Mike Capuzzi: Welcome back to another episode of The Author Factor Podcast. My guest today is Michael Lynch, a  CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and bestselling author with more than 20 years of experience working with clients to craft plans that fund their dreams, educate their children, and finance their retirement. Michael has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, Retirement Daily on thestreet.com, and Investors Business Daily. His first two books, Keep It Simple, Make It Big, and It's All About the Income were Amazon bestsellers. And he recently worked with me to publish his first short, helpful book, Taking Care of Your Future. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Lynch: Mike. It's so good to be here. I'm very excited about today. Very, very, very excited.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, you know, you and I have gotten to know each other. Gosh, it's almost a year you and I have been working together. I admire not only what you've built, but how you've built it. The people that you helped, you were just one of those clients that clicked for me. Our conversations always sort of went beyond just the book project. But listen, I just barely touched on your extensive background. Can you share a little bit more for my listeners, your background, what you've done and what you're doing today?

Michael Lynch: I've been a financial planner for 22 years now and I say it's my third and last career out of college. I worked at a free market think tank where I knew my job was whatever my boss needed. And she was just fan is a fantastic person. I learned how to write, network and all that kind of stuff with her and communicate. And then I had another person hire me away from her to cover DC for an LA based magazine. And prior to. So I had communication skills. I never really wanted to be a writer.

Michael Lynch: That wasn't my thing. And I just got lucky. Was working at home, hated working at home, ironically, hated working at home. And so I said, look, it's time for a career change. I always love doing personal finance. So that's the direction I went in.

Mike Capuzzi: And just for my listeners, the markets that you serve, is it a regional market, Michael? Is it all over the country at this point?

Michael Lynch: Now it's a national market. We like to say we have a target market. If you have a checkbook and a smile, we will help you. And I'm serious about that. I know there's, what does it say? Riches and niches. But, you know, even when I was a writer, I was a generalist. I wrote different stories every single time. I never specialized in anything.

Michael Lynch: And I feel the same about personal finance. It's all human beings. It's unless until you get into the really, really, really huge amount of wealth, 5100 million and up, it's all the same. And so we have clients who make 30,000 a year. We have clients who make 3 million a year, and we can help them all. And that's a, that's just a great thing and a great thing, you know.

Mike Capuzzi: Here to talk about your use of books, because you've now published, what, three books, right, Mike?

Michael Lynch: Yes, I have. Yes, I have.

Mike Capuzzi: Yep. So, and these are all within the last couple years that you've published these. So my first question is, and you know, the point of this podcast, and you listen to it, so, you know, is to inspire other business owners and entrepreneurs to do what you've done. Why did you decide a few years back to publish that first book? What was it about becoming a book author that attract, you know, was attractive to you?

Michael Lynch: Well, one, I like to write, so I don't love to write, but I like to write. So it's one of those things that I don't really look forward to doing. But when I do what I enjoy it to, I write, typically pretty fast. But they answer your question. So, one, I could do it, and I read constantly, so I have material, but there's nothing like a book for authority. The author factor is absolutely right. Look, let's face it, most people, and this is not to say some are better than others, but most people don't even can't just say reading a book intimidates, right? Let alone writing it. So people that are able to write a book, that gives authority.

Michael Lynch: Second, though, more importantly, you can't be a good writer if you're not a good thinker. You cannot be a good writer if you're not a good thinker. You could be maybe a good thing or a bad writer, but you cannot be a bad thinker and a good writer because there'll be no there there.

Mike Capuzzi: Right.

Michael Lynch: So the act of writing itself is a way of organizing. It's a way of thinking. It has benefits in and of itself, separate and apart from the actual product.

Mike Capuzzi: And I recall, and I think I mentioned this to you many times as we were going through the draft for taking care of your future. It was readily apparent you were a good writer. And I think I commented that on that several times. So, not that everybody has to be, like you said, this great writer, especially the kind of books we publish a lot of times. I encourage people, you know, write like you talk. Sure. But yes, it has to be helpful. There has to be some context and thought put into it.

Mike Capuzzi: We're not about publishing crap. And, you know, just out of curiosity, Michael, because I know, I know you use AI. What are you. Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on artificial intelligence as a resource for people who are publishing nonfiction books? I know it's a left field question.

