{"id":236105,"date":"2011-10-03T04:00:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/?p=236105"},"modified":"2023-09-28T12:47:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T18:47:53","slug":"fincon-financial-blogger-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/fincon-financial-blogger-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve learned (and taught) at Fincon"},"content":{"rendered":"
For over a decade, I’ve spent a week every fall hanging out with fellow money nerds at Fincon, the annual “money and media” conference. FinCon started in 2011 as a small(-ish) gathering for a couple hundred financial bloggers. It’s now ten times<\/em> its original size and draws legit financial journalists from all sorts of platforms. It also attracts some of the biggest names in the world of financial products — USAA, Ally Bank, Capital Group, etc. — plus plenty of new companies with cool ideas that may blow up in years to come.<\/p>\n For me, though, FinCon isn’t about meeting brands or looking for new ways to make money. Some of that happens, sure, but I spend most of my time catching up with colleagues. Ten years ago, these folks were mostly strangers. Today, they’re some of my closest friends.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I opened that first conference by speaking about why we write. Why do we blog about money? Do we do it for the fame? The fortune? The fun? I think all of these are part of it, but I argued that the real<\/em> reason we blog is because of you, the readers.<\/p>\n Your blog does not belong to you. Your blog actually belongs to your readers. Without them, you have no blog.<\/strong> If you want to grow your blog, to gain fame and fortune, let your readers have as much control as possible. I’m not saying you should allow a no-holds-barred free-for-all in the comments. I’m saying you should allow your readers to steer the blog’s content and direction.<\/p>\n[…]\n We’re lucky. We don’t have to choose between helping ourselves and helping others. We can do both<\/span>. One of the things that makes personal finance blogging so awesome is that our interests and our readers’ interests are often perfectly aligned. The more we show others how to achieve their financial goals, the more likely we are to achieve our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I also stressed the importance of story. I always<\/em> stress the importance of story when I speak to bloggers. I think traditional financial media is too dry; it lectures. Blogs are great because they let us share real-life stories about money so that others can learn from our successes and failures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As part of this point, I brought in a special guest: Benny Lewis<\/a>, the Irish polyglot. (Benny recently shared an article at GRS about how to learn a foreign language without spending a cent<\/a>.) Benny is spending time in Chicago learning to speak Klingon<\/a> for a Star Trek<\/em> convention. This is a great example of using story to convey an idea to readers.<\/p>\n Networking is a dirty word to a lot of people. It conjures images of slick guys in expensive suits who spam their business card to as many people as possible while pitching their product or service. There are absolutely<\/em> some folks like that at Fincon, but they’re rare. They’re the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n Because my peers have dubbed me “the grandfather of personal finance blogging”, and because I’ve been fortunate to build and sell a profitable website<\/a> already, I view my role at Fincon as a resource. I know next to nothing about modern blogging (although I’m learning!), but I still have lots of experience to draw upon. More than that, my decade in this field has allowed me to build a wide personal network, so I’m able to connect people who ought to know each other.<\/p>\n I suspect most new Fincon attendees spend their time attending the info-packed sessions. Not me. I spend my time in the hallways and lobbies, chatting with whomever happens to pass along. I chat with old friends like Jim Wang<\/a> and Harlan Landes. I chat with newbies like Gwen Merz and Marcus Garrett. I chat with people who have tiny podcasts and I chat with people who have created massive followings.<\/p>\n When I network, I practice what I preach.<\/p>\n I go into each conversation without motive. This probably goes against every piece of professional networking advice, but I don’t have objectives when meeting people. I let the conversation go where the conversation wants to go. Preferably, we chat about our personal lives: about our dogs, about travel, about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt<\/em>. Because we’re at a business conference, we do often chat about business, but I try not to steer things in any particular direction. I do my best to keep the conversation focused on the other person, not on me.