Finding your people is the best thing for your spiritual well-being, your personal growth … and your bank account!
A friend of mine has collected beer cans for four and a half decades. He started in his teens (yeah, times were different then!)
A little over a week ago he went to his first CANvention since the 1980s — or as the younger people say, the “late 1900s” haha!
These breweriana collectors are his people. They’re people he can geek out with and not have to explain a thing to anyone because he’s not a weirdo when he hangs out with these people.
Searching for my people as a blogger
I’ve been blogging here (sometimes more consistently than other times) for over 17 years. The topics I’ve covered center around money in general: frugal living, personal finance, investing, taxes, career, retirement, and making money.
I began the blog mainly as a spark from a friend who was a great salesman, a side hustler, and a deal finder. He pointed me to a couple of places to buy airline tickets for less than the going price and introduced me to click-through rebate sites.
What eventually got me started, and what got me hooked, was that I not only could publish easily topics I had some interest in but that I could also get paid for doing so.
Blogging became a side hustle of mine, and it was the side hustle part of it that excited me more so that the money topics themselves.
Side hustles and money nerds …
I’ve attended FinCon a number of times over the past 11 years. I’ve met hundreds of great people over those visits and maintain some fantastic friendships from it all. It started in 2011 as a family-like get-together of all the people that I had been blogging with for the past few years but never had met in person. Attendance has since grown about tenfold and it absolutely crazy successful.
FinCon is a meeting of “money nerds” that geek out about all kinds of money topics: side hustles, investments of all kinds, retirement, travel hacking, FIRE (financial independence, retire early), frugal living, personal finance, and everything in between.
Over the last few years, though, I’ve noticed my interest in the money topics of personal finance kind of waning. I question whether I was ever really passionate about these topics, though I did write a lot about them.
I sense I’m not as money-nerdy as I used to be when it comes to most of the topics above.
My people were just around the corner
What always interested me when I went to these conferences, though, was learning about the different ways to make money creating content around these topics.
And I absolutely loved talking to people who were doing it! Almost all of the content creators at FinCon were making money in one — or many! — different ways, and that fascinated me.
So I enjoyed hanging around the FinCon people not necessarily because of the money content itself, but because these people had an entrepreneurial spirit.
Both types of people relate to money, but differently.
It took me until very recently to realize this distinction. This past weekend we met a family at a yard sale that had three different side businesses. One parent was a Thirty-One consultant and a Stampin’ Up! consultant, and the other sold sports cards and magazines on eBay.
I was super-excited to talk with both of them.
Entrepreneurial spirit. These are my people!
Why you should find your people
Your people are great to be around
You’re drawn to your people because you share a passion. You get excited about the same kinds of things that they get excited about. You feed off of each other.
We’re all given precious little time on earth. We should spend a good chunk of it with people who bring us joy and energy.
Your people bring out your best self
Being with your people catalyzes new ideas like little else because of the shared interest. You already share a common domain language so expressing ideas is easy and direct.
With your deep common interest in the subject, you see how the pieces fit together in a new way easily.
Your people propel you higher because learning and collaborating accelerate.
Your people are potentially your ideal clients
What better people to work with than people who energize you?
Why not get far, far away from clients that suck the energy from you?
Find something that can help your people make a transformation in some area. You’ll be helping them out, and you’ll love the process because you enjoy spending time with these people anyway!
Question: Is this you?
Over the past few weeks I’ve done a lot of prayer and a lot of soul searching.
I see all over the place opportunities for entrepreneurially-minded people to build stability in their money-making endeavors with a solid online presence.
I see the opportunity for people to build up their own business rather than build up someone else’s.
I see the opportunity for people to create a business they control — one that doesn’t depend on the whims of an 800-pound gorilla of a website that can cancel them for no good reason at all.
I see opportunities to build something that is flexible — that can pivot, diversify, and grow.
Most of all, though, I see opportunities to help people avoid the mistakes I made over the years.
If this sounds like you, then:
- I’d love to hear what you’re doing! and
- I’d love to help you build and grow a solid online presence that you control!
Contact me with the subject “Online Presence” and I’ll be in touch!
