[Editor's Note: This is a guest post from my friend Nathaniel Minnick, DO FACEP. We had him on the podcast a little while back and he has lectured a few times at the ACEP Scientific Assembly on financial topics. We have no financial relationship.]
I met the White Coat Investor in Las Vegas during the ACEP Scientific Assembly (SA) in 2016. My panel discussion, “Don’t Get Fired, Don’t Go Broke, Don’t Get Sued” had ended, and he walked up to shake my hand as the crowd cleared. Hours earlier, I had checked my inbox in the speaker ready-room and read an email from him stating that it was great that ACEP allowed me to give financial talks. A common link between us is that I work in Virginia where he used to moonlight. He asked if I wanted to write a guest post about speaking on a large stage, and how to get onto that stage in the first place.
Educating Doctors on the Basics of Finance
The genesis for lecturing on finances started in residency. After reading the Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing in my third year, I prepared a lecture for my classmates and attendings that served as the template for my future talks. I began with what I knew from a stock market education that began courtesy of my father when I was ten years old. I then took the retirement concepts that I learned from the Guide and created a two-hour talk to inform people of the basics. The lecture was well received. I emailed other residency programs in the hospital and wedged my way into the internal medicine morning report twice. On all occasions, attendings asked more questions than the residents, which revealed the weak points of financial awareness. Future incarnations of the lecture buttressed the frequently questioned portions and eschewed 201-level concepts.
I now work in a community ED with a few residencies. After taking boards, I got back onto the noon lecture circuit and continued talking. Depending on my stylistic preference at the time, fonts and backgrounds change, but the meat of the lecture remains the same.
My health system operates as an employed medical group. Each month, the newly hired providers go through an orientation week. At some point it dawned on me to ask administration if I could give the lecture there as well. They agreed. This provided more practice.
ACEP sends an email out to its members each year asking for speaker and topic suggestions for the upcoming SA. I suspect most members delete it, as we get daily briefings from ACEP and get overloaded. The first time I realized this email existed, I responded. Months later I received an acceptance email. ACEP SA’s previous finance lectures were titled with retirement year foci, listed like target date funds. Apologies to the previous speakers, but many of them didn’t educate; many discussed inflation, the amount needed to retire, and other topics that didn’t provide the basis for, “Do this, because then this happens,” education. And this is what physicians need because inflation is a 201-level concept. Physicians don’t know what a Roth IRA is and the tax implications for Roth designated accounts. I decided to start there and deal with inflation later.
9 Tips for Successful Financial Lecturing
1) Get to Know Your Society
Obviously, read your society’s daily briefs and look for a “Submit your idea” heading. Consider emailing one of the coordinators or directors of the annual meeting. Hope that they have the forward-looking vision of non-clinical lectures like ACEP did.
2) Stick to the Basics
For anyone who already presents personal finance talks to any physician group, all of our slideshows are probably similar. We likely cover the Roth definition with examples, disability insurance, index funds, and some student loan thoughts. I avoid discussion of inflation, estate planning, or portfolio design. Educate people on the most basic principles. When some of my SA reviews stated that my finance talk was “too simple,” I took that as a victory. As a physician society, if a 101-style lecture was universally booed for being “too basic,” then we’ve reached critical mass. It means that next year we go with 201, like portfolio design complexities, REITS, and intermediate tax discussion.
3) The Presentation
See why I like Dr Minnick?
If you don’t have a slideshow prepared, borrow presentation techniques from others. The Thousandaire’s Roth IRA video provides the basis for what I use when I go through the basics of retirement accounts. Many White Coat Investor articles can be morphed into slide form.
4) The Slides
In order to present well, you need to wield your slides to your advantage. How to Present Like Steve Jobs must be read prior to slide creation. Whatever you do, don’t read from your slides. Put as few words as possible. “One more thing,” isn’t an easy concept to master, but keeping slides in the background to guide your talk separates professional speakers from rookies who read blocks of text. No more than seven words per line. No more than 3-5 lines per slide.
5) Powerpoint
Edward Tufte is a Powerpoint critic. His arguments against Powerpoint’s format provide practices to avoid in order to enhance audience-speaker cohesion.
6) Q & A Practice
Practicing your talk holds importance, but handling questions goes farther. The only way to get question and answer practice is to give your talk in any venue you can find. Make your Powerpoint (or Keynote) slides and go forth. For each question asked, figure out how to edit your slides and speech to prevent that question from ever being asked again.
7) YOU Are the Expert
When you get on a big stage, remember that people are paying to watch you, the expert. It’s not an audition. Presenting to an international audience recording my voice for perpetual use wasn’t as stressful as I anticipated because it was the same lecture I gave many times before. I believe I’m an expert in the field, and this eases the tension of public speaking. Realize that you are the attraction, and people spent money for you to teach them. If you read off of your slides, you are not an expert, just someone who can read.
