After a nasty split from his 11-year business partners at the Art of Charm podcast, Jordan Harbinger found himself putting his own networking lessons to work as he started a new business from scratch with the Jordan Harbinger show and the Advanced Human Dynamics  platform.

Jordan's money story:

Jordan Harbinger:
Yeah, so it was supposed to be an amicable split. I got sick of being the dating guy, because I'm pushing forty, and I'm married, and I'm in a healthy relationship, and I just wasn't interested in that anymore. And a lot of the shows that I was doing were interviews with athletes, and generals, and all these really high-profile people, and they were always shocked, like 'oh, this is what this podcast is about?'

Bobbi Rebell:
Well the show was evolving, with you.

Jordan Harbinger:
The show was evolving with me. And my business partners were not super happy about that, and so they decided that we were going to split, and then when they proposed a split, we all agreed on it, and then later on, they decided, 'actually, we're not going to give you anything,' because ... I think that they had ... well it's only one guy, really ... I think he had hoped that I wouldn't leave, because I was doing all of the stuff that they needed to do to generate revenue.

Jordan Harbinger:
And so, I think he really, kind of had a little bit of an ego melt-down.

Bobbi Rebell:
When you say they didn't give you, is this about money? That he didn't give you the money, the buy-out?

Jordan Harbinger:
Right, I still own a third of the company.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right.

Jordan Harbinger:
But I'm locked out of everything. So instead of fighting for that, I said, you know what? I'm just going to start over. So I started my show, social media, email list, website, all from scratch.

Bobbi Rebell:
For people that don't know, can you talk a little bit about those assets, the value, and how they're created and what it takes to rebuild it?

Jordan Harbinger:
Sure. So, I had, essentially, created social media, Twitter accounts, since 2008 or whatever. An email list that had over, at that point, hundreds of thousands of people on it. A website that was getting millions of visits per month, and shows that were getting millions of downloads per month. And then, when all that was locked, I just basically ... I mean I literally created a new account on Twitter, called friends and said, 'hey man, can you whip up a website?' Put an email collection plug-in, in there, that was from a friend, Noah Kagan over at sumo dot com.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh I love Noah Kagan, he's terrific.

Jordan Harbinger:
He's great. Yeah. And so, I started The Jordan Harbinger from episode one, after doing the other show for eleven years.

Bobbi Rebell:
Was there a way to make people aware of this, other than, you're suddenly not on this show? And they're just being silent about it?

Jordan Harbinger:
No, there was no way for me to tell anyone. The listeners all had to come and look for me. And that's actually what happened.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where does this stand now? I mean, is there any recourse when this happens. Because people ... it's unusual, but it's sort of not.

Jordan Harbinger:
It's actually not that unusual, yeah. Now that I'm telling my split story everywhere, almost every successful entrepreneur is like, 'oh yeah, this happened to me a while ago,' or 'that happened to me a while ago, and I've never been happier.' It's really, really interesting to see. And, I've actually never been happier, myself, either. It's strange, you never realize how toxic environments are until you're out of them, because, it's that whole boiling frog thing, right? If they turn the temperature up by a notch every year, you're there for ten years, you don't realize you're on some sort of crazy funhouse ... funhouse is not the right word, a funhouse mirror-covered crazy-house, more like.

So when you get out of there, you go, 'oh! This is how normal people treat each other on teams, and this is how people celebrate wins together, and this is how people reinvest in a company.' Instead of causing stress, and blowing it. And so, it's actually just really, really been nice, for me, to pull the plug and start over. It's been rough, but it was absolutely worth it.

Bobbi Rebell:
There's a human element to this. So you lost ... your website, you lost your branding, you lost your email list in that. But, you've took humans with you. Tell us about that.

Jordan Harbinger:
When everything hit the fan and fell apart, what I did is I made a list of people I wanted to call, and the first ten or twelve phone calls that I made were to people I know would say yes to helping me. CEOs and other entrepreneurs, and people that were really, really great to me, in the past. And they said, 'yeah, we're going to help you!' So I had this massive support network. I went on over a hundred other podcasts this year, along, well over that, actually, at this point. And rebuilt the show up to millions of downloads a month, from zero, in February. And now it's better than ever.

And it's just been so strange, because, oh! I also took a lot of the team with me. Because when I left, a lot of the other team, that was at the old company, was like, 'well, we came to work with you, man.' So they all left. And I said, 'I can only pay you half of what you're worth for the next foreseeable future,' and they said that's fine. So that's what happened, and I've made them whole since, but that was a massive vote of confidence.

