Schedule

Coffee & Networking

Opening General Session | Pushing the Envelope – Being the Best When It Counts

Speaker: Col. Nicole Malachowski, USAF (Ret.) 

To be successful, leaders from every industry and experience level need to effectively navigate moments of self-doubt, master the role of a trustworthy team player, and embrace moments of personal and professional vulnerability. Using the idea of an aircraft performance envelope as a metaphor, this elite fighter pilot and military leader will share inspiring personal stories and practical tools to ignite individuals and teams to reach beyond commonly-assumed limitations to achieve their maximum capabilities and impact. Nicole Malachowski’s presentation will bolster the ability of individuals and teams to:

• Overcome self-doubt that often inhibits personal and professional growth

• Model the selfless trust needed to be an effective teammate

• Practice vulnerability and transparency to build trust and galvanize teamwork

• Build accountability, dependability and reliability that drive performance

• Break down silos to unleash creativity and adaptability

Education Breakout Sessions | Block One

Mid-Career | The Art of Career Development

Speakers: Matt Fizell, Jared Machen
Description: Many financial planners spend years mastering their craft but never stop to intentionally design the next phase of their careers. This interactive session helps participants step back from the day-to-day to evaluate where they are, where they want to go, and what's required to get there.
 
Through guided discussion, reflection, and practical frameworks, attendees will explore strategies for navigating career transitions, overcoming the mid-career plateau, building leadership and influence, and identifying opportunities for continued growth. Participants will leave the first hour with greater clarity about their career direction and the key areas to focus on for long-term success.
 
This is a two-part session. During the second hour, participants will apply what they've learned in a hands-on workshop designed to help them build a personalized career action plan. Through guided exercises, attendees will take inventory of their unique skills and experiences, define their value proposition as a financial planner, evaluate their current role and future opportunities, and identify actionable next steps to intentionally shape the next stage of their career.

Learning Objectives: 

• Taking inventory of your unique skills and experiences.

• Discovering your ideal value proposition as a Financial Planner.

• Identify existing role compatibility and mapping out next steps to take action.

Advanced Career | The Succession I Didn't See Coming

Speaker: Rick Kahler
Description: Rick spent eleven years building a succession plan. He gave himself runway. He found values-aligned successors. He held his integrity through every negotiation. And he was still blindsided twice before the sale that finally closed. Five black swans. Two failed successions. One sale he didn't see coming. And one loss that surprised him most: not the culture, not the control, but the version of himself that built the firm. This is not a cautionary tale. It's a first-person account of what succession actually costs, what it gives back, and what no operating framework or consultant prepares you for. Advisors leave with six takeaways they can use before, during, and after the close. 

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the emotional and psychological costs of succession that operational frameworks do not address.

• Recognize the difference between succession planning and succession passage and why confusing the two leaves founders unprepared.

• Apply a grief-informed perspective to leadership transition that distinguishes loss from failure.

• Evaluate personal non-negotiables before entering succession negotiations. 

Career Changer | Mini-Sessions

There's Levels to This
Speaker: Jon Panning
Description: What got you here won't get you there and Jon Panning learned it not in business, but by walking away from trumpet, an instrument he'd mastered at an elite level, to teach himself to sing from scratch...and somehow land a role in a full stage production that demanded 35 hours a week of rehearsal. Each leap meant voluntarily becoming a beginner again, where his hard-won skill at the last level counted for almost nothing and the rules of the game had completely changed. In this fast-paced session, Jon draws the direct line from that unlikely path to the stages of a financial planning career, helping early- and mid-career planners recognize which level they're really playing and what breaking through to the next one will actually demand.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the level you're playing at right now—and get clear on what "winning" actually looks like at that stage, instead of competing by last level's rules.

• Execute against the real demands of your current level, putting in the focused work each stage requires rather than coasting on the skills that got you there.

• Identify the next level before it forces your hand—spotting the signals that you've outgrown where you are and what breaking through will demand.

Powering ON the Career and Life You Want
Speaker: Joel Steel
Description: While many speakers quote inspiring stories about other people, Joel shares his own. From near-death experiences to building businesses across finance, fitness, and professional sports, Joel brings a rare perspective forged through firsthand breakthroughs, not borrowed ones. He's helped start and grow winning organizations spanning personal wealth (finance), personal health (fitness), and professional sports, where he's a member of the ownership group for two professional teams. Along the way, he's learned what it takes to break through personal and professional plateaus. Through unfiltered storytelling, mindset rewiring, and his signature Life Switch framework, Joel helps audiences stop overthinking and start acting with clarity, conviction, and momentum.

Learning Objectives:

• Reinvigorated to be in this business.

• Motivated to see what your potential can be in financial services.

