When new prospective clients meet financial planner David Rosell of Rosell Wealth Management, he routinely offers to tell them a little bit about himself.

“Never mind,” they say more often than not these days. ”We read the books.”

“Well, let me share our company investing philosophy,” he says.

“Never mind,” they say again. “We know.”

They don’t need any additional information. David’s books Failure Is Not an Option: Creating Certainty In the Uncertainty of Retirement and Keep Climbing: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Planning have already told them what they need to know. The prospects just want to sign up with him.

As a result, David no longer markets his business. He just promotes his books.

We’d initially met for less than an hour when I told David he was aiming too low—a first for him as I would quickly find out. Ever one to speak my mind, I said, “I know you just want to produce a book which will serve as a brochure that clients and prospects won’t throw away, but I think you’ve got a real book here.”

David isn’t your average financial planner. As a recipient of a Retirement Distribution Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business who has been featured in two of the financial industry’s leading publications, Financial Advisor and Financial Planning magazine as well as on CNN Money and NPR, David excels at turning his clients’ IRAs and 401ks into paychecks and playchecks. Before launching his financial planning career, he ran a seasonal business and traveled during the half of the year when cold weather prevented him from working. Also not your average tourist, David spent a month in each country he visited. Over a period of ten years, he lived in 65 different countries around the world.

After hearing a few of David’s stories, I knew instinctively that those adventures could somehow marry with the financial lessons he wanted to share with retirees. Little did we know at the time that the eventual title of the book—Failure Is Not an Option—would be the theme that would tie the adventures and the financial lessons all together.

Over the next several weeks, David and I brainstormed ideas and hammered out at least three separate outlines. All the while, David kept writing and, as I suspected, the material started to fall into place, sometimes in ways that surprised us both.

Failure Is Not an Option teaches retirees or those on the brink how to circumvent the unique and potentially devastating risks inherent in the second half of their financial journey. Through this unexpected melding of travel and even family stories coupled with financial survival tips, Failure Is Not an Option lays out the eight fundamental risks every retiree faces during the uncertainty of retirement.

Perhaps the best part of David’s book is that it’s so much fun to read, you don’t even realize that you’re learning so much about finances.

It took seven months of writing and editing, followed by several more months for design and layout, for Failure Is Not an Option to be completed. But the books have landed and they’re beautiful, thanks to book designer Lieve Mass, owner of Bright Light Graphics, and Hillcrest Media Group, an independent book publishing consortium.

To help launch his book, David has created a website, a fabulous book trailer (which lives on the site) and a media release. He’s also lined up speaking engagements and had postcards, bookmarks and posters printed up. But his biggest marketing push came before we even went to press, when he pursued—and obtained—endorsements from famous people he knew, like Charles R. Schwab, Jr. who proclaimed the book a “must read for anyone at or near retirement.” David also went after luminaries he had never even met, landing some of the biggest names in the financial and motivational arenas.

He couldn’t have gotten better endorsements if he had paid for them. Here are just three of the ten he received:

– “The Road Less Traveled meets Think and Grow Rich.” – New York Times bestselling author Don Yaeger

– “David Rosell’s guide to retirement planning shows you not only how to get your finances in order, but also how to bring meaning and purpose to those very special years.” – Ken Blanchard, co-author of the One Minute Manager and Trust Works 

– “This powerful, practical book gives you a step-by-step guide to retiring in comfort and never working about money again.” – Brian Tracy, author of Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

I confess, I don’t play fair. Every time an endorsement came through, I couldn’t resist the temptation to rib David. “And you wanted to write a glorified brochure,” I’d say. I’ll probably continue to give him grief about that every time I see him. And I have to say, he doesn’t mind a bit. Why would he? Less than a month after receiving his first box of books—and a week before the actual book launch party—he’s already put in an order to have another 1,000 books printed.

I’m so proud of him, of the work we did together and of the book that I could pop.