Still surprised - The Reformed Broker

Posted September 20, 2023 by Joshua M Brown

Kristen Oliveri wrote this at the new Crain Currency – a magazine covering family offices and wealth management – yesterday afternoon:

Enter Future Proof: a wealth management festival that’s decided to shake things up. Founders Josh Brown and Matt Middleton of Ritholtz Wealth Management knew the industry was due for some change, so they boldly decided to lead the way.
The entire event was outside on the beach. Stages were erected, food trucks were displayed, huddle tables and high top tables were scattered throughout the festival site to ensure that spontaneous networking could happen at any time, anywhere.
It was by far the most diverse group of people I’ve ever seen gathered to discuss the future of wealth—not to mention the staggering number of women in attendance.
The content was extremely diverse as well. While there were the traditional main-stage panels, they also did live sessions of podcast episodes, fireside chats, personal growth workshops as well as wellness and food and beverage networking activities. You could wake up and do yoga on the beach and catch a quick salsa lesson mid-afternoon.

We’ve had other write-ups with a similarly surprised tone. It’s still a bit shocking that we could pull something like this off, at the scale we did it. No one else has ever attempted it, which is why people are still incredulous. “They actually did it. All the stuff they promised would happen has happened!”

Yup.

And we’ll do it again next year, even bigger. Because my people at Ritholtz Wealth Management and the Advisor Circle people are part of the same tribe. The “Just you wait and see” club. The over-deliver club. Worst thing you can do is tell people like us that we can’t do something. You don’t want to do that.

Thanks to all the great reporters who made it out to Future Proof this week to document the event. Thanks to all the folks who came as guests but wrote about their experiences for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or their own blogs. We see you and we appreciate the passion with which you’ve told the story of your own adventure out west.