David Mullen was a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch for 27
years from 1980 before retiring in 2007. He personally hired and
trained over 500 advisors, and his methods have been adopted by
many managers and advisors firm-wide. Since retiring from that
company, Mullen has written two books,
The Million Dollar Financial Services Practice
and
The Million Dollar Financial Advisor
. Mullen spoke to Benzinga to fill us in on the details.
Can you give us a little background on you?
I started with Merrill Lynch in 1980 and spent my first six years
as a financial advisor, building a successful practice. Then I
was tapped to go into management with Merrill Lynch. I went to
the Merrill Lynch management assessment center in 1986 and I was
a managing director of five different assignments for the next 21
years. Newport Beach, California, responsible for Merrill Lynch's
offices there. Minneapolis. I was a national sales manager,
eastern division, in New York City. I managed one of Merrill
Lynch's, as the time, largest offices in Atlanta. I ended my
Merrill Lynch career as the managing director of the Colorado
complex. I retired from Merrill Lynch in 2007 after 27 years with
the firm. I always enjoyed the training as I was a manager and
worked with the advisors through those years. I thought there was
a real need for the kind of training insights that I had
developed and accumulated over the years, and I felt that there
was a great second career for me in the training business. I
retired in '07, and thought that the best way for me to get
started would be to frame my thoughts and organize my different
experiences that I had in the training part of the business, and
write a book about how to become a successful advisor. I always
felt that the million dollar level was the gold standard that
people work towards, and I thought that if I put a book together
about providing the blueprint on how to reach a million dollar
profit, then that would be a popular book. That's what led to the
publication of
The Million Dollar Financial Services Practice
in 2007.
Which led to
The Million Dollar Financial Advisor
?
Yes. The first book did very well, so Amacom [publishing house]
came to me and said, 'we'd like you to consider writing a second
book', and did I have any ideas. I told them that I felt that
there wasn't a great flow of communication between financial
advisors that aspired to be at the highest levels and those that
were at the highest levels. The most successful advisors I worked
with were pretty focused on their business and didn't spend a lot
of time sharing how they became successful with people that were
really interested in that. I thought that I would pull back the
curtains on the most successful practices and I interviewed the
most successful advisors that I had worked with during that
period of time, as a manager. I basically came up with a pretty
big body of research, plus my own observations. Through that
process I identified 13 success principles that the most
successful advisors I had worked with all had in common. I wrote
a book about identifying those 13 principles, and sharing with my
readers how they could aspire to be proficient in those
principles. That was the basis of my second book.
Who are the books aimed at?
Well, the books are aimed at financial advisors at all levels,
with all levels of experience in the financial services
business.
How did you set about choosing the 15 experts that you
interview?
They were the best advisors that I had worked with in my 27 years
at Merrill Lynch. I was pleasantly surprised - not only were they
happy to be involved but they answered every single question. I
was surprised at that because I asked some pretty personal
questions about how much money they had put in the practice, what
they felt like their failures were as well as their successes,
and they were extremely open with me.
27 years with any one company is rare nowadays,
especially in finance. You must have seen a lot of changes in
those years. Is there anything that's happened since the
publication of your books that you wish you'd squeezed
in?
Since you ask, I'm in the process, almost complete, of the second
edition of my first book. It's going to come out, I believe, the
end of this year. So I'm right in the middle of taking all those
things I wish I'd added and putting them into the first book. I'm
doing that right now, and specifically there are two things that
I'm spending a lot of time on with the second edition. One is a
whole chapter on social media, and how financial advisors can use
social media to market themselves. The other is, I'm fleshing out
the wealth management process in a lot more detail than I did in
the first book. I think that our industry has really evolved from
when I started in 1980, being primarily a sales, product oriented
business to one of advice, council and guidance. I think that's
all very good. I'm spending a fair amount of time talking about
that evolution and what I think is the gold standard in terms of
the wealth management process. I treated that pretty
superficially the first go around, and I'm really fleshing that
out a lot. I'm also updating all of my chapters with things that
I've learned over the last five years that weren't in the first
or second book.
What change the most between 1980 and 2007 with regards
to the everyday activities involved in your job?
When I first started in the industry in the '80s, I won't say it
was all about product but there was a heavy product focus, and
that is new issue stocks that were coming out. It was a
transactional business. You bought and sold things. The best
advisors always acted in their client's best interests but there
was definitely some conflict going on between the need to sell
product and to generate transactions in the best interests of the
client. I think that our industry has evolved in such a good way.
We're now primarily fee-based. People pay for advice and
guidance. I think that the professionalism of the advisor today
is so much higher. I think that advisors have elevated themselves
to being more like a physician kind of relation with their client
vs. kind of a sales relationship. I think all that's been really
good.
Do you miss it?
Well, I feel like I'm still in it. I ended up doing 83 group
training days last year, when I was in front of financial
advisors, training them. I currently have 15 coaching clients
that I actively work with. I feel fully immersed. My role is
different - I'm more of a teacher than a manager or an advisor,
but I'm still in it pretty deeply.
You mentioned the second edition of your first book - do
you have a third book planned?
That's a little bit like asking a woman who has just had a baby
when she's going to have another baby. I can't tell you how hard
it is. There are some people who are natural writers, it just
flows in their brain and they can sit down and crank it out. For
me to write a new chapter in a book, it takes hours and hours.
It's tedious and it's hard. I think the hardest mental exercise
that there is, in my experience, is writing. It isn't just your
thoughts and your research - you have to out it down in an
organized, coherent way. It's difficult. I'm right in the middle
of a second edition, and the thought of writing another book
right now, I can't even imagine.
Follow me
@BCallwood
.
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