Seth's Blog on Finance

Photos and Reflections on My First Financial Planning Talk

Please register your interest with me so that I can notify you of future talks and other useful information. Those who register will enjoy early-bird discounts on future talks. I will also be looking at sharing video snippets from this talk with people who register.

I held a talk over the past weekend on “How Young Working Adults Can Avoid Buying Costly Financial Products”. I feel strongly about people being misled into being shortchanged by the industry and hence I wanted to share my experiences and knowledge on how people can avoid it.

I have always experienced rather major bouts of stage frights whenever I have to do public speaking, so the first 10 minutes of the talk was rather nerve-wrecking to say the least, but I think I managed to maintain my composure for the most part as I was speaking on a topic that I am very confident in.

The audience comprised of working adults from varied professional backgrounds – IT, dentistry, logistics, creative industry, events, medicine, education etc. I shared with them on the state of the “financial advisory” industry in Singapore as well as the different channels they can obtain advice from. I went through popular products that are marketed and dissected them to expose the caveats. Thereafter, I also shared practical tips on how to construct a proper insurance and investment portfolio that will efficiently provide coverage as well as grow their money for retirement.

During the talk, I was able to share with my audience many “politically incorrect” opinions and facts that entities with vested interests do not like to reveal. I cannot put such information publicly on my blog due to potential lawsuits from entities with vested interests. I hope my attendees went home with a greater insight on how to better care for their own financial interests.

At the end of the talk, I got the attendees to provide me with feedback about my talk. I requested them to rate me on the value of the content I have delivered, the effectiveness of my speech, as well as their overall impression of the talk.

Here are the numerical scores given by the attendees, with 5 being excellent and 1 being poor:

My weakest showing was predictably in my effectiveness as a speaker. I have identified several points of improvement from the feedback – I needed to smile more and make the talk more interactive. I also felt that I could have made my manner of speech slightly clearer and reduced some unnecessary words.

I aimed to make this talk’s content as valuable as possible to my audience and I’m glad it is here that I scored the most number of 5′s. I wanted the value of my content to far exceed the admission fee they have paid and I think that I have managed to do that.

Overall, I am very grateful to my audience who was very kind to give me high marks for my inaugural seminar. I have many exciting improvements to add on to future talks which I cannot wait to organise.

Please register your interest with me so that I can notify you of future talks and other useful information. Those who register will receive early-bird discounts on future talks. I will also be looking at sharing video snippets from this talk with people who register.

I thank all who have made this talk possible and I am humbled by people who have paid to attend. It reaffirms my decision to do the right thing in this industry.