About the project
THE NEED
Joe Delaney, California-based financial advisor and managing director of Lifeguard Wealth, recognized that he had a number of attorneys among his friends, acquaintances, and clientele. He felt he understood the challenges unique to the attorney space and identified it as a niche he wanted to focus on.
What he needed was a way to showcase his expertise while demonstrating his commitment to serving attorneys. The answer was high-value, niche-specific content inspired by attorneys and written for the benefit of attorneys. He reached out to me (we had worked together on blog content for about two years) to discuss the idea that would eventually lead to the development of a white paper.
THE APPROACH
Joe had already planned to conduct a series of interviews with the attorneys in his sphere. I helped him craft interview questions that would give us the raw material for a kind of attorney-informed financial guide. We didn’t get more specific than that in the beginning, because we wanted the interviewees to help guide us toward the kind of content that would be most useful to the niche.
After several months of interviews, Joe shared his notes with me. He and I saw some consistent themes. Most of them tied back to a single, overarching concern: retirement. We identified six obstacles attorneys face to retiring when they want to (or ever), and six action steps they can take to address each one:
- Time Management
- Spending & Saving Worries
- Managing Debt
- Financial Regrets
- Coping with Stress
- Keeping Up with Money Management
I put together a draft of the copy with notes on where I thought infographics would be helpful. Data came from Joe, our interviewees and my own research on attorney student loan debt and mental health issues. We turned everything over to our design partner, Spotted Monkey Marketing, who produced a beautiful PDF (link below).
THE RESULTS
Joe has successfully used this white paper as an outreach tool when making contact with attorneys and in a presentation where he offered a printed version to attendees. But more importantly to Joe, he offers it as a valuable resource to his friends and clients who practice law.
Before the Sun Goes Down is available as part of Lifeguard Wealth’s library of resources under the website’s “Learn” tab, existing both as a text-only blog post and downloadable PDF. It remains a useful relationship-building and educational tool for Joe. And it is an enduring product of Lifeguard Wealth’s thought leadership among top fiduciaries serving attorneys and other advanced professionals.
Link to blog post & downloadable PDF:
