Our next guest is Max Rothery, the VP of Community at Finimize. Previously, he lead Innovation and Transformation at the private bank SocGen which gave him a deep understanding of how the financial system works. In today’s episode, we are going to cover how to tell your community’s story, leveraging your user base for your events, metrics for success and much more.
Our next guest is Max Rothery, the VP of Community at Finimize. Previously, he lead Innovation and Transformation at the private bank SocGen which gave him a deep understanding of how the financial system works. In today’s episode, we are going to cover how to tell your community’s story, leveraging your user base for your events, metrics for success and much more.
Too Long; Didn’t Listen
Derek Andersen:
Welcome to the C2C podcast, I am your host Derek Andersen. After holding my first event in 2010 I went on to create Startup Grind, a 400 chapter community based in over a hundred countries. Along the way, I discovered the greatest marketing tool of all time, your customers, yet I couldn't find anyone sharing how to build a community where people could experience your brain in person or at scale. On this show, we talk with the brightest minds and companies on the planet about how to build customer-to-customer marketing strategies and create in-person experiences for your brand and customers before your competitor does. I'm excited to have our next guest, Max Rothery, who is the VP of Community at Finimize. Previously, he led innovation and transformation at private bank, Soc. Gen., which gave him a deep understanding of how the financial system works. On today's episode, we're going to cover how to tell your community story, leveraging your user base for your events, metrics for success, and so much more. Take a listen.
Derek Andersen:
Max, can you describe what Finimize is and what you do in your role as VP of Community?
Max Rothery:
Yeah, sure. So Finimize is a platform that helps people navigate the world of finance. So, we keep you informed by explaining what's going on in the news. We help you understand different concepts around investing and we connect you with a community of other people that are similar to you. But all of our content is created assuming that you don't have a financial background. So, we like to keep it lighthearted without any jargon, but my role is really to engage our subscribers with the Finimize mission.
Derek Andersen:
Describe that... how that... is that mission been the same from the beginning? Is that something that's changing? What is that mission exactly?
Max Rothery:
Yeah, so our mission is to empower people to act as their own financial advisor. But the interesting thing about Finimize is that we actually build the community first. So, we started out with our newsletter product and that helped us build this really engaged global following, so when it came to launching our app, we had such a good understanding of the problem that people faced when it came to investing.
Derek Andersen:
There's a lot of, let's say, companies in the startup phase, that community first approach that's Duolingo or Docker or Branch or a few others who, it seems to, as they've scaled, really, really pay off. And there's others that can kind of bolt it on later and it works, but there seems to be a lot of great benefits to sort of doing it from day one in spite of it being probably really hard to pull that off with all the other things that you have to do just to sort of get the machine going.
Max Rothery:
Yeah, totally, totally. And it has started to really set us apart when it comes to product. I guess we managed to get this unique insight, so we're trying to empower the world to make smart, informed financial decisions. And our unique insight from working with the community was that the missing puzzle piece in solving that problem wasn't technology or access to financial products, it's actually people felt like they lacked knowledge, trust, and ultimately confidence. So, we found that the combination of really great content, people being able to interact with this awesome community was a really great way to solve the problem. And that wouldn't have come about if we were a product-first business.
Derek Andersen:
So, you have about 600,000 users on the platform. How have you leveraged that user base to grow your community events program?
Max Rothery:
Well, the benefit of the scale that we have is you have this preexisting ecosystem, so you've got an engaged audience to recruit your hosts from. You've got an engaged audience for hosts to market their events to. And you've got an audience that brands want to partner with and get access to, this young and affluent market. So, one thing that we figured out really early on is that understanding finance was like learning a language, and you almost need to practice using the terminology and speaking with other people, hearing their experiences in order to build your own fluency, which is where this idea of taking the community offline really came from. But we couldn't scale it ourselves, so we work with our community to really figure out this problem of how we address getting more people to engage in the world of finance by having informal and informative events in every major city in the world. And essentially they offered to host the events for us.
Derek Andersen:
Why are they doing that?
