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title: The Messenger is the Message description: [AFW M.1.46] Michael Epiphany #46 published: true date: 2026-06-30T08:09:37.419Z tags: editor: markdown dateCreated: 2021-07-03T18:58:48.473Z

The Product isn't the "Product" - You Are

“First and foremost, you are selling yourself.” ―Nick Murray

“When You Believe, You'll Be Believed.” ―Nick Murray

“Nobody ever asked Chuck Yeager to Build an Airplane.” ―Nick Murray

“Your ability to cause clients to remain steadfast at the moment of truth will be a pure and absolute function of the personal relationship you have with them.” ―Nick Murray

“I get paid on products, but I sell advice.”

“No gift is more precious than trust.” ―Star Wars Clone Wars, S2E6: Weapons Factory

Read Nick's ATY 004 January 04 - The Messenger Is The Message PDF

Read Nick's ATY 112 April 22 - Limits of History PDF

Read Nick's ATY 336 December 02 - Hang Your Heart On Your Sleeve PDF

Read Nick's This Time Isn’t Different - #19 - Part 2.1 - Tear Away the Curtain PDF

Read Nick's This Time Isn’t Different - #21 - Part 2.3 - Start Weaning Yourself Off Intellectual/Statistical Demonstrations PDF

Read Nick's This Time Isn’t Different - #23 - Part 2.5 - Friends Don't Let Friends Panic Out PDF

Read Nick's This Time Isn’t Different - #35 - Epilogue - Toward an Antifragile Investor PDF

Read Steve Siebold's Secrets of the World Class #20 - Supreme Confidence PDF

The greatest power you have, as an advisor, is your own authenticity — the strength and integrity of your convictions. A Behavioral Investment Counselor doesn’t ask primarily to be understood — that would be ideal, but it’s not required. She asks, rather, to be believed and trusted.

There are two points in your relationship with your prospects when they decide to do business with with you:

  1. In the beginning of the first visit client conversation.

  2. During the objection-handling phase.


Neither one have anything to do with products, but they have everything to do with you.

  • The messenger is the message.

  • The things we tell people aren't true because we can produce credible third-party corroboration.

  • The things we tell people are true because we say they are. Thus: our advice is to be followed for no other reason than that it is our advice.

  • Thus: the most potent source of potential good we can marshal is our own moral authority. It's not what you know, but who you are and how you make the client feel.

  • We should avoid gratuitously supplying corroboration unless and until it's asked for. Even then, we should stress that the corroboration only demonstrates the past; there are no facts about the future.

  • Our ability to do good for people rests solely on their faith in us, which we must-and do-richly deserve.

  • Understand your family's financial goals as well as or bet ter than does anyone outside your family.

  • Moreover, I'm every bit as committed to those goals as is anyone inside your family. At all times, the advice I render to you and yours will be identical to what I would do and may very well be do ing in similar circumstances.

  • My advice is always and everywhere driven by your plan, and by the time-tested methods of achieving your goals never by an economic or market outlook.

  • In summary, I have no other agenda but to facilitate your permanent financial success.


Prospect Don't Care What You Know Until They Know That You Care

When you first chat with your prospect you want to convey the following:

  • I understand you.
  • I feel what you're feeling.
  • I'll help you, if you let me.
  • Only good companies will get you there, managed by a first-class manager.
  • We're going to have to be disciplined.
  • Keep "performance" in perspective. You don't need to shoot the lights out, but you do need to avoid shooting yourself in the foot.
  • Whatever it costs, you can't afford not to do it.


"Selling the Invisible" Fables

“You don't pay me for the few minutes it takes me to provide you with my best advice - you pay me for the 36 years it took me to know how.” ―Michael

These fables illustrate the value of having, and listening to, professional advice. You see, much of what I teach my clients can be explained in minutes, but the certainty of that advice can take years, or even decades, to establish.


The Master Carpenter's Value

Watch The Carpenter's Fable VIDEO

A man was suffering a persistent problem with his house. The floor squeaked. No matter what he tried, nothing worked. Reluctantly, he called a carpenter who a friend said was a true craftsman. The craftsman entered in the room, walked across every inch of the floor to analize the squeak. He set down his toolbox, pulled out a hammer and nail, and pounded the nail into the floor with tree blows.

The squeak was gone forever.

The carpenter pulled out an invoice slip, on which he wrote a total of $45, and above he wrote two lines:

  • Hammering and 1 nail: $2.
  • Knowing where to hammer: $43.

Some will sell you the hammer and the nail, I teach you where to place the nail.


Picasso

Watch Picasso's Fable VIDEO

Remember, what we are "selling" is not products and services, but advice.