• Renewed conviction for genuinely helping clients achieve their goals, while simultaneously achieving your own.

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Two

Mid-Career | The Art of Career Development Part Two

Speakers: Matt Fizell, Jared Machen
Description: Building on the concepts introduced in Part 1, this interactive workshop gives participants the opportunity to apply what they've learned by creating a personalized career action plan. Through guided exercises, attendees will take inventory of their unique skills and experiences, define their value proposition as a financial planner, evaluate their current role and future opportunities, and identify actionable next steps to intentionally shape the next stage of their career.

Advanced Career | Succession Planning: Helping Retirement Experts Retire

Speaker: Caroline Jones
Description: About 40% of financial advisors are projected to be retired in the next decade, and nearly three-quarters of financial planners don't have a succession plan. This session explores why planners put off succession planning, why the number one exit strategy among practice owners is having no plan at all, and starting points to think about your own succession plan. This session will be set up as a facilitated conversation and group coaching experience, helping advisors work through not just the business and valuation questions but also the deeper aspects, including identity, legacy, and purpose. 

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the basics of succession planning and its importance.

• Identity your own attitudes, values, and biases when it comes to your own retirement.

• Experience a facilitated coaching conversation that can help you work through not only the business and valuation aspects of succession planning, but also deeper aspects, such as identity, legacy, and purpose.

Career Changer | The Power of Simple: A Case Study in Late-Career Turnarounds and Automated Growth

Speaker: David Nassief
Description: When clients face a financial crisis late in life, they don't need a dense, confusing 100-page report; they need clear direction. This session delivers a real-world case study on how extreme simplicity can rescue a financial future and drive significant results.

Based on the journey behind the Amazon #1 Hot New Release One-Page Wealth Compass, this presentation explores how focusing on a single page of clear direction can transform client anxiety into action. Furthermore, attendees will see how the same philosophy of simplicity can be applied to their own practices. Discover how to implement a "set it and forget it" approach to digital marketing and operations, cutting out the noise so you can focus entirely on helping clients achieve massive turnarounds.

Learning Objectives:

• The Psychology of the Turnaround: Understand the emotional reality of clients starting over late in life, and learn how to replace financial panic with a clear, calm path forward.

• The One-Page Advantage: Learn how streamlining client communication down to a single page increases trust, execution, and real-world results compared to traditional, overwhelming documentation.

• Automate the Noise: Discover how to apply a "set it and forget it" model to your firm's social media and daily operations, using automation to free up valuable time for direct client relationship building. 

Lunch & Networking

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Three

Profit + Purpose: Empowering Financial Advisors to Guide Meaningful Giving

Speaker: Barron Damon
Description: This Business of Giving workshop equips financial and wealth advisors, as well as other financial professionals, with the frameworks, vocabulary, tools, and hands-on practice needed to confidently integrate philanthropic planning into their client service model. The session combines instructor-led content with practical application.  

Learning Objectives: 

• Articulate the business case for integrating philanthropic planning into their client service model, including its impact on client retention and referrals.

• Apply the Philanthropic Equation™ (Values + Resources + Strategy = Impact) to structure meaningful charitable giving conversations with clients.

• Identify and assess client profiles using the 3 P's of Philanthropy™: Philosophy, People, and Process, to determine where clients are in their philanthropic journey.

The Concentration Trap: Why Your Clients' Passive Portfolio May Be Anything But

Speaker: Don Cody
Description: The S&P 500 is more concentrated today than at any point in modern history. Seven stocks now account for roughly one-third of the index, and most "passive" client portfolios carry that risk silently. SPIVA data confirms that active managers broadly fail to outperform, but that doesn't mean concentration risk should be ignored. This session presents a rules-based, Bloomberg-indexed alternative: a concentrated equal-weight structure that enforces sector diversification across all 11 GICS sectors while systematically capturing the documented rebalancing premium. Attendees will leave with a clear framework for identifying hidden concentration risk in client portfolios and a practical, index-benchmarked tool for addressing it without abandoning indexing discipline.  

Learning Objectives:

• Quantify the current magnitude of cap-weight concentration risk using SPIVA Year-End 2025 data and S&P 500 index composition analysis, and explain to clients why a portfolio that tracks the index is not inherently "diverse."

• Describe how systematic equal-weight rebalancing generates a structural return premium relative to cap-weighted peers, and explain why a concentrated equal-weight structure (22 holdings, two per GICS sector) captures that premium more efficiently than broad equal-weight funds such as RSP.

• Evaluate a rules-based, Bloomberg-indexed SMA structure as a complement or replacement for traditional large-cap passive exposure in client portfolios using back-tested and live performance data to assess risk-adjusted return characteristics.

