I’m not a content creator. I have nothing to sell, and no business that needs any products or services.
Yet here I am at a conference/trade show for influencers, thought leaders, content creators, financial coaches, and others in the personal finance industry. As a former tax nerd, I feel like I fit in tangentially, at best.
So why am I here, and what have I learned?
My primary reason for coming to this conference was to spend some quality time with my BFF, James Orr, who specializes in helping real estate agents cater to the needs of real estate agents, because that’s exactly how he built his real estate brokerage business. Personally, I think that the FinCon organizers should reach out to James and ask him to give a presentation about this at next year’s event, but I’m also pretty biased.
A secondary reason for attending this conference was to meet other FIRE folk (FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early). I figured that an event like this would have at least a few people that were also FIREd, and it did not dissapoint. In fact, the number of other FIREd attendees was quite high. I wanted to network with other early retirees because I like talking about money and investing, but sadly it’s such a taboo subject in our society that most people don’t want to talk about it. This objective was definitely achieved, and I now have several new friends that are not just willing, but eager, to talk about such things.
A third reason for me going was more ethereal in nature. I wanted to reboot my finance and marketing brain, take the pulse around marketing strategies being used, perhaps stumble onto a new business idea for myself. What emerged from that were some possible angles from which I could help tackle the financial literacy crisis in the United States. Look for more on that from this blog in the near future.
Finishing this post at home after the conference, here are my top tips for first-timers attending FinCon or a similar event:
Install the event app and complete your profile well before the event. I didn’t do this until the day before, and I think it cost me some lost connections.
Have your 30-second elevator pitch crafted before the event. This quickly became an impediment for me, because I didn’t do it ahead of time. Winging your elevator pitch is never a good thing. Practice in front of your dog, cat, or mirror, not in front of a prospective client, brand partner, or even just a new friend.
Be judicious in attending the education sessions. Before the event, scrutinize the lecture schedule and only attend those sessions that: (a) Directly impact what you need to address most right now in your business, and (b) provide ideas that you can implement within the next 1-3 months. I highly suggest that you attend the minimum number of education sessions that you can reasonably implement within the next quarter.
After selecting your minimal number of lecture sessions, prioritize attending networking sessions and roundtable discussions. At FinCon, Community Meetups are organized by attendees themselves, and submitted for inclusion on the schedule. Platform + Niche Meetups are roundtable discussions with tables available for different topics, like FIRE, podcasting, budgeting, financial advisors, etc. Lastly, there are Creator Conversations, which are single-topic roundtable discussions that are guided by a discussion leader from the stage. These covered topics like FIRE, YouTube, podcasting, fees, debt, creating content for Gen Z, and many more.
Sign up for a dinner group. These are organized by FinCon, and coalesce the week before the event. I failed to sign up for one of these, and that was a mistake.
When you register for the event, sign up for the higher-level pass that includes the mastermind group. I believe FinCon called it the “Plus Pass”. Yes, it costs more, but you get placed into a group of people with similar goals. I didn’t opt for this level, but James did, and it sounds like he made some incredibly worthwhile connections from within his pre-assigned mastermind group.
Outside of the organized sessions, work the hallway. This was a piece of advice given to me by the first person I met at the first morning networking mixer of the event, so shout out to DeMarcus Hunt for this tip. If you see somebody filming, ask them about it. The single most actionable new marketing tip I received came from Kyle Cardoza after seeing him filming short-form interviews in the hallway. If the business name on a passing person’s event badge sounds interesting, turn around and walk back to talk to them. If you overhear somebody say something interesting, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself and politely ask for more information.
Talk to the vendors in the expo hall, especially the smaller companies where you’re likely to be talking to the founders or C-suite team, because you never know who you’ll meet. For example, I had conversations with Jeff Cummings, the COO at LLCAttorney.com, as well as Jen Yip, the founder of budgeting app Lunch Money, whose previous startup was in the 500 Startups accelerator program two cohorts after my startup was. If you want to see a couple unique ways of bootstrapping the growth of a tech startup, it’s worth dissecting what these two companies have done. Perhaps I’ll write on that in the future.
Follow up with new connections as soon as you get home. It’s now Monday morning as I wrap up this post, and I got up especially early so that I could do follow-ups, complete this draft, review books and websites that I was referred to, and arrange Zoom calls with people for this week.