Because all of this qualified staff left the old company. They all bounced.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well they followed you, more than they left. They went to where they saw the opportunity, and that's human nature.

Jordan Harbinger:
Yeah, that's true. I mean, I still have my production team, my [inaudible 00:08:14] team, everything. Everybody came with me.

Bobbi Rebell:
And, probably, many of your listeners are gradually migrating over, if they have not already. And because you have adjusted your format, and constantly evolve it, that's probably expanding what your opportunity is, and they see that.

Jordan Harbinger:
Exactly. There's been a lot of people that have said, 'oh, I didn't even know about the old show.' And I'm like, that's good. That's what I like to hear. Because, I don't necessarily just want to bring the same crowd, from the last show. There's great listeners from the last one, but The Jordan Harbinger Show is just a much better interview. It's a much more interesting project for everyone involved, and I've done a lot of the things that we used to do in the old company, like try to run live events, and do all this, and do all that. And I've realized, I actually don't like doing it.

So, it's pretty fun to just be on my own.

Bobbi Rebell:
How do you move past something like this? Or do you not? Do you just work it into your life, and use it as part of who you are now?

Jordan Harbinger:
You work it into your life and use it as a part of who you are now. And granted, look, this is ten months since this thing. The lawsuit is still in full swing. So, it's not exactly, something I'm going to forget about this year, or probably even next year. But, that's all fine and good, I mean, this is trial by fire in a lot of ways. And I've certainly been through worse with less resources. Losing a business is a problem, but it's not losing a kid, it's not losing a spouse.

In fact, I look at it this way ... this isn't just rationalization either ... when I look at this, I think, if the deal that I had signed with the old company, had actually been honored, I would have been forced to gradually disentangle with them, over the period of three years. I would have had to promote their stuff, their products, the low quality stuff that was coming out now, I would have had to promote on my new show.

Instead, since they didn't honor anything, I have no non-compete, I can do whatever I want, I can make money however I want to do it. I can do anything in any niche, they have no say in anything. I can run any ads that I want and I don't owe them anything. In fact, they owe me thirty-three percent of the company share value.

So, it really ended up being like, the dumbest thing they possibly could have done. And for me, it was really scary, and then it turned out to be the best possible thing that could have happened.

Jordan’s money lesson:

I'm here to tell you, dig the well before you get thirsty. Because, if you try, when this stuff all happens to you, to reach out to everyone, and you're going, 'hey, look, I'm having a really hard time,' some people will be understanding. But a lot of people will be like, 'we haven't spoken in two, or five years, or whatever it is. I don't know what you want me to do. Best of luck.' Right?

But, since I'd done such a job ... I won't say great job, but such A job ... building and maintaining network connections, giving value, offering people things that can help them, without the expectation of getting something in return, when I did need help, people were coming out of the woodwork.

I mean, it was just, people I didn't even know were like, 'hey, heard what happened. Let me know if you want to come on my show and tell the story.' 'Hey, can I write an article about this for Ink?'

Jordan's everyday money tip:

I see a lot of people doing things like, spending ninety minutes, round-trip, driving to this produce farm, because they get cheaper stuff. And look, maybe you like organic produce from that farm, that's fine. But I see a lot of people doing really silly things to save money. Little, I wouldn't say scams, because they don't elevate that far, but I'm going to move the car eighty-five times, instead of renting a parking spot in my building in San Francisco. I mean I see stuff like this.

And they're lucky to break even on the cost of parking tickets at the end of the month, let alone all the time they spent, getting up at 5 AM so they can move their car, or driving around for twenty minutes, and then going back to sleep. I mean it's ridiculous, right? Pathological in some people.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh yes.

Jordan Harbinger:
But we like to focus on the big wins. And when I say that, what I mean is, the same people that will not rent the parking space in their building, in the city, so that they can park, and will drive around all day looking for parking spaces? These are the same people who will often keep credit card debt, so that their credit score takes a little bit of a ding, and then when they go to buy a house, they get a lower ... I should say higher ... interest rate, on that mortgage, and it ends up costing them sixty-eight thousand dollars. Right?

So we have to be really careful and focus on the big wins.

Financial Grownup tip number one:

Show up. Guys, we edit these podcasts, because, as you know, I really value your time. I want to keep them to around fifteen minutes. So, sometimes those edits are pretty severe. But we also edit out things, just to make the podcast better, not just for time. And in this case, we cut out a lot of Jordan coughing, and fighting to sound his best, for this interview.

