Takin Care of Business: FinCon 2017 Recap

At last! Gwen writes her recap of Fin­Con 2017! I know you all were los­ing sleep all week wait­ing for it, so with­out fur­ther ado.… my recap!

Now, I’m not going to get super into the details this year. It’s not going to be an epic 4500+ word post where I write about each per­son I met (cough Fritz cough) although I would absolute­ly love to do so. Instead, I’m just going to do a gen­er­al overview of the week and talk about the impact Fin­Con had on me.

Last year, I went to Fin­Con to hang out with friends and have fun in San Diego for a few days.

This year was different.

This year I went with goals on things to achieve for the blog, the pod­cast, and myself.

This year I was a Speak­er. I was nom­i­nat­ed for Plu­tus Awards. I was Known.

Big Events

I had a num­ber of awe­some expe­ri­ences at #FinCon17. I was asked to speak on the FIRE pan­el with some real­ly awe­some peo­ple: Tan­ja (Ms ONL), Nords, and Scott Trench. All 3 are peo­ple I hold in high regard and con­sid­ered the expe­ri­ence an hon­or. It was a good mix between already FI, on the edge of FI, FI and doing their own thing and me with my “F‑it I have some mon­ey saved up approach”. I felt we had some great con­ver­sa­tion between us on the pan­el and with the audi­ence (packed house!)

I also got the chance to record an episode of our pod­cast with Bran­don. Less than a year ago, we were on his pod­cast and now he was on our pod­cast. What an awe­some turn of events. Even cool­er, our episode was record­ed from the back of a real VW bug. We had a crowd of cheer­lead­ers hov­er­ing while record­ing which made me feel like a Real Podcaster.

Prob­a­bly the COOLEST thing of the entire trip was being nom­i­nat­ed for not just one Plu­tus award, but TWO!!! TWO AWARDS! I was up for Best Gen­er­a­tional Blog Award, and J and I were up for Best New Pod­cast. Thank you to every­one that sup­port­ed us, argued for us, and vot­ed for us. Even though we did­n’t win, I’m still real­ly proud for mak­ing it all the way to the final vote. It’s a tan­gi­ble reminder of how far I’ve come, and how far we have come with the podcast.

I’m not super upset as I was award­ed the entire­ly fake and com­plete­ly made up award of Best Par­ty at Fin­Con after host­ing an epic par­ty Thurs­day night. We drank, we laughed, we shout­ed over each oth­er, and drank a lot of good beer. I guess I should say they drank a lot of good beer as I’m glu-tard­ed and did­n’t actu­al­ly drink any beer at all.

I made a con­scious deci­sion to thor­ough­ly enjoy every minute of the week. High­lights include fun din­ners with new and old friends, danc­ing with tons of my favorite inter­net friends (seri­ous­ly, some of these finan­cial blog­gers can get. it. down!), and a late night heart to heart girl chat. I did my best to cement those mem­o­ries deep into my brain and I hope I nev­er for­get them.

Big Networking

This year was also the first year I was invit­ed to spe­cial invite-only events. I went to a break­fast host­ed by USAA and a lunch host­ed by Real­ty Shares. I don’t men­tion these to brag. I actu­al­ly dis­like the idea of pri­vate events at Fin­Con, but I can’t deny I per­son­al­ly ben­e­fit­ed from going. I was able to qui­et­ly con­verse with peo­ple in a small group with whom I had a lot in com­mon. The USAA break­fast atten­dees were social media influ­encers and mil­i­tary relat­ed blog­gers. The Real­ty Shares group was (sur­prise!) full of real estate investors. I’m hop­ing these events lead to con­crete oppor­tu­ni­ties in the future like free­lanc­ing gigs or speak­ing opportunities.

I fill a real niche of some­one who can speak both finance and mil­i­tary, so I think get­ting paid to speak to enlist­ed folk about mon­ey would be one of the coolest things ever. This helps ease my mind about quit­ting my job. Just know­ing there are peo­ple out there who want to give me mon­ey to do things is huge for eas­ing any wor­ries. The fun­ny thing is, I did­n’t set out to find oppor­tu­ni­ties- they found me!

