Harris Nydick's Common Financial Sense Sat in His Head for a Decade — Then Became His Firm's Best Business Card
"You can't spell authority without the word author. Corny, but that's my mantra."
— Harris Nydick, Founding Principal, CFS Investment Advisory Services
Harris Nydick spent ten years walking around with a book in his head. In August 2008, he sat down at a black-and-white IBM in his kitchen and typed out a table of contents. The next month, the Great Recession hit. The book went into a writeable CD and stayed there for a decade. Then, in 2017, Harris drove home from a friend's book launch party angry at himself, and decided to spend every Saturday and Sunday from noon to five at the keyboard. Common Financial Sense came out in the spring of 2018, has stayed in print across multiple editions, and was named the best how-to book of 2020.
The decade of stop and start
Harris was part of the first wave of certified financial planners trained in the early 1980s. He came up at a large financial institution in Manhattan that treated its training class like a medical residency, rotating new advisors through eight-week immersions on municipal bonds, international, small caps, and more. He spent six years in the city before moving the practice to New Jersey when his first child was born. Along the way, he and his business partner Greg McCasky carved out an early specialty in 401(k) and 403(b) plans, the retirement plans most advisors didn't want to touch because the service model is so different from high-net-worth wealth management.
That niche became the book's wedge. Their clients kept telling them, "You guys tell really good stories. You should write them down." So Harris started typing. Then markets crashed. His kids grew up. He put it down. Years later, a friend who had ghostwritten his own autobiography invited Harris to a small book signing, and Harris was a story in one of the chapters. He drove home that night and told his wife: every Saturday and Sunday, noon to five, until the book is done.
Four orange Sharpies and four college kids
The hardest problem in writing a finance book is that almost nobody picks up a finance book for fun. Harris's firm is named CFS, which stands for Common Financial Sense, and the central premise of the firm and the book is that anyone who can't explain investing in plain English either does not understand it themselves or is lying to you. So when the manuscript was in progress, Harris bought four orange Sharpies, printed out the draft, and handed it to four college students on break. One English major. One history major. One science major. One non-finance liberal arts major. The instructions were simple: circle any word you don't like or don't understand, financial or otherwise. He got the manuscripts back covered in orange marks. Then he rewrote.
The introduction by the father of the 401(k)
Harris wanted an introduction written by the most credible person alive on the subject. Ted Benna is the man widely credited as the father of the 401(k). Ted is a quiet homebody living in rural Pennsylvania. Harris cold-called him, drove five hours to a lunch meeting, and rehearsed everything he was going to say. Ted sat down across the table and asked, "Why are we here?" Harris had to throw out his rehearsed pitch and reverse-engineer it on the spot. Ted said he'd give it until Tuesday. The next morning, the first draft of the introduction was in Harris's inbox.
"What would you do if you weren't afraid? You don't get a hundred percent of what you don't ask for. Did everybody answer yes to me? Absolutely not. But more people said yes because I asked a lot of people."
— Harris Nydick
The launch party his father presided over, one week before he died
The local community bookstore hosted the launch. About 150 people packed a small back room at the end of June. As Harris and Greg were being interviewed from the front, Harris looked over the crowd and saw his mother and father standing in the back. His father was watching the whole room, presiding over it with pride. The week after that party, Harris left on summer vacation. While he was away, a distracted driver killed his father. The last full memory Harris has of his dad is the man standing in the back of that bookstore, proud of his son for finishing the book.
"That's a core memory for me now. And it never would have happened. You can't have a book opening if you don't write the book."
— Harris Nydick
What the book has done for the firm in eight years
The book has stayed in print across multiple printings and at least two editions. Harris and Greg added an entire chapter to the most recent revision and updated every number to keep it evergreen. The firm uses it as a multi-purpose tool. C-suite executives at corporate clients receive copies first, then Harris and Greg run financial education sessions for the whole employee base. Prospects sometimes show up to discovery calls having already bought and read the book, treating it as their due diligence on the firm. Existing relationships stay warm. New 401(k) plan acquisitions accelerated noticeably after the book came out. The firm donates copies to college students, medical schools, and professional societies. Every copy is signed by Harris and Greg, even when it isn't personalized. Other authors' books resell on eBay for five or six dollars. Harris's books don't.
What he tells aspiring authors after eight years of using one
Harris is at CFSIAS.com and on LinkedIn as Harris Nydick CFP AIFA. He responds to any first-time author who messages him for advice. He won't hesitate to write a third book if the right idea comes. He had no regret about the upfront cost of doing it right, even when it seemed formidable. The ROI on a book in his business is not measured in royalty checks. It is measured in eight years of client relationships that started or deepened because a 401(k) plan administrator handed the book to her CEO.
"Sit down. Stare at a blank screen for forty-five minutes thinking about what you want to say, not how you want to say it. Then word-vomit the whole thing. One match gives so much light and direction. Just start."
— Harris Nydick
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