Max Rothery:
Well, I think is this real ever since the day that I joined Finimize, is this real... people really resonate with what we're trying to achieve. I think everyone's been in the situation where you build up your savings, you know you should be doing something smart with them, but when it comes to actually taking that action, it's just really unnecessarily difficult. So, to come across a brand that is speaking to you in your tone of voice, finally understand this concept. People are taking that mission on themselves and looking to expand that to their local communities. So, we found the real magic moment to be when a host decides that they're going to be part of this mission. They bring a local finance event with... they put together an excellent panel and all of a sudden there's 200 people in the room coming to watch and engaging with that topic. That is the real magic moment where people get the Finimize bug.
Derek Andersen:
What is it, if I walk into one of these events, describe what happens at the event and sort of what am I going to experience?
Max Rothery:
The one thing that will be different to and will definitely have at any other finance event you go to, but it has this community feel, so it's a conversation. So, some will be more informal, just meetups where people are going to solve common challenges they come across. So, whether that's discussing what platforms you've used, what investment products you've used, what you think of the current landscape, or it's a large scale panel event where the host has recruited top level speakers. But there would always be a conversation, this isn't a presentation or a pitch, this is just a chance for Finimize audience members to source the ideas from experts and meet other people that are going on that similar journey too.
Derek Andersen:
And is it... it's typically, I'm assuming, it's an evening event and it looks like most of the events are free and it's a two, three hour event kind of thing. What does the agenda usually look like?
Max Rothery:
Yeah, so the agenda is normally... we have our informal introductions and then we go to a panel and then have this sort of elongated Q and A. Yes, they are typically in the evenings. I don't know whether it's because Finimizers like to drink while they talk about finance. But to put it in perspective, let's say last week we had 200 people turn up to a finance event in the evening on a weekday in Romania [incluse 00:00:06:26]. That is the stuff that really, really blows my mind. We had people in Hong Kong watching through a window because the venue was so packed to see people talking about finance. That is just... I've never seen that level of engagement before in the finance industry. And I guess that is where you get the magic from working in community. I think that's what people are missing. People that, perhaps you are interested in finance and you do want to talk about it, but everywhere you go it's full of suits or people using terminology that you just don't understand. So, that is what is keeping people coming back, that they're seeing people similar to them and they are being able to talk about in sort of an informal and relaxed way.
Derek Andersen:
I think what's interesting about it too is that, look, I can go to any bank on any corner of the street in any of these cities and I can go in and talk to a financial planner or something. I can get some financial advice from somebody basically for free if I'm a customer there, or I can go... actually go to a financial planner themselves and pay them to take advice from them and nobody does that, or at least I think young people aren't doing that. Definition of young, you mentioned that earlier, I'd be interested to know what that means to you. What the sort of target demographic is there that you're going after. But it is interesting that you put these events together, I've seen the pictures of them. I'm looking at some of the speakers that you have, some really incredible people that are coming to speak at these events.
Derek Andersen:
So, I understand why somebody would want to get advice from these people. But it is interesting that you sort of of rally people around it together, bring them together, help them learn together and you both have the experts that are willing to come out, but then you have people that would probably never consider sort of these other methods, traditional methods of getting educated that I just described. And yet, here they're coming in droves to visit in-person for hours and hours at a time. It's not some small commitment, it's a big commitment to come in and learn these things. It seems like you're really onto something interesting that... sort of hitting this vein of both meshing community with also this need that people have that they probably don't have a good understanding about how to solve that problem.
Max Rothery:
Yeah, totally. Totally. We see it. I guess the difference between financial advice and what we're doing is... the comparison we use here is the difference between going to hospital and going to your local pharmacy. The majority of people don't necessarily require a financial advisor to solve their financial problems. Often, sure, if you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars and you know you've bought property and maybe you've got a couple of divorces, there's certain complex financial situations where a financial advisor, perfect. Go and find yourself a financial advisor. But the power of that we see in this is it's someone, two people from a nonfinancial background, just talking about some of the products they've tried, and then that is enough for them to feel that they have a connection to go and start testing, start investing. And that's where the community that we are building, it's not like you said, it's not just on the side of the product, it really is at the heart. It's an added benefit on top of the content that we have that really, really does motivate people.