8) My Secret Tip
My secret (delusional?) tip to get a finance talk accepted at a big meeting, and this may knock me out of the running for future SA’s, is to lead the submission with the finance talk and then devolve into weirdness. ACEP’s submission format allows for multiple presentation topics listed on one form. For the first choice, I put “Personal Finance for the Young Attending,” then, “Student Loans” as a second lecture choice. I add a few more finance topics before putting in the talks that I would absolutely love to give but never expect to be accepted. Those would be “Mickey’s 10 Commandments as an Emergency Physician,” and “Lessons From the Creative Industry To Improve Your ED.” If you are in an administrative role, read Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. It is a great management book. Jay Kaplan gave a patient satisfaction lecture at this year’s SA that referenced Disney customer service. I feel like it’s only a matter of time until I get my version accepted. I focused on Disney parks in undergraduate art history (ie architecture, commodity culture, place-making), so it’s a tough dream to kill.
I think that the SA coordinators recognize the knowledge gap of personal finance. Dr. Dahle paved the way with his ACEP Now column. The SA coordinators are advanced enough to realize this is a critical area. [Submit your topics, but stack the odds that the finance talks are the more valuable subjects. Put your hobby lectures last. Be prepared to actually give the hobby lecture if they accept it. Then write a guest post here about how you got your hobby lecture accepted at a national venue.]
9) Talk Openly About Real Money
Finally, and this doesn’t have as much relevance to public speaking, but don’t be afraid to talk about real money. When in physician-only circles, we need to drop the social taboo to not talk about money. It perpetuates our lack of financial IQ. If physicians talk more openly about finances with each other, we can learn our individual mistakes, strengths, and misinformation.
What do you think? How have you tried to educate friends and colleagues about personal finance? Have you ever thought of taking that passion for educating docs to a stage? Comment below!
Interesting post- interested in starting lectures with the trainees and curious if you’d be willi g to share your slides (recognizing most of the actual talk may not be on the slides). Thanks!
Good timing, as I’m due to give my first financial lecture on a large stage for a few hundred WCI devotees in 11 short days! I should probably start practicing that at some point.
I’ll take your advice to heart, and will probably ignore the advice I’ve gotten to picture everyone in the audience in their underwear. Does that actually help anyone?
Cheers!
-PoF
It depends on if you can stop staring. ????
Was just gonna say the same thing – good timing. I’ve been struggling with the slides thinking they are “too basic” but friends told me to keep it basic. Thanks for confirming that!
Yes, keep the slides simple. Just like Steve Jobs (and the rest of Apple). I always get the vibe that people reading straight off their slides are less credible. If you need them as a crutch to keep you on track, you need more practice.
Rule of advertising is no more than 7 words per page/billboard
Find three people in your audience (left center right) in the middle rows and focus on them. If you’re really nervous, find people not paying attention and focus on them.
At ACEP this year I had a 360 degree stage. This was a real doozy for me because
A) They didn’t tell me until I walked in the room
B) I have only done “2D” stages before.
It was tough to not get dizzy. I ended up focusing on 75% of the room because it felt weird doing laps non-stop.
I thought the stage was cool.
It also takes a lot of preparation and practice to give a three hour talk with no more than 7 words per slide. The better I get the less that goes on the slide.
I’ve thought a lot about this, but didn’t know how well it would be received without an MBA or financial letters behind my name. They would have to be trusting me as “an expert” because I said I am.
I’ve thought about starting at the resident level by giving a talk on personal finance there. Since I work in academics I’ve always viewed that as a good first opportunity. For now, I’ve just been educating residents one on one when they ask me questions about refinancing or investing.
I plan to branch out at some point. Thanks for the encouragement that this can not only be done, but it can be done well!
I formed a finance club in my florida community
I give them nice hand outs which they seem to appreciate
Yes KEEP IT SIMPLE and make sure they are understanding your points
I even made up a test to see if they GOT IT!
Great post, thanks for sharing your tips. I hope to get my hands on that Steve Jobs presentation book.
I just gave the second of my two talks on personal finance to the residents and fellows in my department. It was incredibly well received, and they have asked me to give it regularly, so I will get lots of opportunities to practice and refine it.
Perhaps not surprisingly, when I first approached the resident directors about this idea, they (faculty much older than me) were interested in me giving them a talk as well. I have yet to schedule this, but it goes to show how much interest is there from even senior attendings.
