Followup to AdviserEdge + the winner of the FinCon ticket!

Two weeks ago today, I was sitting in a room of financial advisers, accountants and mortgage brokers all listening intently, two days in to the wonder that is the AdviserEdge conference.

I have been to AdviserEdge before, and so I had some idea of what to expect, however I have to say not only did the content highlight areas that I can work on to take my business to new heights of connection & engagement with the public, that room of wonderfully engaged professionals inspired me to do more, be more and try more.

It isn't very often you get to spend a few days with motivated, curious & adventurous small business owners and it was fantastic to find so many 'soul mates' in my never ending journey to find ways to do things better in my business.

This electric vibe culminated for me in my presentation on Saturday morning called "Bringing Innovation to Client Service Models - Caboodle's journey to Zaptitude". I am always happy to share the journey that has taken us from our first client portfolio 10 years ago to the development of a stand alone financial literacy brand in the last 18 months, however the level of interaction, enquiry & buzz in the room was just amazing and I am so grateful to Baz Gardner, Michael Back & the team at Social Adviser for giving me the opportunity to present. (If you would like to get a copy of the slides, then just enter your name & email address here and we will ship them out to you!)

One of the areas I covered was the extent to which the financial services industry uses jargon with the public, without even realising it, & the fact that they honestly have NO idea what we are talking about when we do. I even challenged the audience to tweet out all the different acronyms they could think of, and suggested that the best tweet about my presentation, or one of the topics I covered would win a free ticket to FinCon.

FinCon ... what is it?

FinCon is a peer conference for the money media community in the US, and is starting to reach out to the rest of the world. At the annual event each September,

• attendees connect with others in the community,
• learn to create, promote, and profit from compelling online content, and
• discover new trends in personal finance and investing.

Originally called the Financial Blogger Conference, the event was shortened to simply “FinCon” to reflect changes to the scope of the attendees.

FinCon's mission is to:

To support the movement that is reaching millions of people with a positive money message.

Having attended last year, and witnessed over 800 personal finance bloggers get together to discuss ways to enhance their content, develop online product offerings for their audience & most of all, reach more people by approaching their work as a whole community, I can safely say this is something that would benefit anyone in financial services who is either thinking about or already committed to creating content regularly.

I am going again this year, and would love to have a bigger Aussie contingent, so be sure to go and check it out here and as soon as you decide to come, then I would make two suggestions:

1. Immediately book your accommodation. Last year I waited too long and ended up way over the other end of town. These are full days and it is much easier if you are staying in the same hotel as the conference.
2. Let me know, and I'll be sure to collate the details of all the Aussies making the trek so we can catch up over there.

So, who won the Twitter comp?

Needless to say there were loads of awesome tweets, some creative translations of my Batman & Robin analogy into Star Wars, great wordplay demonstrating the crazy way we attempt to communicate via three letters at a time, and even my very own super hero alias.

However the winner of the Twitter comp, and the beneficiary of the ticket to attend FinCon this year in San Diego is James Millard with the following gem:

James came across a tweet by the lovely Hosanna Smith listing some of our industry's ridiculous language and then noticed that his phone tried not only to interpret it as a foreign language, but was then unable to translate it at all.

Sweet irony, and captures the idea I was trying to communicate perfectly!

So, James, please get in touch & I will get you the details for your FinCon ticket.

Now, for those of you that missed out, but were keen on attending FinCon, then you still can, and what I would say is that the conference price will surprise you at how low it is, so don't be shy and check it out.

Innovation, and taking the next step

After my presentation, I had a number of people come up to me with a wide range of questions, however most of them came down to one key thing:

I want to start to build a systems infrastructure in my own business, where should I start?

What I need to say upfront is that I am not a systems expert. And plan to never be a systems expert. However in Caboodle's constant efforts to improve the way we do things we have certainly got some insights to provide about innovation, systems & process improvements. And rather than keep those to ourselves, we are running a webinar next week called Innovation 101 in which we will cover:

• Getting the right mindset - Discover how to balance new technology with the great people already in your advice practice
• Find the low hanging fruit - Learn a workshopping technique designed to take you & your team on your first innovation adventure.
• Assessing a solution - Discover 7 things to measure each potential app or widget against before you implement it.

I will also finish up by highlighting some of the cool new cats I have come across in the app world, and how you can keep your eyes peeled for new ones in the future.

The wonderful Lauren Wilcockson, who joined us all at AdviserEdge, is also going to join me for a chat about Infusionsoft and how to work out if it's for you. Something I imagine a number of you were wondering after the conference.

If you are keen, you can register here, the webinar is on next Tuesday 2nd March at 8am. I look forward to seeing you in the world of webinars, and if you have any specific questions, please feel free to send them through beforehand.

The final word

The final thing I wanted to cover was to put out there something I have suspected before, but fully realised as I was in the midst of presenting at AdviserEdge - I love presenting!

Attempting to find the perfect intersection of information & storytelling, the buzz of the crowd's response, and the wonderful interaction afterwards was amazingly fun, and incredibly challenging, and I want to do more.

So, if you found the session helpful, and figure your dealer group or your team could benefit from it then please feel free to connect me with them. I have also done presentations based around my article "The Public are from Mars & the Financial Services industry are from Venus" that are both interactive and challenge the audience to think differently.

I look forward to seeing a few of you at FinCon, and if there is any other way I can help you with your innovation adventures in your practices then please don't hesitate to get in touch,

Peita

p.s. I also mentioned a service during my presentation that RP Data has put together for Financial Advisers to provide information on their home & investment property's value. If you are keen to find out more, get in touch with Darren at CoreLogic at [email protected] and mention 'Caboodle' to receive 2 months free.