With great naiveté. The truth is that I probably would have never started it if I knew it would take this long. Originally my plan was to write a little print-on-demand paperback book roughly 100-150 pages long that explains my investing philosophies to existing and prospective clients. It started as a simple outline of what I felt clients needed to know if they were going to work with me. As I wrote and researched, I found that there wasn’t a book where readers could get an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the world of personal finance. I felt that people needed a mental framework to base financial decisions on.

Two years. I started writing it in the fall of 2015. Again, since it was for clients, my assumption as I wrote it was that I would personally know more than 90% of the people reading it. I think that because of this, the book has a very personal tone to it – like it’s a letter from a friend. However, as I wrote and researched, the project grew into what you see today. The main writing part took about six months. The rest of the time has been editing, refining, and graphic design.

The cover was created by a Venezuelan artist named Juan Fuentes. The bull and bear are the classic icons of Wall Street. Generally, a bull market is when it is going up and a bear is when it is going down. Often you will see these two facing off against each other and portrayed as enemies. Here, they are friends because I believe that people should not see them as opposing forces. I see bear markets as your “price of admission” for the long-term superior returns of the stock market. You have to embrace the bear, to get all the benefits of the bull. Your greatest practical tool is patience, peace and optimism during the dark times – which is also what the cover suggests, “In times of darkness, enjoy the stars.” It is also partially inspired by the Walt Whitman poem on page 140.

Go to page 365 for this one.

1. Page 128 – What would happen if you relabeled the US Map as countries with a similar economic output
2. Pages 34-35 – Shows the importance of saving early in life (early 9 years is better than later 65 years)
3. Pages 10-11 – Nobody’s ever made money in banks over the long term.

I created all the graphics in a raw form. I was particular about how it was laid out and what colors to use (so that it’s consistent throughout the book). However, I hired an excellent graphic designer in South Africa named Gabi Hill who converted my rough graphics into works of art. She created the layout, the table of contents, and many subtle things throughout the book.

I went full circle with this one. As I said, originally my assumption was that I would use a print-on-demand service and just give the book away. I didn’t think twice about this route until about six months ago. As my wonderful senior editor Chris Benz worked on the book (who has done work for Michael Lewis and Dave Eggers), he kept urging me to go through a traditional publisher. I kept resisting and he eventually asked if he could “play agent” with it. Within a week he found an agent, two days later that agent found a publisher. This was incredibly exciting because the agency represented some really big names (Dr. Phil, Joel Osteen, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, and many others). However, it was clear early on that I was going to have to compromise. They said it definitely couldn’t be in color, needed to be 200-250 pages long, and some other things. Whether it was from vision, stubbornness, or self-destructiveness, in the end I decided to walk away from it all and go back to self-publishing.

I have no regrets about this. I eventually decided to have them printed because the print-on-demand was very low quality. I’m very happy with what you see today. The book itself experiments with some publishing innovations that I feel will make the concepts easier to understand – particularly the use of color to “brand” concepts. I am printing it with the best materials: cloth quarter bound hardcover with an embossed dust jacket, the highest quality paper, and first rate graphic design. None of this would have happened with a traditional publisher and certainly not for $32.00.

Selfishly I hope that it will help get the word out about what I do as a financial advisor and that it will help me meet new clients. Selflessly, I hope that it will make strangers wealthier and that they will do noble things with that wealth. Modesty aside, I think it has the potential to be a classic book on finance, but I know that there is a lot of luck for that to happen. And, it’s not a small book which may be intimidating to people.