A few other stray thoughts:
1. I appreciate the suggestions to keep Powerpoint slides simple. I put lots of info on mine, as I also have a website where I post the files from my talk, as well as to-do lists and links, etc. The idea is to reach even the residents who didn’t attend my talk. Maybe I should make simpler slides for my presentation, and keep the slides with more writing on the website.
2. Aside from giving a talk to faculty, I plan to eventually reach out to other departments, or maybe even the med school, to try to reach even more (future) physicians.
3. I also plan to suggest giving talks at some of the big national meetings. I haven’t seen any yet, but maybe someone else will beat me to it!
4. As much as I know (or thought I knew) this stuff, I underestimated how much time it would take to put these talks together. I am also supposed to be putting talks together on my clinical specialty, so maybe I should take a break for a while. After going through even this small aspect of financial education, I have so much more respect for WCI and other bloggers. This stuff ain’t easy!
Yes, once you do a few of these you realize why I’m not willing to spend a day preparing and practicing a talk and two days traveling to give it for expenses or expenses plus $500-1000. I’ve turned down speaking at some rather prestigious locations over the years. It’s great to get “the message” out there but talking to groups of docs 20 at a time isn’t a very efficient way to do it! I decided it was fun to do 5 or 6 times a year but beyond that, it felt a lot like work and didn’t pay well enough to justify the time and effort. Maybe if I liked to travel more….
I agree.
When I talk to residents there are about 40 in the audience. I do it for free (I know I’m breaking the WCI rule of “Don’t work for free.”) I posted my talk on my blog and over 600 people viewed it online. That is a much bigger impact and I didn’t even need to leave my home!
Exactly my point. It’s really tough for me to spend 3 days to present to 20 when 10,000+ are reading a typical blog post or listening to a podcast. I think it is good to do from time to time to keep from getting out of touch, but it’s “not the business we’re in” as I explain to my poor wife whose job it is to turn all these folks down who think $500 + airfare is an attractive speaking fee. We’re working on alternative solutions though to still help these folks without requiring a 3 day commitment from me. Every year when I post what I made in speaking fees everyone makes fun of me! But I can count on one hand the speaking gigs that paid me enough to be worth skipping a couple of ED shifts to do it.
Such as farming the talks out to people like me? 🙂 I think that’s what you did with Jason Mizell.
Mizell is the man
Yes he is. Both Rogue Dad MD and Mizell are in my talk at the conference next week!
Much as I like Jason and the rest of the folks at UAMS, I really only want to do a half dozen of these a year.
I really enjoyed your talks there the last two years. Hated to see you weren’t on this year’s schedule, but I totally understand.
He’s always been great about letting residents audit his M4 class. I’m still pushing some coworkers to go this semester.
Don’t feel badly. Katie tells me I turned down Mayo this week too! Maybe PoF could do that one…
Seriously I think there’s enough demand for this stuff that 100 of us could do a dozen talks a year if we were willing to do them for $500.
Don’t tempt me too much. I may need a side gig after I do my boards.
And hey, I can’t feel too bad. I now feel like a legit member of this site with you replying to one of my comments.
You don’t even have to leave a comment to be legit around here!
Granted I’m not the institution you are, Jim, but to anyone out there looking for a speaker and is willing to pay the expenses, I will give talks all day long!
Thanks for the shout out! I thought this was a great post and so helpful. It is really difficult to be great at our jobs, learn about finance info we were never taught, and then learn how to effectively present what we’ve learned. I’ve also learned there’s a big difference between being a presenter and a true educator. Anyone can read off a slide, but to keep an audience engaged is not easy!
I’m not willing to give talks all day long like Nate, but I do enjoy them and have won our lecture of the month award each time I’ve given my finance talks here. I will at least listen if Mayo or someone else calls and wants me to present to them. 🙂
Kudos to you for putting yourself out there to discuss finance with docs openly. The taboo is very strong in Canada. It is probably partly because our Universal Healthcare system is perceived as “free” and that concept is a cultural center-piece for our country. Everyone knows money is involved, but doesn’t want to explicitly discuss it. Docs are also perceived as “rich” and our political environment here has been very focused on “making rich people pay their fair share”. We have had several tax increases (up to 54% now) and fee clawbacks over the past 4 years by our government because “we are rich and can afford to help out just a little bit more”. We have another Federal budget in a couple weeks which will specifically raise taxes on medical professional corporations and likely disable our ability to use them to build wealth for retirement planning. This is a timely post, as I am organizing a talk about how to maneuver in the setting of new rules at our next Medical Staff Association meeting locally. We need more docs teaching docs about money and thanks for the tips.
