Three Days In The Desert: Wealth/Stack 2019

It’s been a busy couple of days since arriving home from the inaugural Wealth/Stack conference in Scottsdale, Arizona; I’m just now getting a chance to write up my thoughts from my few days in the desert. First off, I want to congratulate everyone at Inside ETFs, especially Matt Middleton and Sovaida Noronha, my two main contacts there, and Ritholtz Wealth Management for putting on an outstanding conference. The energy was high and the information was plentiful–the only other conference I’ve been to that has been so focused on financial advisors is the XYPN Live conference…most other conferences are heavy on the product pitches disguised as informational, or just about investing.

I don’t think I stopped talking the entire conference, which resulted in nearly losing my voice-it was fading after Sunday, which was just a half-day.

Luckily, my voice didn’t fade until after my panel at 3:20; this was the panel I predicted would be the best panel of the conference and I feel very confident we delivered. I was joined by my close friends Dasarte Yarnway, Tyrone Ross, Douglas Boneparth, and Nina O’Neal to share the role content creation and leveraging social media has impacted our careers and business. We only had 40 minutes, but we easily could have gone on for another 40 minutes. In addition to sharing our experiences and advice, along with some strategy, our panel had an exciting announcement…Tyrone shared his new project with Altruist, a new podcast called The Human Advisor. I’m a huge fan and supporter of Tyrone and I was so proud of him as he made his big announcement! You can find The Human Advisor here.

My View From The Stage:

I’d be lying if I said participating with the panel wasn’t one of the major highlights of the trip, but here are a few more:

Having my wife, Ang, join me for the first two days of the trip and having a chance to meet all of my friends from the profession and see me on stage.
Getting to see old friends…too many to list, but you all know who you are.
Getting to meet other Twitter friends in real life for the first time.
Holding an informal meet up for The Advisor Growth Community™ and seeing a group of members organizing their own dinner.
Recording another episode of Meeting Of The Minds. Yes, it was in a hotel room again.
Recording another episode, this time with video, of Project One Question.
Hiking Camelback Mountain with a large group.
Making a bunch of new friends.
So much more…it really was a non-stop three days, but I never felt like my time was wasted.

The main take away from the conference for me was that the profession is heading in the right direction; disruption is coming, investing options are improving, FinTech is going to allow advisors to do more and be more productive, and most importantly...the advisors who are the future of the profession are ridiculously talented and morally grounded!

If you are considering joining in the fun next year, you should definitely attend Wealth/Stack…it’s going to be on the west coast and in September. As soon as the details come out, you’ll want to jump all over it. I can only imagine how Inside ETFs and RWM will top this year’s conference.

I mentioned my panel could have kept going and I’ll be posting a blog post with a few thoughts I wish I would have had time to share…a short follow up to the panel will be coming soon.

In the meantime, here are some photos from the trip to keep the FOMO going if you missed out:

Ang was able to join me on this trip and finally be exposed to the greatness that is FinTwit: