – How can the IUL cap rates be so much higher than indexed annuity cap rates?
A – You’ll learn the answer on pages 113-115. Hint: With the IUL the insurance company has more money to purchase more call options.
Q – Why would a client buy an IUL when the illustration shows that the policy could lapse after twenty years?
A – You’ll learn the answer on pages 163-167. Hint: Non-guaranteed mortality charges are a primary causes for an early lapse. You’ll learn a simple way that client’s can offset any possible increases without paying additional premiums.
Q – I’m worried that many of my older clients would be declined for health reasons and not qualify for an IUL.
A – Read pages 52-54 and you’ll learn how it may be possible to provide the wealth building power of IULs no matter what your clients age or health status. Hint: The answer lies in survivorship IUL and surrogate insureds.
Q – Doesn’t an IUL have loads and fees that aren’t in my annuity?
A – Read pages 111-112 and you will learn exactly what the loads and fees are in an IUL. More importantly read chapter 10 and you will learn the best way to show clients why these loads and fees are more than offset by the advantages of a properly structured UL.
Q – I already understand IULs and the marketing organization I work with runs my illustrations for me.
A – Read chapter four and you will never allow anyone else to every run your illustrations again. Hint: Probably 90% of the illustrations run by “cubical people” are poorly designed when it comes to building wealth for your clients. You will learn the principals that will lead you to designing IULs that squeeze every last ounce of wealth building power out of the policy to benefit your clients.
You will also learn:
• Chapter 4… Why a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC) is likely a better option for your senior clients than a single premium indexed annuity. Hint: A MEC IUL has a much higher cap, a long term care rider and the death benefit is income tax free. No indexed annuity can beat that.
• Chapter 5…The best sources of funds for your baby-boomer clients to put into an IUL. Hint: Diverting a portion of the clients 401(k) contributions is a good one but there are seven others that might even be better.
• Chapter 6… Why an IUL is better than a Roth IRA for many of your baby boomer and senior clients. Hint: If you have read Doug Warren’s other book “The Great Roth-IRA Rush” or have heard him speak than you already know the answer.
• Chapter 8… Learn how to combine “hybrid annuities” with IULs to provide your baby boomer clients with the best possible combination of tax favored retirement income and guaranteed safety
• Chapter 9… Learn how your senior clients can use their IRAs to fund IULs and help protect their children from drug addiction, bad marriages and poor money management.
It’s all here and more in a 168 page quick-read that gets you up to speed fast and gives you the confidence to start moving the big Boomer money into IULs right away.
How to Avoid a High Wire Retirement: Introducing the book that brings it all together… How to Avoid a High Wire Retirement is comprehensive, easy-to-follow book showing clients strategies that will put them in control of their retirement future. Readers will learn simple but powerful concepts that can protect their savings and effectively manage the risks that can threaten security and peace of mind.
The principles that readers will learn are rock-solid and time-tested. The strategies are easy to follow and implement. And the retirement success those strategies will bring is not dependent on good luck, good timing or good fortune.
How to Avoid a High Wire Retirement
Introducing the book that brings it all together… How to Avoid a High Wire Retirement is comprehensive, easy-to-follow book showing clients strategies that will put them in control of their retirement future. Readers will learn simple but powerful concepts that can protect their savings and effectively manage the risks that can threaten security and peace of mind.
How to Avoid a High Wire Retirement is the ideal book for advisors to give to clients and prospective clients. For the first time, one easy to read book shows consumers the importance of using our safe-money products to build a retirement filled with security and independence.
There are some basic concepts that consumers must understand and appreciate before they truly see the value of your products and services. They must recognize the importance of:
• Lifelong income and how to properly integrate it in an overall plan.
• The importance of being tax-wise when building future sources of retirement income.
• Social Security’s tax torpedo and how advance planning can help some people reduce or avoid it.
• How new hybrid forms of life insurance and annuity products can provide more attractive solutions for managing the risks of long-term care expense and outliving our savings.