• Apply a client communication framework for discussing concentration risk, rebalancing methodology, and index benchmarking in a way that builds trust and supports informed portfolio construction decisions. 

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Four

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: A New Roadmap for Tax-Free Retirement Planning

Speaker: David McKnight
Description: Discover why the "permanent" extension of the 2017 tax cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is almost certainly temporary, and why today's historically low tax rates may represent the shortest, most valuable planning window in modern history. This presentation gives financial advisors a clear, actionable framework for helping clients shift assets from tax-deferred to tax-free before tax rates rise again. Learn how Roth conversions, Roth accounts, properly structured life insurance, and annuities can create resilient, tax-free income streams and position clients in the zero percent tax bracket, where they're effectively shielded from the impact of future higher taxes. 

Learning Objectives:

•  Understand that Tax rates in the future are likely to be dramatically higher than they are today.

• Learn the only way to truly insulate yourself from higher tax rates is to get to the 0% tax bracket.

• Recognize it's nearly impossible to get to the 0% tax bracket by relying on just one stream of tax-free income.

• Evaluate personal non-negotiables before entering succession negotiations. 

Reg S-P Is Live: How RIAs Can Pass an SEC Exam and Stay Compliant

Speaker: Harrison Baron
Description: The SEC's Reg S-P compliance deadline has passed, and the agency has made it clear that compliance will be a focus in upcoming exams. Financial advisors can no longer prepare for the rule. They must prove they follow it. This session breaks down what RIAs and broker-dealers need to have in place today, in plain language. We will cover what SEC examiners look for, the most common gaps that trigger findings, and how to document your program so it holds up under review. Attendees will leave with clear, actionable steps to stay compliant, exam ready, and protect their clients without breaking the budget.  

Learning Objectives: 

• Understand what SEC examiners expect under Reg S-P, including incident response plans, customer notification procedures, and vendor oversight. 

• Identify the compliance gaps most likely to trigger exam findings or enforcement, and take practical steps to close them. 

• Build and document a cost-effective cybersecurity program that stands up to an SEC exam and protects client information. 

Networking Reception

Coffee & Networking

General Session | This Is How It Happens: Ethics, Ego and Financial Misconduct

Speakers: Moira Somers, Philippa Hann 

Why do smart, capable and caring financial professionals sometimes make ethical mistakes? Why do financial scandals keep happening? In this groundbreaking keynote, a seasoned financial services lawyer joins forces with a neuropsychologist to expose the hidden psychological currents and power dynamics that threaten to drive high-stakes ethical failures. Through riveting case studies of real-world frauds and moral crises, they take you beneath the surface of everyday decisions to reveal the invisible forces that can compromise even the most principled professionals. Moira and Philippa’s presentation will help attendees: 

• Identify the personal, client, team and cultural factors that contribute to ethical missteps

• Develop alternative responses to cognitive dissonance, rationalization and small acts of self-protection that can lead to ethical drift

• Define their non-negotiables and plan how they will respond to common challenges in the advising environment

• Rethink misconduct, leadership and organizational culture through the combined lens of law, psychology and practical decision-making

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Five

Mastering Two Disciplines: AUM vs. Income Under Management: How They Differ and Why It Matters

Speaker: Curtis Cloke
Description: The skills that built your clients' wealth will not sustain it. Most advisors carry an accumulation mindset into the distribution years, and that gap is costing clients their retirement confidence. In this session, Curtis Cloke introduces a framework that changes everything: Buy Income / Chase Alpha, two distinct disciplines that must be mastered separately. Buy Income first to establish a guaranteed, promise-based income floor. Then Chase Alpha with the freedom that certainty creates. The defining metric shifts from AUM to IUM, Income Under Management, and ROI no longer means Return on Investment. It means Reliability of Income. Attendees will learn to identify client assets being held hostage in accumulation-only vehicles and develop strategies to "Free the Hostages," converting abstract balances into reliable income streams. Walk away with a new language, a new scoreboard, and a practice built for the retirement income era. 

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish the two disciplines of retirement planning: Understand why Assets Under Management (AUM) and Income Under Management (IUM) require fundamentally different skill sets, and how the Buy Income / Chase Alpha framework creates a complete, sequenced retirement architecture that accumulation strategies alone cannot deliver. 

• Redefine ROI as Reliability of Income: Apply a new client conversation framework that shifts the focus from market performance to income certainty, replacing return anxiety with a promise-based income floor that funds retirement with confidence and predictability. 

• Master the language of Risk-Based vs. Promise-Based Income: Learn to clearly distinguish between income that is guaranteed and income that is market-dependent, and use that distinction to reframe client conversations, reduce fear around volatility, and align every asset in the portfolio with its proper role in the retirement income plan. 