Not that you would notice, he's a pro.

Jordan was battling a cold, and probably, at some level, exhaustion. He had just returned from a big speaking engagement, and was really not feeling well. But Jordan showed up. The man has done over one hundred podcasts promoting his new venture, not to mention, keeping to an aggressive appearance schedule, and other projects, building out his new business.

The guy shows up, and he works hard. No pity party, no year off, finding himself, blah blah blah. Jordan Harbinger works, and that is why his business is, and will continue to, grow, exponentially.

Financial Grownup tip number two:

Did I ever tell you guys I was married in my 20s, and got a divorce? And believe me, I was the one that always said I did not believe in divorce. But it happened. The best thing I did, was give stuff up, because you know what? You can get it back, or you know what? You really don't need whatever stuff you're fighting over, in the end.

So if you have a split, business or personal, of course, fight for what is yours, to some degree. But eye on the prize. Be like Jordan and move on. Take the long road, and most of all, get to work building your new life, or your new business. Do not let your ex walk all over you, but don't get stuck fighting for some material item, or every last cent, so much so, that you get caught up in your past, and don't move forward.

Bobbi and Jordan also talk about:

• How Noah Kagan was instrumental in helping to get Jordan's business off the ground. To learn more about Noah, check out his website here - https://okdork.com/about/

Check out Jordan's website - www.jordanharbinger.com
Here is a link to his course we mentioned - https://www.jordanharbinger.com/course

Follow Jordan!

• Instagram

• Linked In

• Twitter

• Facebook

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

When entrepreneurs Daniel Levine and Steven Pulver started their Fireside Conference in Canada 4 years ago, their ambition was so hot it burned through their budget, putting the conference in the red. 

In Dan and Steve’s money story you will learn:

-The backstory of their first Fireside Conference

-The key thing that they did not factor into their budget

-How they select who attends the Fireside conference, and how they believe that curation ties into their success

-The missing thing in the conference marketplace that they identified, and inspired them to create their own conference

-The personal connection they have to the location of the conference

-Where their funding came from at the start of the venture

-Why they were $30,000 in debt when the first conference ended

In Dan and Steve’s money lesson you will learn:

-Why they decided to stay on their original trajectory even though the conference lost money in year one. 

-What the data from the first conference showed them and how they leveraged the data for the future

-The role that social media played in their success, even though there was no cell phone reception (or use) at the conference

-How they monetized a very small audience by focusing on community curation

In Dan and Steve’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-Why they allocated a significant budget to in-person events to connect with their community

-The quick realization that they could have more impact on a lower budget by changing one key thing. 

-How you can apply that to your networking and marketing, or even just your friendships and personal relationships

-Why spending more money to impress people is often not effective and can sometimes dilute the potential impact

In My Take you will learn:

-How the new hit show Succession illustrated the same point as the Fireside guys- wealthy people are not impressed by expensive stuff. Just be real with them. 

-How I implement the same strategy, hosting friends and colleagues in my home, rather than taking them out for fancy impersonal dinners

-The significance of pro-actively choosing how you fund a startup

-How self-funding allows for a less painful failure, because while you lose your money, you maintain control and avoid pressure to cut losses from outside investors

Dan, Steven and Bobbi also talk about

-Dan and Steve’s entrepreneurial venture MinuteBox.com

-The next Fireside conference in September

-The speakers at the next conference will include Jordan Harbinger and Jason Calcanis

-How to get preferential consideration for the conference

 

Episode Links

Learn more about the Fireside Conference!

 

Follow them on social media!

-twitter @firesideconf, @daniellevine

-instagram @fireside_conf

 

Learn about their 2018 speakers:

Jordan Harbinger

Jason Calcanis

 

Learn more about the show I mentioned- HBO's Succession!

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Transcription

Daniel Levine:
We didn't have a sense of when we told people that it was going to be all you can drink, what that meant on the bottom line, and we didn't really have a sense of when you do a conference in the middle of nowhere three and half hours from the closest big city, what that means when you have to start helping to arrange transportation for people.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup, with me certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How To Be a Financial Grownup, and you know what, being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money but it's okay, we're gonna get there together. I'm gonna bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes my friends, the bar tab can get pretty expensive, especially when you offer it unlimited all weekend long, and that was just the beginning for entrepreneurs, Steven Pulver and Daniel Levine when they started the Fire Side Conference in Canada four years ago. The team wanted everything to be perfect for their first experience, but perfect does not come cheap. Lots of lessons and take aways here are Steven Pulver and Daniel Levine.