Encourage prospective clients to read the entire book or certain chapters and when they are finished they will view your products and services in a new, more positive prospective.
Client’s will also learn the following:
• How to use the Rule of 100 to balance lifelong risk with security
• How to optimize Social Security and coordinate it with your savings
• The proper use of annuities to provide a safety net of lifelong income
• How to use IULs to build tax-wise sources of future income
Clients see the financial world full of complication and turbulence. Retirees and soon-to-be retirees need simple methods of taming the financial risks we are all sure to face in the future. This book provides those methods. The principals that readers will learn are rock-solid and time-tested. The strategies are easy to follow and implement. And the retirement success those strategies will bring is not dependent on good luck, good timing or good fortune.
Give a copy of this book to any prospective client and they will start to see how working with a knowledgeable professional to help achieve lifelong security and independence.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
SECTION 1: RISKS AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Chapter 1 An Economy Built of Straw and Twigs
Chapter 2 401(k)s and IRAs: The Do-It-Yourself Challenge
Chapter 3 Managing Multiple Risks
Chapter 4 Balancing Risk and Reward: As Simple as Pie and Pyramids
Chapter 5 Other Ways to Increase Yields: Time, Taxes and Fraud
SECTION 2: INCREASING PROTECTED INCOME
Chapter 6 Social Security: Boosting Your Before-Tax Benefit Check
Chapter 7 Social Security: Boosting Your After-Tax Benefit Check
Chapter 8 Add a Safety Net: Annuities for Supplemental Protected Income
Chapter 9 Hybrid Approaches for Volatility, Protection and Taxes
Chapter 10 Hybrid Approaches for Managing Disability Risk
Chapter 11 Taxation: Be “Tax-Wise” About Your Income
SECTION 3: A BLUEPRINT FOR LIFELONG SECURITY AND INDEPENDENCE
Chapter 12 Age 60 to 70: Your Golden Years… for Planning
Chapter 13 Building Your Retirement Castle
The Great Roth IRA Rush: There are trillions and trillions of dollars in IRAs and 401(k)s. More than the total market value of all publicly traded U.S. stocks.
Millions of prospective clients are asking! “Should I convert?“ Clients need help. And advisors who take the time to become knowledgeable on Roth IRA conversions will be in a prime position to expand their clientele.
An enormous wealth of information on Roth-IRA conversions has been packed into this 147 page book. It’s filled with easy to understand information on technical aspects, as well as the practical application of Roth IRA conversion strategies.
The Great Roth IRA Rush
Since the 2010 change in the tax laws most of the restrictions on who could convert to tax-free income disappeared. Now millions of prospective clients are asking! “Should I convert?”
Clients need help. And advisors who take the time to become knowledgeable on Roth IRA conversions will be in a prime position to expand their base of client.
An enormous wealth of information on Roth-IRA conversions has been packed into this 147 page book. It’s filled with easy to understand information on technical aspects, as well as the practical application of Roth IRA conversion strategies.
This is a must read for any financial professional who works with clients who have a concern that future tax rate increases might negatively impact retirement security or the legacy they intend to pass on to their heirs.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Key Roth Rules and Regulations
Chapter 2 Who Should or Shouldn’t Convert to a Roth IRA
Chapter 3 Searching for the Best Income Strategy
Chapter 4 Roth IRA for Wealth Transfer
Chapter 5 Social Security Tax Reduction and Roth IRAs
Chapter 6 Why Partial Conversions May be Better
Chapter 7 Conducting a Roth IRA Seminar
Chapter 8 The Initial Client Interview
Chapter 9 The Critical Pivot
Advanced Annuity Strategies: Now you can “eavesdrop” as some of the nation’s top annuity professionals reveal the strategies they use to build their business and help their clients.
This ultimate insider’s handbook is the result of hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with over 50 of top financial professionals. You get 198 pages worth of proven tactics used by industry leaders.