At The Money: Considering a Career Change? How About FINFLUENCER?

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Barry Ritholtz (0:37)

It could be both interesting and lucrative. To help us unpack this and what it might mean for your career, let's bring in Tyler Gardner. He taught economics, eventually becoming a financial advisor and portfolio manager, but then he pivoted to a financial media business, eventually reaching more than 6 million followers. His book, Real Wealth, Make Money Work for You, arrives December 1st, 2026

So Tyler, let's start in the beginning of your career. What pulled you out of education and into finance?

Tyler Gardner (1:15)

I think the easiest way to sum it up is I've never been pulled out of education. There was a point, I remember the meeting specifically, it was with our faculty at a school in Connecticut, where we had a representative from TIA, Cref, who came to talk about retirement funds.

And not one colleague of mine could understand what this person was talking about when they were saying expense ratios or target date funds. And I left saying, there's a big problem if 110 truly educated adults in this world cannot understand a basic concept of expense ratio.

And so I wanted to add education to the financial component. And I realized at some point along the educational career in high school, I liked talking to my colleagues a little more about money than I like talking about semicolons in class to 15 year olds. I didn't try to eliminate it. I just started to have this vision that becoming a financial advisor or portfolio manager would be education for finance. And I'd get to go teach these things and learn these things. So that was the initial inspiration for the pivot.

Barry Ritholtz (2:19)

No, some people would say the complexity and impenetrable jargon is a feature.

Not a bug, because, hey, if you don't understand what financial people are saying or, for that matter, contractors or doctors or lawyers, what have you, well, then you have to pay them for their expertise. But let's leave that cynicism aside, you eventually become both a financial advisor and a portfolio manager. What surprised you about how wealth management actually operated as an industry?

Tyler Gardner (2:53)

A phenomenal question, because that's all it was. It was a big surprise. I worked with great people. I'll start with this. It was a small RIA in Vermont. And the reason I was drawn to that specific RIA is that unlike some of the bigger corporate wealth management firms, they really struck me as valuing education. So again, I got brought into this world thinking I had this real ideal vision that I'd move back to Vermont. I'd get to educate people in my own hometown when I came back. And the biggest surprise was that the majority of people who wanted us to manage their wealth didn't want to be educated on managing their wealth. They wanted us to manage their wealth. And there was a great irony in the fact that so many people, particularly high net worth individuals, wanted to give the assets and say, don't call me, I'll call you. We're all set, I'm paying for the convenience.

That surprised me.

I was really looking forward to a scenario in which I had a daily class with people or a daily coffee where people would flock to wanting to learn more about index funds and low cost investing. It didn't quite work like that.

Barry Ritholtz (4:04)

How did the social media experiment begin? You're a natural teacher.

What led you to say, well, if my clients aren't asking me to educate them, I'm just going to educate everybody else? How did that really start?

Tyler Gardner (4:17)

Well, I think again, to give credits to the initial RIA for which I worked, they noticed very quickly just what you just said. They noticed and were drawn to the fact that I love to educate.

They brought their marketing team in and we started doing some short form videos. They as a firm said, look, this is a really powerful way to reach an abundance of people beyond a very small state in New England and we want to get the message out. We started doing videos. We just weren't positioning them correctly. When I say correctly, I mean, I think we were putting the majority of them on our firm's website and maybe every now and then putting someone LinkedIn, and they just weren't going anywhere. There was no real reach or power. When I first really saw the power of TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, I go, this is the disconnect and this is where, but they knew early on that education combined with considerable reach of these platforms was very powerful. We just never could hone it as well as I know we all wanted to.