Bobbi Rebell:
Daniel Levine and Steven Pulver, you're financial grown ups, welcome to the podcast.

Steven Pulver:
Thanks so much for having us.

Daniel Levine:
Pleasure to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
You guys hold the honor of being the first team that I've had on. So this is going to be cool. We'll see how it goes.

Daniel Levine:
Thank you. We're looking forward to it.

Steven Pulver:
Hopefully no screw ups but we're looking forward to it.

Bobbi Rebell:
You guys are going to be great. Alright you are Canadian entrepreneurs and you are the brains behind a conference that I was very impressed by when I started learning about it, The Fireside Conference. It's happening for the fourth year in September, up in Canada. You're also entrepreneurs yourselves. This is a conference for entrepreneurs, you are entrepreneurs. Your company is MinuteBox, which is cloud based, software basically for law firms to help them be compliant with the various regulations in Canada but the conference is really the focus that I want to talk about here because your money story is about.

Bobbi Rebell:
So tell us what happened, this is year four. I want to hear what happened in the first year, because I think it's some that a lot of entrepreneurs and just people that have ideas about starting businesses or just managing their own finances will relate to and hopefully learn from

Steven Pulver:
For sure. It starts in 2014 when Fireside itself was born and just for your listeners to take just a 30 second overview of what Fireside is, and how it differs from a traditional conference. So Fireside at its core is an invite only retreat for entrepreneurs, founders, investors, influencers from all over the world that we invite up to a summer camp every September.

Steven Pulver:
We started our first official year in 2015. Daniel and I were looking around our community and saying there's a lot of great networking events, there's a lot of great events and things to bring the community together, but the biggest failure they all had was the inability to really bring people together on a way deeper level than just meeting in a conference hall.

Steven Pulver:
So we kind of said there's got to be a better venue that we can do a conference or an event at and we landed on this amazing summer camp where children are there all summer as a sleepover camp outside Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you have a personal connection, right? You have a personal connection to the camp.

Steven Pulver:
Yeah so I spent 24 years there both as a camper and staff and worked my way all the way up from counselor to head staff and eventually leadership team and helped a run a lot of the programming. So I was obviously incredibly biased. Daniel actually had attended camp Alden as well as a staff. So when we were looking at venues we were obviously both biased in knowing this was an amazing place to do this at.

Steven Pulver:
We had no video of photos of Fireside itself. When we were trying to market and spend money on ads and things like that, we literally had no real starting point. So because of that everything we were doing, we were fresh into. So we were throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, as we continue to do today, to see what would stick.

Bobbi Rebell:
Had you done any market research or anything? What was your background that made you qualified to do this?

Steven Pulver:
I think we would be completely foolish to say now that we had any form of subject matter expertise in running events, other than wanting to do something amazing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where was you funding coming from, did you have budget, how did this come together from a financial perspective?

Daniel Levine:
So in our first year, from a financial perspective, it really came together very loosely and in an unstructured way, and hopefully not to ruin the story, but that's how we found ourselves about $30,000 in debt at the end of it. We looked at pricing and we weren't looking at pricing as a factor or breakeven. We weren't looking at it as a function necessarily of our cost. We really went into this with an, "if you build it they will come" attitude and really not having pedigrees in the areas of conferences or event management. We didn't have a sense of when we told people that it was going to be all you can drink, what that really meant on the bottom line, and we didn't really have a sense of when you do a conference in the middle of nowhere three and a half hours from the closest big city, what that means when you have start helping to arrange transportation for people.

Daniel Levine:
So it really was both a combination of not having a budget, but also really just, as you put it, not having any qualifications for doing something like this that had us at the end of a really magical two and half days turn to each other and realize that we really were not in a good financial position.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what did you spend? Give me some of the numbers, what did you spend on the conference and where, and was your revenue that you did have?

Steven Pulver:
Back then, I should say, our only revenue source was tickets. So our tickets were, Dan what was it, $300 to $500 range?

Daniel Levine:
Yeah.

Steven Pulver:
Let's say give or take $350 to $400 on average, in terms of ticket price. That was really our main source of revenue. We had a little bit of sponsorship at the time, but when we're talking about money coming in the door, we're really looking in the $20,000 to $30,000 range or just pure revenue. Now, there's a lot of costs involved, so of course things are completely dependent on the number of people that we have enter the gates of camp. So back then we were about 75 people, now we're around 400, so obviously that has changed quite a bit, but back then, alcohol was a huge cost.

