Telling a new story, to reach new peopleWhy Elephant’s Paycheck?

Recently, tak­ing with a child­hood friend about my book, he observed that it feels like so many peo­ple still don’t know about div­i­dend growth invest­ing. “How could that be?” he asked.

It’s a sim­ple ques­tion, with­out a sim­ple answer.

For starters, look at incen­tives.

Who is moti­vat­ed by teach­ing peo­ple about div­i­dend growth invest­ing?

Most of the com­pa­nies that come to mind don’t think that way. Big com­pa­nies are “afraid” that if they talk too specif­i­cal­ly, they miss the “big­ger” oppor­tu­ni­ty. They’re either try­ing to build brand, or edu­cate peo­ple about fea­tures. Look at E*Trade, Fidelity, and even Robinhood. Erase their brand­ing and it’s hard to tell these com­pa­nies apart. You’d rec­og­nize Robinhood because they talk about “free trad­ing” but the oth­er dis­count bro­ker­ages only talk about them­selves — their process­es, their tools.

Then, you have the busi­ness real­i­ties that div­i­dend growth invest­ing does­n’t gen­er­ate com­mis­sions the way mutu­al funds can, or the way that active­ly trad­ing a port­fo­lio can.

They’re in a dif­fi­cult spot. They can’t make promis­es about results. They have to be spe­cif­ic with their lan­guage. And they want to sell you prod­ucts that align to their busi­ness mod­el. So they end up talk­ing facts, fig­ures, fea­tures, and funds.

What they need to do is tell bet­ter sto­ries. Most con­ser­v­a­tive reg­u­lat­ed com­pa­nies don’t tell good sto­ries.

When I first launched my book, I wrote some­thing for Sure Dividend (a great site with infor­ma­tion for div­i­dend investors) about hav­ing fun invest­ing. Talking to their read­ers, I real­ized some­thing:

The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck isn’t for peo­ple who invest. It’s for the peo­ple they love who don’t.

The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck isn’t for peo­ple who invest. It’s for the peo­ple they love who don’t. Click To Tweet

You want to learn more. You want to get start­ed. But the lan­guage used by the places you learn is a bar­ri­er. Before too long, you’re either read­ing some watered down non-promise (remem­ber, finan­cial com­pa­nies are reg­u­lat­ed and can’t promise results) or some indus­try-lan­guage laced mar­ket­ing brochure that’s not warm or encour­ag­ing.

While some, like Stash, are doing a good job of chang­ing the lan­guage used to describe invest­ments, I want­ed to change the sto­ry about invest­ing build­ing wealth to help reduce the anx­i­ety mon­ey brings to most peo­ple as they get start­ed.

Which leads to a third chal­lenge — div­i­dend growth invest­ing is bor­ing. Really bor­ing. And it’s human nature to thing bor­ing is bad espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how lit­tle peo­ple talk about mon­ey and wealth (it’s not prop­er to do so, right? 🤪).

To sum­ma­rize:

1. You have com­pa­nies that are moti­vat­ed by the incen­tives in their busi­ness plans not by their inter­est in mak­ing the world a wealth­i­er place.
2. Financial ser­vices is a mar­ket where there just aren’t that many good sto­ry­tellers. There are num­bers! And Ledgers! And, oh no, PERCENTAGES!!!
3. Finally, if you do this right, it’s bor­ing. Really bor­ing (though, I like to think I make it less so).

I believe I’ve writ­ten a good sto­ry. It’s short, easy to read, and most impor­tant­ly, easy to inter­nal­ize. It’s a unique only in the lan­guage used not in the tac­tics employed to build wealth. That’s why peo­ple who know about div­i­dend invest­ing prob­a­bly don’t find the book use­ful. There’s noth­ing new, but a sto­ry.

I hope that sto­ry helps peo­ple who don’t know where to start be will­ing to do so. To help read­ers, I’ve been clear in the action you should take to get start­ed. I know how hard it is to do some­thing new, so I’ve pre­sent­ed very sim­ple steps to take you all the way through to mak­ing your first invest­ment.

Best of all, I’ve shared most every­thing I’ve writ­ten in the book, right on this site. Read around, feel my voice, and give it a shot. If you like it, maybe you buy the book for a friend. I’ve had read­ers’ par­ents and sib­lings reach out, hav­ing been told about my book by their rel­a­tives. It’s quite reward­ing.

Start here and then let me know what you think.