It’s More Than The Money

I recent­ly had the plea­sure of attend­ing the Pod­cast Move­ment con­fer­ence in Philadel­phia. Giv­en that I have a pod­cast, I thought it might be help­ful to go to a con­fer­ence with some of the best and bright­est pod­cast­ers out there.

I was a lit­tle ner­vous about spend­ing the mon­ey to go to the con­fer­ence. I spent a fair amount of mon­ey to attend, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of not earn­ing a lot of mon­ey at the moment. I earned $124 in July 2018.

Adding up every­thing I spent on the con­fer­ence gives me a bal­ance around $1,240 for one week at a con­fer­ence. This includes the cost of the tick­et, the sketchy Airbnb, food, and trans­porta­tion. From a pure num­bers stand point, it does­n’t make sense.

How­ev­er, there are an untold num­ber of ben­e­fits that you can’t put… uh, a num­ber on haha.

The Meetup was Heatin’ Up

Sun­day evening Stack­ing Ben­jamins and Choose FI (two of my absolute fav pod­casts) host­ed a joint meet­up at a local brew­ery. They opened it up to any finan­cial pod­cast and their audi­ence to join them as there is quite the over­lap in audi­ences. My co-host J and I flew in ear­ly to hang out with a bunch of like mind­ed people.

We got to meet fel­low online finan­cial peo­ple but more impor­tant­ly, sev­er­al listeners/readers were there specif­i­cal­ly to hang out with us. I LOVE meet­ing peo­ple who listen/read the stuff I pro­duce. It helps me fig­ure out what top­ics to talk about and also just gives me a chance to hang out with peo­ple who think like me.

Where else could I find peo­ple to com­mis­er­ate over own­ing a crap­py rental prop­er­ty with drug­gie ten­ants? You’re not going to have that con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger in line at the gro­cery store check out, that’s for sure.

So, a tremen­dous THANK YOU to those that came out to see us. We loved get­ting to meet you in person!!

Conference Networking

PM18 offi­cial­ly kicked off Tues­day, but J and I attend­ed sev­er­al net­work­ing events on Mon­day. We got to speed net­work with a bunch of awe­some lady pod­cast­ers and then chat­ted with ran­dom peo­ple in the hall­ways. It turns out there’s a pod­cast for any top­ic you could think of — trav­el­ing while gluten free, liv­ing with dia­betes, rais­ing aware­ness for incar­cer­a­tion of women, vet­er­an sto­ries, and any num­ber of com­e­dy and true crime podcasts.

We real­ized we’ve bare­ly cracked the sur­face on sto­ries to tell so we made ver­bal invites to a num­ber of peo­ple to come on the show who have amaz­ing sto­ries. It was real­ly fun to stand there and glance at J who was just as enrap­tured by a sto­ry as I was and know one of us was going to make the offer when they fin­ished their sto­ry. I lit­er­al­ly can­not wait to have them on and share their sto­ry with everyone!!

J and I also got offers to appear on oth­er peo­ple’s pod­casts, which we will hap­pi­ly accept. We love spread­ing the mes­sage of FI and talk­ing about our adven­tures in side hus­tles with new audi­ences. I also got an offer to appear on a nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed radio show talk­ing about real estate, so I’m pret­ty excit­ed for the chance to make my radio debut. (Win­ning tick­ets to a Phil Vas­sar con­cert on the local coun­try sta­tion when I was 12 does­n’t count.)

There were also peo­ple rep­ping pod­cast net­works, pod­cast soft­ware solu­tions, and pod­cast­ing equip­ment. We have the chance to speak with a Senior VP about join­ing a pod­cast net­work which could eas­i­ly dou­ble or triple our reach and start bring­ing in mon­ey (if we decide to go with them). I would nev­er feel com­fort­able email­ing that high of a per­son at such a pres­ti­gious com­pa­ny with­out that per­son­al con­nec­tion before­hand. Pret­ty cool stuff!

Inter­wo­ven with every­one else was my amaz­ing co-host J. We live in sep­a­rate time­zones, so although we talk every day we only see each oth­er in per­son maybe once a year. Get­ting to spend 3 whole days with her was a very spe­cial treat! Nor­mal­ly we talk about pod­cast stuff around work and record­ing new episodes, so it was incred­i­bly ben­e­fi­cial to be able to focus on pod­cast stuff for such an extend­ed peri­od of time.

 

(warn­ing: all the feels com­ing up)

Some­times I unwit­ting­ly take advan­tage of her as a part­ner, but being at this con­fer­ence opened my eyes wider as to how amaz­ing she is. I mean, I knew it on some lev­el already but this con­fer­ence solid­i­fied it. Our pod­cast would­n’t be any­thing with­out all her hard work, so major shoutout to J!

YOU ROCK.

Real­iz­ing my co-host is lit­er­al­ly the best co-host ever was­n’t the only thing I learned at the conference.

Never Stop Learning

If I ever say some­thing along the lines of “I know every­thing about pod­cast­ing” please punch me in the face. 

J and I learned SO MUCH. The ses­sions were so incred­i­bly help­ful. It was like stand­ing in front of a fire hose full of infor­ma­tion about pod­cast­ing. I’m so sad I could only go to one ses­sion at a time. I do, how­ev­er, have access to the dig­i­tal record­ings when they come out so you bet your bip­pies I’ll be watch­ing the ses­sions I could­n’t get to and maybe even going back to ones I attend­ed in person.

Then we get the fun of putting all that knowl­edge into action!

New Toys

I’m real­ly excit­ed about the way I’ll put that knowl­edge into action. I was sit­ting in the lounge in the expo hall one day when a booth near me start­ed their give­aways. I like free stuff so I mosied over to see what they were doing. I did some pod­cast triv­ia and failed mis­er­ably because appar­ent­ly I live under a rock.

But then.… then they had a rock paper scis­sors con­test for a new mic and mic acti­va­tor. If you don’t know what that is, join the club. I think it has some­thing to do with mak­ing the sound clear­er. There’s a more tech­ni­cal def­i­n­i­tion but I don’t want to bore you with details. Plus, I don’t know what those details are.

So, I beast­ed my way through the con­test and WON! I won almost $1,000 worth of pod­cast gear. I won the Shure SM7B micro­phone (the same one used by Joe Rogan and Michael Jack­son!) and the mic acti­va­tor thing called the Cloudlifter CL‑1. Thanks to Buz­zsprout for the gear!

These are going to make me sound so amaz­ing! I can’t wait to get it all set up.…. but much like get­ting a free kit­ten, I’ll have to cough up some more mon­ey to get every­thing set­up cor­rect­ly. I’m hop­ing I don’t have to spend stick­er price on the gear that I need to com­plete the upgrade, but I’m will­ing to make the invest­ment if I have to.

Why You Should Go to Conferences

Don’t look at con­fer­ences as spend­ing mon­ey. Look at con­fer­ences as invest­ments in what­ev­er endeav­or you’re doing. The net­work­ing alone is price­less! Plus, there’s the chance you could win some cool stuff that ele­vates your game to the next level!

If you want to hear more about our expe­ri­ence in Philadel­phia, be sure to lis­ten to our August 1^st episode where we record­ed live at Pod­cast Movement!

Thanks for read­ing! Have you been to any con­fer­ences late­ly? Any­one wan­na hang out at Fin­Con 2018?