Derek Andersen:
How have you been able to tie growth in the community to success with the Finimize platform?
Max Rothery:
So, I think I mentioned before, but I think we're now at 10,000 people were attending these community events around the world in 30 different countries, and we have plans to keep scaling that. So currently the metrics that we're looking at are all about building the blueprint and the foundations of a scalable and sustainable community. So, because we only started building this community about, or the offline part of the community, about six months ago. We're in this phase where we're really looking at creating valuable experiences for the hosts and everyone that attends. And then alongside that we've also just launched events that are exclusive for people with the Finimize premium subscription. And we've introduced group conversations to people with the Finimize premium subscription. So, we're taking this sort of free scalable platform to give Finimize a real presence across the world, and then looking at how we can use this community as a tool to aid our premium subscription and bring more value to the people that are paying for the Finimize service.
Derek Andersen:
You have a campus ambassador program as well. Can you share how that works and what role it plays in your overall community strategy?
Max Rothery:
Yeah, totally. So there probably isn't a better tool if you're applying for jobs in finance than Finimize is for students. So, everything that you'd need to know to go into a finance interview, that is in your hand in just a few minutes. So, we've got a lot of people on campus that make noise for us and we just started rolling out bringing our community events to campuses. But yeah, they're super important to us, and it also seeds our user base as they continue using Finimize long into their careers.
Derek Andersen:
Well what are the key aspects that you've found that make a great local host? Sounds like you probably talked enough to see some that aren't great and some that are great, so what do you really look for as you onboard new people?
Max Rothery:
So, we've had I think a thousand, just over a thousand applications in the last six months. And we play a lot with embedding the right amount of friction that where people that aren't so keen will drop off. And that's a signal that someone is organized and reliable enough to host your events. But the best hosts that we look for are the people that don't want the spotlight. They're the people that just want to bring groups of people together and organize. It never goes well when someone says, "I want to run an event and I want to present to your audience". That always... anyone that's looking for something extrinsic to gain out of these events, those aren't the hosts that continue to become community directors, build their own chapters and scale. It's more the people that want to understand what their local community needs and then how they can put on events around that, that solve that need.
Derek Andersen:
For listeners that want to launch an in-person community, C2C community, but are having a hard time getting buy-in and resources, what advice do you give them in order to get people inside the company bought in, that this is something you should do?
Max Rothery:
I think it's easier than it ever has been, because there are some real world examples about these amazing communities. We are pretty new to this game, so I would imagine that we're part of this new wave of community 2.0 brands that have community from day one as part of their proposition. And that's totally thanks to people like yourself and CMX and Duolingo and Salesforce, and Ted, all these people that are building the playbook. So, I would use these clear examples and just have a really clear plan of how it will eventually impact your bottom line. And I would... once you to have that plan, once you have that sign in, just really focus on spending the time building those solid foundations, so that you can scale in the future.
Derek Andersen:
What does scale look like for you? You're doing 50 or 60 events a quarter, you've got 10,000 people that are going to attend the events this year, so where does it go from here? And how big could it really be?
Max Rothery:
So, instead of comparing ourselves to finance and FinTech brands, we align ourselves much more closely with someone like a Headspace. Where they build this daily habit around mental wellbeing, or Nike that has built this brand that builds these habits and connects people around physical wellbeing. But we want to do that around financial wellbeing. So, we have got no reason to think that this couldn't scale to a similar size. But obviously, we look up to the DuoLingos of this world who are hosting hundreds and hundreds of events a week.
Derek Andersen:
Thank you so much for listening. If you liked the show, please leave a review wherever you listened to this. If you'd like to see more about how to create your own event community, go to bevylabs.com/pod. Again, that's B-E-V-Y-L-A-B-S.com/pod.