Michael Lynch: But, yeah, can we hold that thought just for a minute? And I want to give you some props. I want to answer the AI, but first, I want to say the reason why the book that I turned into you was well organized is because I know how to follow a script, and you provided the script. So what I want to say to people listening here is you do not have to be a professional rider to do a shook and in fact, follow the script. Keep it simple. Don't reinvent the wheel. I mean, it's a fantastic, fantastic thing to run on. And I look forward to my next shook because I'm going to take this shook and I'm just going to shake it a bit, and then I'm going to have another shook. Right now, AI.

Michael Lynch: AI, for me, has not panned out as well as I would have hoped, but we're in the early innings, so, as you know, I was late to the shook concept. Mike, I've been hearing you now on podcasts, and some of the podcasts I heard you on are people that with something I say that I know you disagree with. Don't worry about writing a good book. Just get a book out there because nobody's going to read it. Now, I definitely disagree with that because my clients read my book. That's what I write it for. And second, I believe you also disagree with that because you really believe in creating good, short, helpful books. And the fact that they are short makes them better, not worse.

Michael Lynch: Would you agree with that?

Mike Capuzzi: Absolutely.

Michael Lynch: Okay. So it sank it up. My first one was general financial planning, soup the nuts. My next one was very, very. And that was a struggle, and it was not a good manuscript I turned in, and there's reasons for that, but it came out, I would say it'd be my next one. I got a wonderful letter from my publisher, who said, he rarely says this, but this book doesn't need any work because it was a series of stories, a coherent idea from top to bottom, which is, it's all about the income, baby. You worry about principal, but you live on income. Let's focus on the income.

Michael Lynch: Cause that's what makes your life great. And so that one's nice and focused. Now, about the middle of that book I started listening to you. And don't write a long book. Keep it simple. Make it a lead, mag all the things that are right. But the journalist, to me, the writer, the artist, just rebelled.

Michael Lynch: So now I'm writing my third book, which is done. It's been written. I wrote an all inclusive resort in 2021 during COVID It's for the thirties and 40 year olds. It's a lot. It's get going. And I got it done in Jamaica last year. So it's done. It's pretty much done.

Michael Lynch: But I'm like, you know what? Let me use my brain. The grant. My clients that are parents or grandparents gonna buy this book, they're gonna want their kids to use it, but their kids are going to see a book that's 200 pages and they're not going to read it. So it's not going to be useful. But the kids might read a shook. So I loaded up my book, I loaded up all my writings, hundreds of articles. I loaded up my other book, I loaded up your outline formula, and I told AI to take my book and turn it into a shook, because what I want to do is a book and a shook together, sell them together, and the offer is going to be, get a financial plan for your kid or your grandkid. Right.

Michael Lynch: You buy that, right. For the. For the parents and the grandparents. And you would have thought, yeah, I could have done that. And. But I. And what my analogy is for right now, and I have admittedly, I've not been back to it since. Since this happened in March.

Michael Lynch: April, is. It's like when you have an intern or a teenager doing work and you know, by the time that you redo it, you might as well just do it yourself.

Mike Capuzzi: Right? Right.

Michael Lynch: And so stuff like this, like I said, do these chapters. It wouldn't do these chapters. I said, use my book. It wouldn't use any of the, any of the stuff that I read. It was all generic corporate writing. I said, only use the words I've written. It gave me another edit. It didn't use one word.

Michael Lynch: I said, you didn't use one word I wrote. I told you only you have to yell at it. Anyways, so far, that kind of level work has not been good. I find it absolutely amazing on a Google search type of thing. I think it's probably really good on short articles, blogs, I don't know. So I'm excited about it. It's early technology that I've adopted. I've told my staff and my team to use it.

Michael Lynch: I've told them to be careful of it, but definitely to use it. Obviously, we don't get any client information or anything up in it because that would be a disaster. But, yeah. So I think I see huge promise. So to answer your question, I see huge promise for it. So I know I'm giving you a mixed message, but you understand what I'm saying.

Mike Capuzzi: No, no, no. Listen, the reason I was interested in asking that off the cuff question is because you are a writer, journalist, thinker, and I just want to hear feedback on it, and I think it has its place. And again, I don't want to focus too much on because it's not the gist of this conversation, but I think it has its place and it can be used. And I just spent the last couple days using AI to do some brainstorming. Here's the funny thing.

