Money is a tool to help you lead the life you want, which makes money both important and powerful. Yet, it’s often only whispered about in our larger society. The Financial Freedom Summit is set to change that. Grant Sabatier and Philip Taylor, two of the event organizers, sat down with Cody and Justin on The FI Show to share a behind-the-scenes look at the event scheduled for 2020.
Check out some highlights from their conversation below–including Grant’s billion-dollar goal for the future of the Summit–to learn more about this inaugural event designed to help us all lead richer lives.
The FinCon Connection
Philip Taylor created FinCon in 2011 as a response to the early personal finance blogging space. Anonymous bloggers started expressing their personal finance experiences, including their goals and their issues. As blogging evolved and the need for forging real-life connections emerged, FinCon was born. This conference allowed people to come together to talk and problem solve.
What started with about 200 bloggers, now pulls in thousands of money and media influencers each year. Readers, listeners, and followers attend FinCon now, too, which emphasizes how much people feel the need to come together in a single space to talk about personal finance.
The Genesis of the Financial Freedom Summit
Grant and Cody did a multi-city Financial Freedom book tour this past spring, bringing discussions about money to communities around North America. By facilitating conversations around money at a local level, they were able to help people dialogue about money in new ways. In fact, many people were having conversations they hadn’t dared have before.
The set up also allowed the conversation to move beyond the traditional media narrative. People discussed pressing issues like student loan debt; they also voiced concern about the status quo and emphasized an interest in entrepreneurship. Despite the doom and gloom of the millennial narrative in the media, hope layered people’s conversations. Rather than fixating on financial woes, people focused on living lives they loved.
When considering why there seemed to be such a gap between what the media reports and what they were hearing, Grant and Cody realized it was because people felt they didn’t have a place to have these conversations. That was the impetus behind creating the Financial Freedom Summit. Inspired by what they saw on the tour, Grant and Cody teamed up with Philip to organize an annual event to support these money conversations.
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Who is the Financial Freedom Summit for?
The short answer is that the Financial Freedom Summit is for anyone pursuing financial freedom. It doesn’t matter where you are on your financial journey; you have something to gain from this event. Attendees are invited to listen, learn, share, and even teach one another. All of this is aimed at having more open money conversations and to mitigate some of the stress that results from only discussing money in hushed tones.
Because the event organizers recognize that most people understand the principles behind money, such as save more and make more, this event’s focus looks past the basic tactics of money. Instead, it’s about finding support and offering accountability to one another.
It’s also worth noting that the event isn’t designed to be FinCon 2.0. The Financial Freedom Summit is not geared as an event for content creators, like bloggers and podcasters. It’s a broader umbrella, inviting more people in. Of course, the money nerds who attend FinCon would be right at home, as would their audience members.
Anyone who wants to talk about money and wants to take the next step is welcome. Maybe you are feeling isolated without anyone to discuss money within your day-to-day life. Perhaps you’re worried about your job or wondering about the future. If you want to take the leap into entrepreneurship, explore living in other places, or just design your life on your own terms, this event is for you.
It’s About More than Financial Independence
Financial independence (FI) will certainly be a topic of conversation at the event. However, the Financial Freedom Summit is about much more than FI. By broadening the scope, the Summit can touch on so many pillars of finance, including saving, side hustling, investing, and so many other money niches.
At the event, you’ll have the chance to:
- Build budgets,
- Choose savings accounts,
- Review student loans,
- Analyze renting and buying options,
- Explore life insurance,
- And discuss so many other aspects of financial wellness.
The variety of niches is also apparent in the speaker list. Speakers come from all walks of life with different communities and philosophies surrounding money. The event will present high-quality information with no strings attached. Everyone who attends, from speakers to attendees, is focused on making people feel welcomed and supported. To underscore this, Grant emphasized that the only people who this event isn’t for are people who are judgmental toward others.
The following is only a few of the many speakers who will be in attendance.
More so, the Summit offers childcare to anyone who needs it.
How is The Financial Freedom Summit Set Up?
The event takes place over multiple days, depending on the type of ticket that is purchased. The main event takes place on September 29-30, 2020.
A Friday morning keynote kicks off the Summit by sharing the vision for the event. As the event continues, other speakers will help attendees explore how money supports the life you want. Later, attendees will choose from various breakout sessions. These sessions focus on four core tracks, including discussions on mindset, saving, earning, and investing. All of the sessions underscore the event’s focus on helping people design the life they want.
Also, the event is flexible. With a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure flair, guests can hop from track to track to make the event as specific and meaningful to their lives as possible. After two intense days of learning, the Summit culminates with a celebration on Saturday night.
Anticipating the Next Success Story
All of the event creators have big goals for the Summit. Why? They each understand the power in face-to-face interaction. There is nothing like physically surrounding yourself with people who share a similar perspective and world view. Being able to come together at an annual event is so meaningful, and it impacts your financial journey in profound ways.
Thinking of the incredible success that so many FinCon attendees experienced also influenced the goals that the event creators have. Philip notes that some FinCon attendees transitioned into full-time freelance work a matter of months after the event, while others found huge success with blogging and content creation in less than a year after their first FinCon.
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Surrounding yourself with like-minded people who want something different out of life makes it powerful. The Summit community will grow during and after the event. But the event organizers are building the community beforehand too. A Facebook group is in the works, and that is just one way that Summit attendees can make connections and build a foundation for success beforehand.
The Financial Freedom Summit is a supportive space to help people live richer lives. A personal mission of Grant’s is to have the conference support a billion dollars worth of net worth growth across the Summit community within a decade.
To learn more about The Financial Freedom Summit, check out the full podcast episode or visit www.financialfreedomevents.com.
