The energy at FutureProof was unlike any other conference experience built for the wealth management space.
The event’s organizers billed it as the world’s first wealth management festival. Situated across from the Pacific in Huntington Beach, California, FutureProof offered ongoing music, multiple performance stages, an endless variety of food carts and plenty of Instagram-worthy moments.
The event skewed toward a younger demographic than other wealth conferences, with extracurricular activities including surfing, high-intensity workouts, early morning yoga on the beach, food served from outdoor food trucks rather than banquet halls, and live performances in Hip Hop and Alternative Rock.
Aside from the outside entertainment, attendees were focused on issues that are seldom aired in wealth management conferences – achieving real racial equity and increasing diversity in the profession, using new platforms to communicate with clients and how best to utilize emerging digital assets for clients.
Over three days, the AdvisorEngine team proved to be its own event draw, meeting with a stream of RIAs under the Southern California sun.
The AdvisorEngine booth was repeatedly deemed the best and most creative booth by attendees, and for good reason. With its fridge full of cold drinks, and racks of snacks, knick-knacks and candy stacks, the decision to bring a slice of a New York bodega to the beach was an inspired call.
Attendees couldn’t get enough of the swag, or that they had to play a scratch-off game to determine what swag they could receive. In big demand were AdvisorEngine’s GSD hats – our acronym for “Get Stuff Done,” though you might find another substitute for the ‘S’ …
Another item in demand was AdvisorEngine’s pickleball racquets, and for good measure the team had a pickleball court set up right across from its booth for would-be pickleball champions to test their mettle. (By the end of the conference there emerged one obvious champion.)
AdvisorEngine’s sales team – George Tamer, Kathy Crowley and Justin Wilkinson glad handled with advisor clients and prospects alike. Ensuring the stall was stocked and activities went on schedule and smoothly was project manager Erica Ellis in tandem with marketing specialist Louise Stafford. And displaying her usual finesse with photography and video was Sam Deitch.
The seed for all this activity, though, was a decorated newspaper box in the center of the booth, containing a stack of AdvisorEngine’s new magazine for the wealth management industry, Action!
Craig Ramsey, AdvisorEngine COO, and Suleman Din, advisor intelligence lead, made it to the front page of industry publication RIABiz with the launch of Action! magazine at FutureProof.
Industry leaders – including Ric Edelman, author and founder of RIA Edelman Financial Engines, and DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach – took away copies of Action! and others online offered their congratulations for the launch.
Din says, “Our goals are simple with Action!: To fill in the gap for advisors who want to act on the practice challenges they face and give them the information they can use in their business right away, and bring a voice and spotlight all the roles who support advisors – the technologists, the operations experts, the relationship managers, the administrators – everyone who helps bring a practice to life and makes it go.”