Many years ago a young woman was strolling along a street in Paris when she spotted the great Picasso sketching at a sidewalk cafe. She asked him if he might sketch her, and charge accordingly.

Picasso obliged.

In just minutes, there it was: an original Picasso!

"And what do I owe you?" she asked.

"Five thousand francs," he answered.

"But it only took you three minutes!" she politely gasped.

"No," Picasso said. "It took me all my life."


Bricks and Pyramid

Watch A Pile of Bricks vs The Pyramids VIDEO

Compare a pile of bricks to the great pyramids - it's not the bricks but how you put them together.


The "Messenger is the Message" Close

When we establish a relationship, I can promise you that, throughout all of the decades we work together, you will never find another advisor who will care more about you and your family, or who will be more deeply committed to the achievement of your financial goals.

I promise to invest your capital as carefully as I do my own, because I know that your hopes and your family’s future are every bit as sacred to you as mine are to me. I commit to always tell you the plain, unvarnished truth, especially when you may not want to hear it. When you ask me something to which I may not have an answer, I promise to always say, ‘I don’t know’ – and then move heaven and earth to find it. Finally, I will never, ever tell you I can do something I cannot do, nor will I tell you I am going to do something, and then not do it.

It is feasible that you will encounter financial advisors ‘smarter’ than I am, and just as surely you will run across advisors who are ‘cheaper’ than I am. (You will not, however, find someone who is both ‘smarter’ and ‘cheaper’). But you will never, in your life, find an advisor you can trust more implicitly than you can trust me. If we work together, in that spirit of mutual trust, there is nothing, within reason, we cannot accomplish. And perhaps the most important thing is: you will no longer have to worry. You see, I insist on developing a written financial plan, and then ensuring you stick to that plan. Beyond that, I encourage hope, because I know that in investing, optimism is the only long-term realism. But I absolutely forbid my clients to worry, because in a very real sense that is exactly what you are hiring me to do. If you are going to pay for investment counsel, and then worry about it, you have not really accepted my advice, which in effect means you do not trust me. I can not accept the fate of your financial future in my hands on that basis; it would not be fair to either of us. Understand clearly that you are being asked to entrust your family’s financial future to me (much as you would a doctor to treat an illness or a lawyer to represent you in court) – not a particular financial plan and not to an investment portfolio – to me. And I, for my part, am offering to accept that responsibility.


Often Wrong, Never In Doubt

“Often Wrong, Never in Doubt.” -Donny Deutsch

“If you don’t believe in what you’re offering, no one else will either.” -Tom Hopkins

Read Nick's ATY 060 March 01 - Confidence PDF

Read Nick's ATY 070 March 11 - Moral Authority PDF

Read Nick's ATY 184 July 03 - Confidence PDF

Read Nick's ATY 229 August 17 They're Lucky to be Talking to You PDF

Read Nick's ATY 242 August 30 - The Ultimate Objective PDF

Read Nick's Around the Year September 23 - Just Keep Saying the Unexpected PDF

Read Nick's ATY 271 September 28 - The Power of Knowing You're Right PDF

Read Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic lesson Dsm 04-25 - There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Wrong PDF

Watch Never in Doubt overview VIDEO

This means that you have to be confidence and not doubt yourself even though you may be wrong.

There are two benefits:

1) Having confidence gets you to take action. Doing something because you're confident and failing is far worse than doubting yourself and therefore not even trying.

2) The messenger is the message. Having no doubt is especially useful when presenting your Finished Plan to your clients. You should to present one plan - a unified proposal - and be ultra-confident about it. People buy your confidence more than "the plan". This principle isn't implying that when you are wrong that you shouldn't adjust your beliefs, but it is saying that your should exude confidence until you are presented with contrary evidence.

Since the messenger is the message, people respond much more strongly the confidence with which the message is delivered than to its intellectual content.


messenger1.png


Own What You Offer

“Owning even a little of the fund you're selling increases your effectiveness 300%.” ―Nick Murray

Read Nick's ATY 029 January 29 - You can't sell what you don't own PDF

At IP/AFG it is not required to own any of the products that we offer. In fact, you can even have investment accounts with another BD/Advisor (but why would you?!?)

However, there are tangible benefits to owning what you recommend to your clients.

  • It demonstrates conviction to your clients,

It gives you a psychological edge. If you believe in mutual funds, American Funds, variable annuities, Jackson VA, term life, AIG, living trusts then why are they not good enough for you to put your money into them? If you are not the Advisor on your own accounts, why should your client?


Less Hypotheticals. More People Skills.

Understanding that you are the key to persuading your prospect to do business with you, you must work harder on yourself than you do anything else. Less hypotheticals; more people skills.