<\/p>\n True story: Last year, at a smaller conference that feeds into Fincon, I co-presented about “the right way to network”. I explicitly said that leading with your pitch is the wrong<\/em> way to network. After the session, sure enough, a guy came up to pitch me on his product. I wanted to shoot myself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Fincon is first and foremost a chance to meet and bond with friends and colleagues. When you’re a money writer (or money podcaster or money YouTuber, etc.), you spend a lot of time holed away by yourself. It’s a lonely existence. It’s rewarding to see each other, even if it’s only once a year.<\/p>\n It’s strange to think that although I see these people only one week each year, they’re almost like family. We’re able to pick up where we left off twelve months ago and continue as if we’d never been apart.<\/p>\n For me, the best part of any conference is meeting and talking with my colleagues. It’s almost impossible to overstate how much I enjoy sharing tips and stories and ideas. The people I meet are universally amazing, and this weekend was no different.<\/p>\n Here are just a handful of the folks I’ve met:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fincon is also a chance for us to teach everything we know in order to help others improve their sites, podcasts, and channels. The unrestrained sharing of info and experience is astounding. In a lot of other fields, people would be jealously guarding their secrets. Not here. Here, folks are dropping knowledge bombs all of the time.<\/p>\n As always, I’ve been involved in a couple of presentations (in addition to the bajillion casual conversations in bars and lobbies).<\/p>\n I don’t really like public speaking. I turn down a lot of requests. And when I do<\/em> agree to speak, I’m often very nervous. But I’m always happy to do whatever presentations I’m asked to do at Fincon, and I’m nearly never nervous doing them. Not sure why that is. Maybe because I’m completely comfortable and in my element?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lastly, Fincon is a chance to meet with potential “partners”, companies who want to advertise on our channels or who want to pitch their shiny new money apps.<\/p>\n The real problem, however, is that many partner pitches just aren’t appropriate for me — or for you. Fortunately, some are. I was impressed with three companies in particular, and hope to work with them in the future (whether or not there’s financial compensation involved).<\/p>\n I came to the startling realization that I, as a man nearing his fiftieth birthday, really ought to be working with AARP<\/a>, the national non-profit whose mission is to “empower people to choose how they live as they age”. It was hilarious during my meeting with the AARP rep to watch the light switch on in both of our heads: “Oh, our missions are well-aligned, and there’s an opportunity here to collaborate and make the world a better place.” We don’t know what that collaboration would look like yet, but I’d be surprised if we didn’t work together extensively in years to come.<\/p>\n <\/a>Perhaps the biggest Get Rich Slowly news to come out of Fincon 2018 was that I’ve found somebody to come on board to handle the technical side of the site. As loyal readers know, I’m a writer. All I want to do is write, to share stories and strategies for better managing money. I hate hate hate dealing with the technical and business aspects of this business. (And make no mistake, this is<\/em> a business.)<\/p>\n Well, my friend Tom Drake from MapleMoney<\/a> does not<\/em> hate the technical and business side of things. In fact, he’s the sort of nerd who digs this sort of drudgery. (For him, it’s not actually drudgery.) We haven’t hammered out the details yet, but we’ve agreed that some sort of partnership is in order. In fact, he’s already begun working behind the scenes to clean things up around here. Yay!<\/em><\/p>\n I’ve been to a lot of blogging conferences in the past. Some are better than others. At a lot of these gatherings, folks tend to be close-lipped. They’re reluctant to share how they’ve achieved their success because they don’t want others copying them. It’s like they’re guarding trade secrets.<\/p>\n That’s not how people operate at Fincon, and I’m glad. We all seem to be open, supportive, and approachable. We’re willing to talk to anyone, no matter how big or small. We’re willing to share how to get more traffic, how to make more money, how to better connect with readers. We, as a group, have an abundance mindset<\/a> rather than a scarcity mindset, and this leads to growth and success for everyone instead of a select few. That’s a good thing.<\/p>\n More importantly, this abundance mentality leads to growth and success for our readers and listeners. That’s even better.<\/p>\n<\/span>A Meeting of Minds<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>Bond with Friends and Colleagues<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>Teach Everything You Know<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>Partner with Like-Minded Companies<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>The Future of Get Rich Slowly<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>Making the World a Better Place<\/span><\/h2>\n