Steven Pulver:
Swag, wanting to give people, for instance, under that swag category I would put whether they'd be water bottles, or [inaudible 00:06:28], or pieces like that. Food, obviously, is a huge piece. Those were the big, big, big costs, and when Dan and I looked at this and we said, "We want to create an amazing event," we didn't have budget in mind. That certainly doesn't mean we had an unlimited budget, but we were never going to sacrifice the quality of, say, the food, or the amount of food, or the amount of alcohol, or the amount of drinks, or whatever it might be, on account of our budget in that first year.

Steven Pulver:
We didn't really know where we were going with it, but kind of both said, "We're in, or we're not." And once we made that decision to go ahead, the budget, unfortunately looking back, it was really nonexistent.

Bobbi Rebell:
So where did you get the money from, the negative $30,000? Was it borrowed, were you putting it on credit cards?

Daniel Levine:
Yeah, so that was coming from our personal capital. Steven and I, we certainly didn't have $30,000 to blow away, but we were fortunate to have some savings, and we're very thankful for the support of our significant others, who saw that big bill come in at the end of the day and say that they had faith in us to really build something fantastic. And the only reason that we were able to swallow such a hit in our first year, was that we had a long term view. There's at least one component of that long term view, if not two, that were important to informing our decisions.

Daniel Levine:
One was, we knew we wanted to go larger than 60 or 75 people, we always thought that we'd be in the 300 to 400 person range. Knowing that, we also knew that our fixed costs were high, and our variable costs were quite low. So that actually was a huge point of leverage for us to look towards in future years, knowing that if we were able to focus on growing our membership and attendee base, that would end up covering our fixed costs, and since our variable costs are quite low, it wouldn't be linear and proportional, such that a 60 person conference would see us lose a similar amount of money as we would see in a 400 person conference. We always knew that if we grew enough, in future years we would be able to cover that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. So what did you do then in year two, and what is the lesson for our listeners?

Daniel Levine:
Yeah, so two key things. One was, stay on the trajectory that we were on with our original vision. So we had to have faith in the fact, and quite honestly we could look to the spreadsheets to prove it, but we had faith in the fact that if we grew from 60 or 70 to 285, which is what we were in our second year, we would exceed those fixed costs-

Bobbi Rebell:
Which is phenomenal growth, by the way, that's amazing.

Daniel Levine:
It was. And that was something that we really didn't expect, but because we made that huge investment in the first year and put on a fantastic program, what happened on the Sunday when we came back into the city and got cell phone reception again, is our emails were filled, not just with responses from attendees, but from friends and friends of attendees who saw them tweeting and Instagraming about it, and saying, "How do I get an invite? How do I get involved?" So we were able to leverage a really amazing product into a very big growth year into our second year. So that was a very large component of being able to recoup things in our second year. But the other big factor was, we need more revenue streams. Because we knew we were going to grow, we knew we could also go after revenue streams at 285 that we couldn't go after at 60 or 70 people.

Daniel Levine:
So, for example, sponsorship, that was a brand new door that opened for us, and even though 285 is, let's say relatively small in the conference business, where you might have conferences with 10,000 or 20,000 people, we could now go to major brands and major companies and say, "We have 285 highly curated people that are industry leaders, top entrepreneurs, top individuals, we are going to give you an opportunity to do very deep and impactful experiential marketing activations with them, and as a result, these brands saw a lot of value and in turn sponsorship dollars started coming in, which supplemented the revenue that we were receiving through ticket sales.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, I think that's an important lesson for our listeners, that you weren't just taking a check from anyone. Once you were in year two you were able to have that history of the content that people wanted, and the experience that people wanted, and you could select and curate, as you say, the 285 people. So it wasn't just any 285 people, it was people that really had value to the potential sponsors.

Daniel Levine:
Precisely, and that's magnetized quite a bit over the years, and we've really seen an exponential growth in the inbound requests to join us. Whereas in our first year, we were going out and selecting, each of us, 30 or so people from our networks to really beg to come up and experience this with us. We're now going to receive over 4000 applications from people all over the world to be one of 400 people to come and join us this September.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well that's amazing, congratulations. I want to move from there to our everyday money tip, because that also has to do with something that you do that other people can emulate, that was at first a misstep, and then you found the right way to do it and it's working for you.

