Work hard, work smart

The dog days of the door-to-door guy

Bucher is a door-to-door guy in these early days. If only he could get frequent driver miles for all the tread he's worn off his tires. If only. Buckeye born and Buckeye bred, Bucher could drive 10 miles north to Michigan, but he'd rather drive 40 miles through the back roads of Ohio than march across that state line.

He's got his life and health license and a list of registered voters who are 65 and older. They're his prime target. He doesn't call ahead. If he were somebody else, he might look outside the window, hope for some clouds, some rain, anything so he could turn that car around and go home. You know "The Price is Right" is waiting for you back home, contestants jumping up and down, trying to win a new car. Drew Carey's not quite skinny yet, but he's getting there. Bucher, well, he's hungry, too, and rain or shine, he's on the road by 9:00 am. He could work Toledo, even the suburban Toledo area, but he chooses the rural places, knuckles sore from knocking by the time he calls it a day at 6:00 pm.

On these long days he's careful not to wear a suit out here. He doesn't want to scare people. I'm one of you, he tells himself. I'm one of you. He climbs the steps of wooden porches, talks to widows through screen doors. He hears "no" a lot. Sometimes he's shooed away with a broom. But he never feared anything on those long, dog days…except this one dog.

When you think about it, I guess every door-to-door guy has a dog story. This is Bucher's. "I'm at this house and the garage door is like a foot open. So I park the car and I start walking and see this nasty looking dog. It's big and I thought: 'Oh, this is not good.'

"So he comes out of that little slit from the garage and he's looking at me and I'm thinking 'Oh, God. This is not good!'

"So I thought 'Well, it's cool, it's cool. He's just checking me out.' Then this nasty thing starts out at a full sprint at me and I'm like—'Ahhh!' He chases me all the way to the car where he's pulled back by a chain. He was so close to the door I had to go in through the passenger side."

Googling for Vegas

After days like that everything else is easy, right? It seemed that way for Bucher. Dogs aside, he pushed through. Kept driving, kept knocking, kept selling—$150,000 in production that first year; $3 million the next.

And he wanted more.

While searching on Google one night, he read about an industry conference being held in Las Vegas that held promises of taking your practice to the next level. He signed up.

"It's the best thing I ever did," he says. Bucher walked exhibition row. He stopped at the booth of a leading marketing organization. They traded business cards and talked shop.

"So, how much production did you do last year?" They asked him.

"Three million," he said.

There was silence, a pause.

"Going door to door?"

"Going door to door."

"Just you?"

"Just me."

There's more silence, a longer pause, quiet smiles.

What happened in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas. Bucher signed on with the marketing organization. They pushed him to get his Series 65; they trained him; they mentored him. That next year he topped $10 million in production.

Part II. Work smart

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."—Albert Einstein

FLASHING FORWARD—To the present, Bucher's still doing business with people who live in rural Ohio, but there are no dogs nipping at his heels. Instead, clients come into a sharp, suburban office where they sit on comfy couches and chairs and are handed a menu that looks like something out of a fine dining establishment.

"We keep our kitchen well stocked but if there's something ordered off menu there's a grocery store within walking distance."

The order is then catalogued and placed in the client's file. "When they come back in, we have what they like ready for them."

The office is in Perrysburg, Ohio, a little hamlet separated from Toledo by the Maumee River. His company, Citizen Advisory Group, continues to grow. Bucher counts seven employees in Perrysburg and has opened another office in Palm Bay, Fla. In 2011, his production topped $20 million.

The Whitewater River guide

"At my seminars I tell people about white-water rafting and share with them this picture of my wife in Banff, Canada, where the water was 37 degrees. Before the guides let you down the river they scare you. They take you aside and make you sign waivers. They say you might die. They tell you, 'This is dangerous, this is bad, but we've put a guide on the boat to make sure you get down that river safely. And, as long as you listen to him, it should all work out OK and you won't die.'

"And at that point I show the attendees at the seminar this picture of my wife at the river and she's smiling because she knows my life insurance situation."

Bucher tells me the important point here for this industry is that there are two types of guides out there and most consumers don't realize it.

"There's a type of guide that will research and look into what's the best helmet and the best life jacket and the oars in the boat and they'll make sure you have all the best stuff. They'll sell it to you then they'll get up on the bank and watch you go down the river. And if you scream loud enough when things get a little rough, they might be there to sell you something else to try to get you through to the end.

"Then there's another type of guide. They pretty much do the same thing. They make sure you have the best boat, the best life jacket and the helmet and the oars and they make sure you have the best stuff available. But then they get in the boat with you.

"They go down the river with you and if there's a problem, they've been down this river before. They might even be able to see it before it even happens. And that's the difference between me as a fiduciary and other advisors that are strictly salespeople. It doesn't make that person a bad person. But they play by different rules. And as a consumer you better understand what the rules are to that game."

"For this industry…there are two types of guides out there and most consumers don't realize it."

A passion for community

Community involvement is a cornerstone of advisor Jeff Bucher's financial practice and, quite frankly, his life.

"I think community involvement is important for all of us but in particular for us in this business where communities have entrusted us with their finances and their retirements. It's vital that advisors find an organization that is of interest to them, that they have a passion about, where they can get involved and make a difference," Bucher says.

For Bucher, working with organizations where it touches the lives of kids is a true passion. He volunteers on the local YMCA's Christian Emphasis Committee and contributes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Boys and Girls Club of Toledo.

As a four-time varsity letter winner for The Ohio State University wrestling team and a three-time NCAA championship qualifier, Bucher can't sit idly by and allow kids in his area to grow up as couch potatoes and junk-food junkies.

"Particularly, I focus on those kids who are born into situations that are challenging," he says. "Sometimes, we can forget how blessed we are and to be able to give back and just make that tough situation a little better, even if it touches the lives of one family, then we're doing something.

"It makes all of what we do worth it. Because at the end of the day: it's not the money we have or the time we have; it's what we do with our time and money. That's the message we tell our clients and that's the message we should be telling ourselves."

Smart TV 

Looming on the wall of the conference room at Citizen Advisor Group is something called a Smart TV. It's huge, seemingly filling up one wall, and it's expensive—nearly 10 grand. 

It's an investment, Bucher says, that paid for itself with the first client who saw it demoed in a presentation. 

Bucher walks me through a demonstration of its awesomeness. I quickly see that it's like the world's biggest iPad or at least the biggest interactive screen I've seen in person. The TV, he tells me, is the kind you see TV personalities use on CNN or ESPN. He pulls up charts and graphs of economic indicators, and, before I can fall asleep, he flips to another screen where you can draw objects with your index finger. I imagine if we had more time we might play a game of tic-tac-toe. 

Another screen leads to a view of his company's website and if we kept going I'm sure we'd eventually land on an episode of "The Price is Right" where contestants are jumping up and down and Drew Carey is now very definitely skinny.

Bucher's flipped the screen back to some type of stock market index where there seem to be a million boxes with a million different colors. It's a brilliant display of shape and light.

"You know, it was tough, incredibly tough, those first years, but it was also fun because I met so many cool people," Bucher says.

"And you know something? Some of those clients are with our company even today. They are some of our top champions and they knew back then that I was just some dude out of my living room and they see us now and they're like 'wow' and they really feel a part of that success."

"You know, it was tough, incredibly tough, those first years, but it was also fun because I met so many cool people."