First of all, what an experience! I am excited to have been at my first annual conference ran by next gen in the field I want to excel in.

It was great to do something within my field however, away from my desk.

For me, my next ten story began when I left the office on the Wednesday afternoon heading up to Manchester when Chris was basically letting me know things to expect from this conference. He was telling me all how great it was going to be, the number of great people I was going to meet and introduce me to a financial planning world outside the office.

Well diving in straight away to the story, NextGen kick started the pre-conference correctly! Started with a social drink at brewdog packed out with loads of financial advisers just having a good time catching with one another. Although I am a reserved person, I really did appreciate the fact that people willing came across to me and made me feel welcome to the community and really engaged with me in a conversation about life, financial planning and most important of all to enjoy the whole journey.

Then, we went to the king of curry restaurant spot Akbar! If you’re from Manchester, you’ll know about it.. I love it there, but it was a really cool what next gen done by booking out a whole section of the restaurant for us to eat and socialise. And despite the bunch of people were so friendly, I felt so out of myself to even engage in a conversation. It’s because I didn’t know anyone and I was always like “Oh gosh, what do I say, what do I even talk about” etc. Nevertheless, the guys on the table never made me feel out of place, they introduced themselves to me from the get go and engaged in a conversation which allowed me to ease myself in the environment.

Oh yeah, the naan bread at Akbar’s is HUGE!

One thing I am glad from the conversation held there was with a guy name Tom. He has given me numerous of podcast for me to listen to which will give me a great insight on what financial planning is. Few names of the podcast were: The financial wellbeing, Maven Money personal Finance, The adviser podcast etc.

I am looking forward to listen to them and increase my knowledge bank which I will then apply into my work/life.

Then Nextgen day happened!

I’ll be honest, when I got to the venue, I was nervous and the reason was because I knew I had to try and connect with people who were already engaged in conversations. I didn’t want to just interrupt and knowing what to talk about and being awkward. So what I ended up doing a lot of time was just stand at the back of the room.

What was good however is that the first speech was about networking and how you can make events like nextgen really useful to get to know people and keep good relationships. So I utilised what I learn by engaging in conversation asking about themselves, talking about myself and keep it moving. It help me build that confidence to talk with people I didn’t have a cue what to tell them and it even led to interesting conversation lasting over 10 mins.

What I realised about nextgen is that everyone is welcome to the community and they want to make sure that everybody feels like they’re home. I have met some super cool guys and I just hope as time come, I can develop more of my soft skills and use them in environment such as next ten to get to talk and network with more people.

I look forward to the next even I can go out and keep learning like I did this week.