I appreciate this post. I’m a 1st year resident, but I’ve been following the blog for 4+ years, have read the book and multiple other recommended personal finance books, follow PoF, and have read quite a lot on Bogleheads. I have done or am doing many of the things recommended by WCI. I feel like I’m well informed regarding personal finance, most notably the issues surrounding my current financial situation (budgeting with a family on a resident salary, life/disability insurance, and student loan management options). I have walked a handful of colleagues through student loan management and have helped a several friends/family members with personal finance questions. I believe I could do a good presentation like this.
My biggest hold-up is that I feel like all the things I know about retirement savings, investing, and , I’ve only been doing with my imaginary future money. So I lack the credibility of someone who has “been there, done that.” While I have the knowledge, I feel like I lack the experience with many aspects of PF that would make people take me more seriously. Perhaps this wouldn’t be a hold-up at all and it’s just my own perception. Maybe it WOULD be well-received and I’m nervous about it for no good reason.
Any suggestions on how to pitch this lecture to one’s department?
@aresident, you describe confidence with early career choices and debt management. At age 60 I feel confident in savings, investing, and retirement planning. Consider pairing your talks with someone older, with complementary areas of confidence.
This seems so obvious, and yet I had not even considered it. Thanks!
I gave the talk as a resident with the background of stock picking for 20 years or so.
So what if you’re a resident and haven’t started retirement saving? If you know more than the guy sitting in front of you, you’re an expert.
Read WCI, Bogleheads book, and watch the Thousandaire’s IRA video and go from there. You’re not an expert until someone finds a flaw in what you’re saying. Channel your inner Nick Naylor:
Joey: So, what happens when you’re wrong?
Nick: Well, Joey, I’m never wrong.
Joey: But you can’t always be right.
Nick: Well, if it’s your job to be right, then you’re never wrong.
Joey: But what if you are wrong?
Nick: Okay, let’s say that you’re defending chocolate and I’m defending vanilla. Now, if I were to say to you, “Vanilla’s the best flavor ice cream”, you’d say …?
Joey: “No, chocolate is.”
Nick: Exactly. But you can’t win that argument. So, I’ll ask you: So you think chocolate is the end-all and be-all of ice cream, do you?
Joey: It’s the best ice cream; I wouldn’t order any other.
Nick: Oh. So it’s all chocolate for you, is it?
Joey: Yes, chocolate is all I need.
Nick: Well, I need more than chocolate. And for that matter, I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom and choice when it comes to our ice cream, and that, Joey Naylor, that is the definition of liberty.
Joey: But that’s not what we’re talking about.
Nick: Ah, but that’s what I’m talking about.
Joey: But … you didn’t prove that vanilla’s the best.
Nick: I didn’t have to. I proved that you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong, I’m right.
Joey: But you still didn’t convince me.
Nick: Because I’m not after you. I’m after them.
Ha! Love the example. I think I may see what I can put together first, then move forward from there. Thanks for your feedback.
I had logged into the forum and the name I made it with was AMedStudent, so it reverted back to that… Whoops! Still me.
we need to spread the word
I’m just glad to see a shout-out to Edward Tufte. His work on presenting complex ideas visually is amazing!
I’m not an expert, but as others have said, you only need to know a little more than others to start teaching. A senior resident is an expert to an intern. Same thing applies in finance and any other topic.
I’ve been giving these talks to large groups of residents/fellows in my department and others for a few years now. I don’t have an MBA or CFP or CPA designation. I have a degree in business that gives “credibility” but is really irrelevant for this. I’ve been investing for awhile, learning as I go, and tell people what I do and don’t know.
It’s no different than teaching anything else — know your limits, and don’t pretend your limits don’t exist in an attempt to impress people.
Every time I give the talk I expand and update it slightly. Last year I started talking about FIRE and referenced PoF; next time I will likely be referencing Passive Income MD. I pepper my talks with lots of anecdotes and things that make it relatable and entertaining. Also I enjoy public speaking so getting up in front of a couple hundred people can be fun for me, even if the preparation can be a pain.
I gave my first financial talk to the residents last week. I think it went ok ( several forum members gave me their slides so I had a good idea of which topics to cover) but I wish I’d read this post beforehand! I tried to cover too much. Next year I’ll either simplify further or break it up into two lectures. I don’t think I’m a great speaker but I’m in academics so I’ve gotta teach so at least this is something I get excited about!
Totally agree with sticking to the basics. Granted I’m still young in my financial education game, I am ahead of some coworkers and try to steer them to the basics, especially on this site. I think in medicine we often neglect the basics and then leave our audience overwhelmed as they try to catch up with terminology and formulas. Always good to do the same with financial education so we can reach and teach as many as possible. I’ve also noticed that hammering the basics does a more effective job of sparking interest so people have more self-determination.