J and I also spent a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time speak­ing with poten­tial spon­sors for our pod­cast. I think we walked away with some very sol­id spon­sor­ship pos­si­bil­i­ties so I am incred­i­bly hap­py with that. Spe­cial thanks goes to Erik for being our hype man when he was­n’t busy with his own schedule!

Fin­Con is get­ting huge. Like 1700+ peo­ple. This is awe­some and unfor­tu­nate. It’s awe­some that it’s get­ting so huge which means most of my favorite peo­ple on the inter­net are in one spot at the same time. I could leave to get lunch and spot Paula Pant walk­ing down the side­walk. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are only so many hours in the day and the Sher­a­ton in Dal­las was one sprawl­ing venue. There was just no way I could meet/hang out with every­one I want­ed to and that kills me. I did get to meet some peo­ple but got called away from the mid­dle of some excel­lent conversations.

I did vol­un­teer the first day which helped me see some peo­ple I oth­er­wise did­n’t get to hang out with the rest of the week. I con­sid­er spend­ing two hours stand­ing in one spot say­ing “down the esca­la­tor for Fin­Con reg­is­tra­tion” com­plete­ly worth it. The love­ly Miss Mazu­ma and I also orga­nized a meet­up of Rock­star Finance Forum mem­bers the first day. That was great for get­ting a head start on meet­ing peo­ple since we drew them into us instead of hav­ing all of us spread out all over the hotel in lit­tle pockets.

Fin­Con being huge also led to some seri­ous clique-ing up. It hap­pened to an extent last year but was even more notice­able this year. I regret this as I feel there are tons of smart peo­ple who have great advice and con­ver­sa­tion at the con­fer­ence that could lead to some fun/interesting crossover chances. I end­ed up chat­ting for an hour with one guy who turned out to be real­ly awe­some but isn’t in the FIRE space. I could’ve missed that if I had only sought out FIRE people.

I think next year for Fin­Con 2018 in Orlan­do I will make more of an effort to reach out to peo­ple before­hand to get on peo­ple’s sched­ules. This will ensure I get to meet peo­ple instead of leav­ing it to chance and poten­tial­ly miss­ing out on valu­able con­nec­tions again. If you’re going out to Orlan­do next year and want to hang, shoot me an email!

Big Relationships

Ok, so there isn’t any­thing big about rela­tion­ships but we were in Texas and every­thing is big­ger in Texas, right? It goes with the flow. No judging.

Any­ways.

I’d be remiss if I did­n’t men­tion a few peo­ple specif­i­cal­ly. First, a huge shout out to our friends P & D for wel­com­ing us into your house the first week­end. We had a blast! Sec­ond, to my co-host J and her hus­band. Thanks for being super awe­some roomies! I can’t wait to hang out in Orlan­do with you two next year. I’m also look­ing for­ward to the din­ner you buy us when we win the side hus­tle throwdown 😀

And final­ly, the best for last, to my boyfriend Erik. I real­ly enjoyed get­ting to spend a whole 9 days in a row with you and only wish we could’ve spent more time togeth­er. I’ve nev­er been to a major event like this with a sig­nif­i­cant oth­er and I feel like we crushed it! Thanks for the deli­cious birth­day meal, too! (Don’t wor­ry, read­ers not named Erik, we already said all these things to each oth­er in per­son but I just want­ed to cap­ture it in words on the blog.)

If you’d like to read more Fin­Con 2017 recaps, head on over to the Physi­cian on Fire blog where he has a list of almost 30 recap posts writ­ten! Weird that so many peo­ple would write a recap at a finan­cial blog­ger conference 😉

I’ve already got my tick­et to Fin­Con 2018! I can’t pass up the chance to hang out in Orlan­do close to all the big parks I’ve nev­er been to. See you there?