As Ivan Tominac/Novac writes, blogs are typically the choice of many young people today, and the topics talked about on blogs are often contemporary and lifestyle related. They are also read by Dorian Antesic, who we recently interviewed, and who is also the first winner of the Croatian Smart Croatia competition in the Financier category.
In fact, by launching his Let’s talk about money blog, he went one step further, and as he pointed out himself, he believes that this is a good format for sharing knowledge and learning. He has further enriched his blog with a podcast, and today he networks with colleagues and presents them to potential business partners.
Student Investment Fund
“I started the blog because I had something to say. I think it’s a good format to express ourselves on some topics and to throw out some ideas that are going around in our heads. I started the podcast a little later than I did with the blog. I realised that talking to people suits me more than just writing things down, if I want to have some kind of constant content publishing.
I noticed that there aren’t really many podcasts in Croatia, especially not one focused on finance and economics. There are smart people in Croatia in finance and economics and I wanted to talk to them. There are a lot of podcasts in the world specialised in finance and economics, but here in Croatia, Let’s talk about money is the only one of its kind,” began Dorian Antesic, a student at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Rijeka.
Dorian Antesic actually embarked on his path of popularising the topic of finance even earlier than this, and appearing within the project Hrvatska pamet Hrvatskoj, he presented his project STOK-student investment fund. He delighted the jury with his attitude and thoughts and thus entered the column of the first winner of the Financier category.
According to Antesic, the project consisted of two parts: the establishment of an investment fund that would be managed by students who would invest real money in the financial market and the publication of educational and informative content in the field of investment.
The competition was followed by a series of steps, one of which is investing and implementing a project idea in a slightly different form. From this idea, the Let’s talk about money project was born.
“After winning the award, I thought about starting an association through which students couldd invest, then I decided that I wouldn’t do that, but that I’d implement the project in a different way. Instead of starting an association and a fund, I decided to spend that investment part by creating my own personal investment portfolio.
I withdrew all my savings and started investing with the prize money from the competition. In addition, I started a blog, and later a podcast where I publish educational and informative talks and articles. So in the end, I implemented the project from the competition, I just did it in another form. This way gave me flexibility in my work and greater concentration, since I invested all my money and thus had a dog in the fight when it came to investing,” added Dorian Antesic.
His personal mission, as he went on to explain is to create generational wealth. It is, he added, everything that one generation leaves to another, regardless of whether it is money, real estate or the mentality and system of thinking.
“Caring for generational wealth makes people think long-term. This makes it clearer to them what’s more important to do and have in life, and what’s merely superfluous. I run that mission through a podcast and a blog. With this podcast, I want to create value for financiers and people interested in the field. I talk to professionals and through these conversations I try to touch on some things that would be useful to financiers for their careers and business operations. A successful career and company is the initial condition for creating generational wealth,” explained Antesic.
It can be said that the Let’s talk about money blog is something that brings some new perspectives on financial reality closer to Croatia’s younger generations. The blog’s repertoire includes, of course, economic topics, and the desire is to use its content to help people advance their careers, improve their businesses and adapt to the future. The podcast is reserved for topics related to corporate finance, investment, personal finance, the state of the economy and economic education.
“We’ll talk about the skills that financiers need for successful career growth, and then about the labour market trends for that group. Topics will also be related to the health of financiers – their physical and mental health, since it’s a stressful job where people are under a lot of pressure,” said Dorian Antesic, adding that he has had six guests on his podcast so far. The biggest impression was left by Pavao Pahljina, also the first guest, and the topic was bitcoin.
The Let’s talk about money project and initiative is one way of bringing finance closer to Croatia’s young and often not so interested people. This has been firmly proven by the amount of inquiries that the innovative Dorian Antesic receives on social media, and the advice such individuals seek is often in the domain of personal finances.
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