Terry has over 25 years of experience and success driving multi-million-dollar sales growth and expanding revenue streams for Fortune 500, middle market, and start-up companies, with a key focus on finance and insurance, as well as educational institutions.
In his current role as an independent advisor, Terry leads a team of 14 financial planners and creates documented, customized and optimized retirement income plans for their clients.
In addition to his vast experience, Terry has earned the prestigious Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP) designation, a Master of Business Administration in Finance & Marketing from Case Western Reserve University, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – with a Finance Major – from John Carroll University.
Terry Mulhern grew up in the small town of Windham, Ohio. The youngest of five boys, Terry learned at a young age the importance of working hard (starting in his family’s hardware store) and competing – primarily in several different sports.
He earned his first paycheck at the age of 10 – and, with the strong financial habits that were instilled in him by his father, Terry regularly deposited half of his earnings into his savings account. In fact, he still references his Social Security earnings statement that started in 1977.
When he’s not working with his clients, Terry enjoys photography, along with hunting, fishing, camping, and boating. He has three college-age sons, and two step-sons. Terry and his wife, Kelli, reside in Dublin, Ohio.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book?
My background started in Finance with a BSBA in Finance from John Carroll University in Cleveland Ohio. I went straight into banking and became the leader of a retail finance group within a regional bank. Prior to attending JCU I was also admitted into the Pittsburgh Institute of Art. My plan after graduating high school was to go to art school and be an artist. At the last minute, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to pursue a career in finance and decided to attend JCU. After about 7 years in finance, the art bug in me led me to change my career into marketing to get both sides of creative and numbers. I stayed in marketing for almost 20 years. I started into personal financial planning with my older brother and decided this is where I wanted to end my career. I wanted to help people.
When I started on my own, I worked with a lot of teachers. I would ask a simple question to all of them – “on a scale from zero to 10 how comfortable are you with your retirement readiness”. I was appalled by the responses with numbers like ½, zero, negative 5, etc. This prompted me to conduct a national survey on this one question of teachers. 64% of the respondents rated their retirement readiness at 6 or below or a grade of an F. I thought education was the key and writing a book purely focused on educational content was my new mission.
The concept of becoming the CEO of your retirement was inspired by a presentation that I give to every new planner who joins my team. That presentation is titled “ 7 Habits of Effective CEOs That You Should Implement Today in Your Practice”. The “Epiphany Moment” happened when I realized that those same principles applied to how people should approach retirement planning.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
There are several things I want readers to take away from my book. First, retirement planning is not something that you should “go it alone”. It is too complex and there are a large number of options for one person with a full-time job to give 100% of their time to execute. Find a professional to help you. Take your time and find the best and don’t just settle for your neighbor, the person your parents used, an old classmate, etc. Do the research and find the best fit for you.
Second, retirement is not just about money. 99% of all retirement books are about money and investing. To retire happy, you need both health and wealth. That is why my book dedicates time to both of these subjects. If you have both of these then you can start to think about your legacy, which is the final section of the book.
Third, most people do not change their life by reading a book. To change your life you need to take action. That is why I created a workbook that has the reader complete exercises at the end of each chapter. A the end, they have a playbook to follow with specific actions they need to take to change their retirement trajectory.
What were the top mistakes you made writing publishing your first book?
Before I discuss the mistakes, I would like to discuss the one thing I did that made the greatest impact on the success of my book. I am a financial professional and prior CMO (Chief Marketing Officer and COO (Chief Operating Officer). I am not an author by trade and all of my degrees are in finance and business. I knew for me to get the ideas onto paper in the best way possible I would need help. I researched the best written financial books and contacted the authors. I asked them how they wrote their books and who helped them. I then hired the best in the business for help. It took 10 months from start to finish but without a professional writer, my book would have been way too technical and with poor grammar.
I will speak to the largest and most important mistake I made writing and publishing my first book. Once the book was written, I tried to get to print and start to market too fast. I should have slowed down and made sure I did it correctly. For example, I started marketing the day the book hit Amazon before even receiving my author proofs. BAD idea! After receiving the author copies, I noticed several errors that needed to be corrected. The book did not have page numbers! After writing and first publishing, take a second review of all of the content on every page.
When will you to consider your book a success?
This is a very hard question to answer. Success to me is not about selling books and making money. I want to change people’s lives. I want them to have their best retirement possible. I want them to make changes TODAY to change their retirement trajectory. It is hard to put a number on that. I believe in BHAGS, (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), so I am going to set my number at 1 million people. I want to improve the retirements of 1 million people.
If you read the entire book, at the end you will realize that you need an entire team of experts to help you. This list includes doctors, coaches, financial professionals, accountants, attorneys, family, and friends. Your job as CEO of your retirement is to build the best team possible for you and fire those who do not perform. This last one may be the most important that people a reluctant to do because they have built personal relationships.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before publishing your book?
Prior to writing my book, I spent almost 100% of my time researching how to write my book. I knew I had a target audience, I believed in my message and wanted to write the best book I was capable of publishing. Now that my book is published, I am trying to work out the best way to market my book. People write good books all of the time that don’t sell. I believe the difference is marketing. I wish I started the research on marketing a book the same day I started researching writing the book.
As a former Chief Marketing Officer for several companies, I thought I had marketing covered. Marketing a self-published book is an entirely different beast than corporate marketing. I don’t have a $100 million marketing budget to go hire the best advertising agency in New York or Chicago. As a CMO, $10,000 is a rounding error in a budget line item. Now that is a giant sum of money.
From the answers I have given to the previous questions, you can still tell I am struggling with this. But I have made a conclusion after reading my own book! – Don’t go it alone. There are professionals who dedicate their careers to helping people who self-publish their books. I am taking my own advice and finding the best of the best to help me market my book. In my book I promote having your “Retirement Team”, and I am now building my “Book Team”. This includes the person who helped me write and publish the book, a person for my website, a person for marketing, family, and friends.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
There is very little I would do differently. But there are several tweaks I would make. First, I would have at least attended some classes at an art school. I would have continued to develop that skill. Just in the past 5 years have I really started back at developing the artistic side of my brain with photography.
The only other change would be to have moved sooner into retirement planning full time. I did it part-time for over ten years with my brother while holding another job.
I will admit that I have heavily relied on YouTube. I find the power of watching a video on a topic more impactful than just reading a book or listening to a podcast. I also like they get to the point quickly.
I follow Kim Grant, Chase Reiner, Heritage Wealth planning, Self-Publishing with Dale & Book Launchers to name a few. I am also an avid photographer and follow another 20-30 photographers on YouTube.
If you only had $1000 dollars to promote a new business or new book, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I wrote my book for several reasons. The first is to educate people on retirement planning. The second is to get people to focus both on health and wealth and the third is to help new clients with their retirement plans. Based on the third objective, I am printing 250 author copies and handwriting a note, signing each book, and hand-delivering them to 250 houses in my neighborhood.
What is your favorite quote?
I worked for a company that had inspirational quotes on the walls in every room in every building across the country. The one that sticks with me the most today is the one that was on the wall across from my office.
“Your altitude is determined by your attitude and not your aptitude”
How can we get in touch with you?
I have created a website retirement-ceo.com On the site you can purchase the book, purchase the workbook and download the workbook. If listening to the audiobook, there a section for each chapter to see the charts and graphs. Also, on the site, you can book a meeting with me directly for a free retirement planning session. I will be adding blogs and videos on current retirement topics to keep my readers up to date on current planning strategies. The book itself is available on amazon.
Author Interview: Karen Mangia – The Secrets of Success Revealed