Michael Lynch: Yeah, that's good, isn't it?

Mike Capuzzi: It is. But here's what you'll appreciate this. I just changed the word order of the prompt. Like, just maybe I'll have five. Here's five criteria to consider and one to five, and I'll just change it from five to one. And I get completely different results. Like, mind bogglingly different results that you can ask my wife. I was driving me nuts.

Mike Capuzzi: I'm like, how could it be so different? You know? So there's all those little subtle things. But listen, let's go back. You said a couple things I want to just touch on, because, again, I recollect from our conversations, maybe that was part of the reason I thought your content was so good. And when you published your first manuscript and sent it to us, I was like, damn, we could publish it almost as is.

Michael Lynch: Yeah, because I did you. I took everything from you. I bought all your books at least three or four times. I listened to all your podcasts. I highlighted everything. Look, if you steal from me, you're stealing at least twice or three times. Some of this, some of the words, of course you liked it. I lifted them directly from you.

Michael Lynch: Like, one, change here, change here. Not because I was trying to be a jerk, but because I'm just a business guy. I'm efficient. Look, I'm writing at an all inclusive resort from, like, 08:00 a.m. until, like, noon. I want to get a drink in my hand and get to the beach. You know what I'm saying? Let's get this. Let's get to show on the road.

Mike Capuzzi: It's funny. I just flash back to those conversations. That was funny. Well, listen, you also brought up something which I want to talk about with the short, helpful book, the shook that we worked on, taking care of your future. And here's why I want to dive into this a little bit because you did something. I've actually talked about you on other podcasts I haven't mentioned by name and even with some of my clients, because you did something that is very smart and it's something that a certain number of folks like yourself, professionals, experts, should seriously consider. And what you did was you crafted a short, helpful book to a very specific audience, a very specific target audience, literally within a very specific institution. You know, business, if you will.

Mike Capuzzi: I don't know what the right word is. You can correct me if you want to share that, but you've crafted it to that audience and wrote it for people within that organization. And now, because of the way you wrote it, you're also able to leverage it on a more generic basis. So the more generic version of the book will be available on Amazon when it's done. Whereas the targeted book was literally for a specific building almost. I don't want to share it because I don't want to. That's for you to share if you want.

Michael Lynch: No, I shared. So let me give you a thought now that I said that I don't believe in niche marketing because I'm too undisciplined, as you can probably tell from this conversation. I teach classes at a big healthcare system, Yale New Haven healthcare system, and I have for 1015 years. And so if you look at, I have a lot of nurses as clients, and I work with my partner, Lisa Olson. Now, I'm kind of done taking clients. I'm 55 and my business is full. However, you can't stand still on a bicycle, right? You're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotten. And so I have a partner who is doing all the new clients.

Michael Lynch: And so what we did was, it's called the Yale New Haven Nurses Guide to retirement. Taking care of your future, your simple system for a big retirement. Now, my big brand is simple and big. And this was focused on that hospital where we teach classes and really help a lot of people. And so it's, it's. The goal is to get it viral in there. We threw a big party for, we invited people, we spent a lot of money, we gave top shell liquor, all the good food. Everybody had a great, great time.

Michael Lynch: And it's like, let's get this out. However, now my partner is going to go national. There's a lot of nurses organizations, so it's like, look, take this book, get in the newsletters, get in the, get speaking engagements. You're specializing in nurses now. It's a great, great, great specialty. Not only that, but we have people that want to do more corporate education, that is on site speeches at other healthcare centers. So like, I'm going to meet with two other healthcare and I'm going to bring this book and I say I can customize this book for your hospital. Right? It can be the Hartford Healthcare guided versus guided retirement.

Michael Lynch: If you don't like the word nurse, I understand it, then it can be that, you know, healthcare professionals, but the more specific you are, the better. And, you know, people usually aren't offended by nurses. So that's kind of how it went in that direction. So, you know, I listen, Michael, I listen to you marketing gurus and I violate almost every rule, but every once in a while, after I've heard like 28 times, tried everything else that didn't work, I'm like, well, maybe these women and men know something and, you know, you guys do. So that's why, that's how I did that. And I would encourage other people to do it. Go narrow. You can always go, you can always, you can always broaden it out.

Michael Lynch: You own it, you can change it. My shook that I'm going to do out of my big book, my next one is not going to be that different from this one. I'm going to be cutting and pasting, Mike, it's coming your way, but that's probably not a big surprise to you.

Mike Capuzzi: Is it a no? No. And I appreciate that. But again, just for listeners sake, typically, Mike, the way it works is someone will craft more of a generic book, whether it's a shook or book. And then we typically dial it in and say, hey, there are these subset audiences that you can attract, and just by a slight tweak, just even on the COVID some of the language inside it, nothing substantial, 95% of the book remains the same. But by personalizing and making it so that that person, you know, how can a nurse in the New Haven system not want to read this? They're all going to eventually retire, right? So it's just, it was a very smart thing that you did, and now you're going to leverage it other ways and it becomes a business asset that, you know, really has legs and long term value. So it's a really great example, Michael.

Michael Lynch: Of one more thing on it. I'll tell you, when you work with people is it makes writing easier, too. It's easier to write a love letter to one particular person than it is to write a treatise on women or dating. By focusing narrow on something you want, you're going to write better because you're going to have the stories, you're going to be viewing people. It's like Bruce Springsteen songs. It's come on, Wendy, let's go. Tramps like us, we're born to run, right? It's about a person, you know? It's about a person. So.

Michael Lynch: So that is a little trick too, just for the writing process, I think.

Mike Capuzzi: So, Michael, as we get ready to wrap up here, you are a multi book author. You've journalists. You love, you love books. You love. Maybe not love writing, but you like writing.

Michael Lynch: Yeah, I like writing. Yeah.

Mike Capuzzi: Can you share what it has meant to you? Either you, maybe your clients or your business. One of the three or all the three, whatever. What has meant to you to be a published book author?

Michael Lynch: I think it's like the pinnacle. I would consider my world the pinnacle of success. Okay. Because it is not easy to write a book and it's not easy to write a good book. And at least two out of the three are good, including, especially when I did with you. And the fourth one is going to be great. And that means a lot. I take a lot of pride in it and it's.

Michael Lynch: I think, I'm not making this up again. I'm stealing it. A four dollar business card. I just believe in this. You should never have a publisher. I mean, publisher. Just talk about another layer of bureaucracy and nonsense that you just don't need in this world anymore. And to be able to give it to clients.

Michael Lynch: Have clients read it, have clients give it to people. To be able to talk to a group of nurses and say, here's. Here's your book. Take this, call us when you need us. Sign up for this website, organize it. It's just been fantastic. I can't say I wish I did earlier, but I'm glad I did it now. And I'm gonna keep doing it.

Michael Lynch: I think I got another two or three Emmys still.

Mike Capuzzi: Very good. Well, listen, Michael, I appreciate this. Again, I appreciate working with you and your team, and I know we're gonna be doing some more work here.

Michael Lynch: Oh, yeah.

Mike Capuzzi: Looking forward to that. So how can my listeners learn more about your firm in case they maybe want to reach out to you? And where's the best place to get your books?

Michael Lynch: Okay, so we're on Amazon for the books. So it's Michael lynch. And if you google Michael lynch, keep it simple, make it big. Keep it simple. Make it big. That will pull it up, and there'll be that one. And it's all about the income. My nurse's book is not yet up there, Michael, did you know? Because we're doing a national launch on that one.

Michael Lynch: On the website where most my writings are, is simpleandbig.com. so, www.simpleandbig.com, that's my publishing business. That's where I do the publishing for regulatory reasons. If you are interested on anything else, just reach out to us through that. We have the whole financial side as well. The financial business side. But they were talking about the books, talking about publishing. So that's where you go.

Michael Lynch: Go to Amazon and then my simple and biggest big website. And we love what we do. And we're just so happy to be here and working with you, Michael. It's, you know, your marketing works because that's how I got you. And you're the real deal, man, so.

Mike Capuzzi: Well, I appreciate that, Michael. And listen, thank you very much for your time today. I really do appreciate all that you're doing.

Michael Lynch: Oh, yeah. Okay, well, this won't be our last time we talk. Congratulations on a great, great podcast series. And I look forward to. Look forward to more years of interactions.

Mike Capuzzi: All right, Mike. Take care.

Michael Lynch: Take care. Yep.