Steven Pulver:
At the start of this new year, 2018, we said we would start doing dinners. So we basically hand selected both current attendees, who are attending for the first time this September in 2018, alumni, other people in the community that we wanted to join us, and we'd have dinners, and we would invite people to nice restaurants, certainly not over the top fancy restaurants, but nice restaurants here in Toronto, and we did a few in Boston, and Chicago, and other places. And we would basically bring people together for a night of eating and drinking, and just a good time connecting people.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's expensive though.

Steven Pulver:
Yeah. So we found out very quickly that that's very expensive, and that was built into our budget. We knew from the beginning we'd spend maybe $2000 at dinner, and we had built that in that we were going to do a few of these. So we'd earmarked that and we knew we were going to do it, but after a few dinners we realized that this was getting expensive, despite us being ready for that expense, but it wasn't really us. We loved the fact that we were connecting with people and having great meals and great conversation, but at one point Daniel actually turned to me and said, "Why don't we just do a few barbecues? Do you think maybe we could do it at your house?" And I said, "Absolutely we can so that."

Steven Pulver:
Next thing you know we got the barbecue all ready and went to our favorite butcher shop and got burgers, and basically created a barbecue that I'm actually staring at in my living room right now, we're about to host a barbecue in a hour or so from now, and we said, "We can do barbecues. We can so five or six of these a month, at a cost of maybe $200 a barbecue, max, and bring amazing people together and have the flexibility to not spend a lot of money, but actually get way more bang for our buck."

Bobbi Rebell:
And that's something a lot of people should take to heart, because we sometimes get so busy trying to impress other people, and in fact it's often more impressive to bring someone to your home. Certainly it creates a different kind of bond, a more special and more personal bond, and it is more budget friendly.

Steven Pulver:
Right, and I think it really does go to our core too, right? As both individuals and as a business where we want to connect with people in this kind of way, as opposed to some hoity-toity kind of restaurant that is just fundamental not us.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right. So it is on brand, as they say, and speaking of that, you've got conference number four this September.

Daniel Levine:
Yeah, we now have a hard cap at 400 attendees, particularly because for us community and authentic relationship is super important to us. We're going to have incredible folks like Jordan Harbinger, from The Jordan Harbinger Show, and Jason Calicanis, who is one of the most world renowned Angel investors, coming and joining us for the weekend. Disconnecting from technology up at summer camp, sitting around the fire pit, sharing stories about business and growth and leadership, and going water skiing and rock climbing while we're at it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Sounds amazing. Alright, where can people find out more, if you even have any spots, or get on the wait list for next year?

Steven Pulver:
So, we have just opened up our final 50 application spots, those are now officially open for application, so there is still room available to apply, and I would encourage any of your amazing listeners to visit firesideconf, C-O-N-F, .com, as in conference. We are always there as well, you'll see a little chat bubble, you can say hi to us and ask us any questions, or you can feel free to apply and just let us know that you're coming from this podcast and you'll immediately jump to the top of the line.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wonderful. Thank you both.

Daniel Levine:
Our pleasure, thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, so many lessons here. Financial grownup tip number one; let's start with the guys everyday money tip, because that hits close to home. Don't assume you have to spend a ton of money to impress wealthy and successful people. The thing is, fancy people aren't impressed with fancy. There's a scene in a new show called Succession that I've been watching, where a character is trying to impress his future father-in-law, who is very wealthy. So he spends a crazy amount of money on a watch, but when he gives it to the man as a gift, he's trying to impress him remember, the fact is he is barely acknowledged, and in fact, the very wealthy future father-in-law later gives it away without much of a thought. Watching it was pretty sad, unfortunately there is some reality to that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Rich people don't need another fancy meal. Once Steven and Daniel realized this and started hosting barbecues at their own homes, they had a much better time connecting with the people that they wanted to impress. I mean, the conference is at a camp, that's who they are. They're real, they're down to earth, and they want to connect to their people in that way. It's refreshing. Not everything has to be in a five star hotel or restaurant.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial grownup tip number two. Well, the fireside conference lost about £30,000 the first year because it was self-financed. The founders remained in control and did not face pressure from outside investors. Early stage businesses that can avoid taking outside investors retain control, something Daniel and Steven seems very happy about.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you enjoyed the show, tell a friend, or share on social media. On Twitter, I am @BobbiRebell, on Instagram @BobbiRebell1, and on Facebook @BobbiRebell, and please subscribe if you have not already so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Thank you to Steven and Daniel for your candor and openness about the challenges and rewards of starting such an ambitious conference. I'm looking forward to watching The Fireside Conference continue to grow. So thank you gentlemen for helping us all get one step closer to being financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart, and is a BRK Media production.