At The Top of his Game

He also cautions his doctor clients that they can’t protect all their assets from potential lawsuits, a fact that many of them don’t seem to realize, he says. “In this life, if you cause grievous injury to someone, you’ve got to compensate them for the damage you’ve done, and that’s whether you punch them in the nose or slice through a tumor while you’re operating on them,” he says. “Those things aren’t supposed to happen, and if they do–and even if the doctor didn’t mean to, or was tired, or sick, or just had bad judgment that day–they gotta pay.”

Balliett’s goal is not to get the doctor off the hook entirely, but to make sure, through insurance coverage or simply savings, that a doctor has enough money available to settle a case fairly with a patient, and only then consider ways to shield the balance of the doctors’ assets. “If [plaintiff's attorneys] know that that’s all there is, and it doesn’t matter how much they threaten you and how many dollars in legal fees they throw at you, that’s all they’re going to get,” he says, “then they’ll settle for that amount, if it’s a reasonable amount.”

The Write Stuff

In addition to trust planning and advice on the usual gamut of financial planning issues, Balliett provides his clients with some unique perks. One is a one-page poster/newsletter for doctors to post in their office lunchrooms; topics are explored in a simple Q&A format, and answers are directed at young, not-so-rich individuals–the typical profile of a nurse, receptionist, or other member of a doctor’s staff. The poster, designed with classy, clean lines by a contract employee, isn’t intended so much to attract the staff as clients as to simply help the doctor provide a service to them. “It’s just a perk,” says Balliett. “And even the children of doctors who work in Daddy’s office need to learn about money; these things are shared with them as well. I don’t know anyone else who does this.”

While many advisors regularly mail some sort of client newsletter, Balliett’s stands out both by size (usually 12 pages) and its design (the pages are clean and uncluttered, with a magazine-like design; no cheesy clip-art and goofy border overkill here). Balliett used to write the whole thing himself; he now writes parts of it and edits pieces submitted by his staff. With clients in 30 states, the newsletter is an important component of his communication efforts.

And one need only read his newsletter, one of his books, or even his “All About Us” brochure (a substitute for the Form ADV for clients, now that he’s no longer regulated by the SEC) to see that this is a guy who takes the printed word seriously. He should, given that his resume from 1950 to the mid-1970s includes stints as a writer, photographer, and editor at everything from an army base newspaper in Alaska to The Cincinnati Enquirer and Medical Economics magazine–not to mention the slew of financial planning and practice management books he’s authored since then. From the day his fifth-grade teacher in a country school outside Dayton, Ohio, first suggested he might one day become a professional writer, Balliett’s ambition was to become a journalist, preferably the news editor of a big-city daily newspaper. (He says he still fantasizes about being rich enough to buy such a publication and “retiring” to become its news editor; for the moment, at least, he’s contenting himself with working on two other financial planning books.)

Fresh out of high school in 1949, Balliett couldn’t afford to go to college to study journalism (or anything else, for that matter). Instead, he worked for a year on an assembly line, operating a hydraulic press–and going cross-eyed with boredom. But he learned something more than how to make metal-alloy rotors that year. “In that lonely, challenging year, I came to recognize the heroism of fathers who labored all of their adult lives at dangerous, boring jobs they despised, and doing so because no alternatives were open to them and they had families to shelter, feed, and clothe,” he says. “That’s the year I came to see the relationship money has to dignity and choices.” To this day, he tries to share that lesson with all his clients.

His own dignity and choices got a nudge from fate when the Korean conflict erupted; when he enlisted in the Air Force, primarily to avoid being drafted into the infantry (“I knew I’d surely be dead even before I got off the boat,” he says), the Air Force sent him to the Army War College to study–surprise!–journalism. From there, he was sent to write and edit a newspaper at an army base near Fairbanks, Alaska, then to Montgomery, Alabama as a staff writer, and then, after his enlistment was up, back home to the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal & Daily News. In 1954, he enrolled at Ohio State, and “the GI Bill and Dee, teaching, put me through college,” he says. His major, of course: journalism.

After graduation, he worked for The Cincinnati Enquirer, then Newsday, finally trading in the daily-newspaper beat for the position of editor at Medical Economics, a financial magazine for doctors. The siren song of entrepreneurship grew louder as he began doing consulting work, advising doctors on practice management and financial planning issues, but it wasn’t until after another five years, this time as editor of Physician’s Management magazine, that he succumbed. The Gene Balliett Family Finances Seminar, a three-day program presented to physicians across the country, ran from 1979 to 1989; most of Balliett’s current clients met him through the seminar. In 1986, he returned to office-based practice, and by August 1987 he had $8 million under management. After some very prescient investing decisions both before and after the crash of October 1987, he was managing more than four times that much. “By Monday, October 12, 1987, the Dow had fallen nearly 9%, and I moved every dime into money funds. Black Monday was one week later,” he says. “We moved from zero to 100% back in the market less than a week before the S&P bottomed out on December 4. The word-of-mouth must have been marvelous; a few months later, we had $35 million under management.”

Balliett says he doesn’t have time to miss his journalism career much; what with books, newsletters, reports, and Web site content, he’s too busy writing. And that’s a large part of what financial planning is about, contrary to popular belief, he adds. “There are people who do financial planning by only talking to people; by and large the new movement toward hourly consultation is pretty much talk, talk, talk,” he says. “But other than that, those who are doing comprehensive financial planning are in the business of writing–writing reports.” Although he believes his writing skills are one of his greatest strengths as a planner, the downside is the frustration he feels when supervising planners who aren’t similarly words-minded. “I think many people who are majoring in finance or economics who say they want to be a financial planner are way off base, because what they think they want to do requires writing skills, and they probably don’t have them,” he says. “One of our greatest challenges is getting financial planning [employees] to write a simple report.” He says he’s generally pleased with the work his employees are producing, but the amount of coaching and training required to get to this point surprised him.

With clients to meet, new services to organize, and newsletters and books to pen, Gene Balliett, age 70 going on 40, is still going strong, and remains convinced that productive, enjoyable work is better than any traditional kind of retirement. “I know I hate golf, and am entirely appreciative of roses when other people grow them. I believe my greatest satisfactions come from work,” he writes in his book Make Your Kid Rich (Professional Communications, Inc., 1993). “If you are doing what you most like to do, you are retired. If you mostly like your work, then alter it however you should, to make it better. When your day goes mostly the way you most like it, rejoice.” Pretty good advice, no matter how old you are.