JFP Research Showcase Part 1

Speaker: Charlotte Ingram
Description: This session presents preliminary research on how inheritance-related wealth changes are associated with household investment behavior. Using 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances data, the study considers inheritance relative to income and net worth and examines patterns in stock ownership, portfolio allocation, and financial risk tolerance. The session will also discuss potential implications for financial planning practice and future research on wealth transitions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key ways inheritance-related wealth changes can be examined within household financial decision-making.

• Compare associations between inheritance measured relative to income and net worth and selected investment outcomes.

• Consider preliminary implications for financial planning practice and future research involving inheritance and portfolio decisions.

Speaker: Kevin Bayani
Description: Blockchain-based financial products are moving from the fringe to the mainstream. This session equips financial planners to engage client conversations about these topics with confidence, evaluate products responsibly, and distinguish legitimate use cases from promotional or fraudulent claims.

Learning objectives:

• Identify professional countertransference as a mechanism affecting advice quality in blockchain-enabled consumer finance. 

• Apply a three-phase progressive framework (practitioner readiness, crypto literacy, and client readiness) to consumer blockchain product cases, demonstrating how to conduct a practitioner self-of-the-therapist check, build structural competence on the product, and prepare a client conversation that aligns goals, risk tolerance, and suitability. 

• Differentiate cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and digital assets and the characteristics associated with each. 

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Six

The G2 Conversation You're Avoiding Is Costing You Millions: Why Next-Gen Talent Is a Top Valuation Driver in Today's RIA Market

Speaker: David Selig
Description: The RIA M&A market is on track for 475 deals in 2026. Your G2 advisors are watching, and they know their worth. They're doing the math on their futures, with or without their current employers. Firms commanding today's highest multiples share one defining trait: G2 advisors who are equipped, empowered, and aligned. This session walks RIA owners through the strategies to begin putting in place, and the conversations to have now, to keep advisory staff happy before the market forces the issue. Because the gap between firms built to endure and firms built around a founder is widening, fast.

This session is built for RIA owners and senior partners who know the market is moving but haven't yet translated that awareness into action with their next generation of talent. While it draws on M&A and valuation data, the real focus is on the human dynamics that determine whether a firm captures premium value or quietly loses it.

Learning Objectives: 

• Understand how G2 readiness directly impacts RIA enterprise value in today's M&A market and identify the specific G2 indicators that PE-backed and strategic buyers evaluate during diligence.

• Apply a 5-conversation framework for aligning with next-generation advisors before not during a transaction process.

• Develop a 90-day action plan to close the most common G2 readiness gaps that erode valuation and create transaction risk.

JFP Research Showcase Part 2

Speaker: Jeremy Ko
Description:  This presentation articulates a novel approach to Social Security optimization for married couples which moves beyond analysis based on average or expected lifespan and toward prudent management of longevity risk. It specifically uses long projected lifespans from the 70th and 90th percentiles for each spouse. We devise rules for optimal claiming which migrate away from strategic claiming decisions (in which one spouse accounts for the other’s decision and maximizes the value of joint benefits) in the average lifespan case. They instead migrate toward decoupled decision making (in which each spouse maximizes the value of his or her personal benefit only) in the case of longer assumed lifespans. This approach can be used in all aspects of retirement planning including to determine savings thresholds, withdrawal rates, annuitization, long-term care insurance, etc.

Speaker: Keith Jacks Gamble
Description: Does working with a financial planner improve household outcomes, and does the CFP® credential add value on top of that? This session presents new evidence from the CFP Board's Financial Planning Longitudinal Survey, a panel of 3,357 U.S. households tracked across 2024 and 2025. Working with a planner is associated with roughly $220,000 more in investable wealth and higher financial satisfaction, even after controlling for demographics. Households that adopted a planner between the two survey years gained about $63,000 within a single year compared to non-users. The session also addresses the measurement challenge. Because many clients cannot say whether their planner holds the CFP designation, the estimated CFP-specific premium ranges from statistically insignificant under a conservative approach to about $128,000 under an inclusive one. Attendees will leave with an evidence-based way to talk with clients about the value of planning, a clear view of where the CFP premium is well-supported versus uncertain, and practical takeaways for the profession. 

Learning Objectives: 

• Quantify the wealth and financial-satisfaction differences associated with using a financial planner. 

• Distinguish the total value of engaging any planner from the incremental value of the CFP credential.

• Identify which client segments show the largest planning benefits.

Lunch & Networking

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Seven

The Great Wealth Transfer: An Interactive Advisor Simulation

Speaker: Barb Provost, Maggie Nielsen
Description: As the largest wealth transfer in history unfolds, advisory firms have a tremendous opportunity to strengthen relationships, deepen client engagement, and position themselves for long-term growth. In this highly interactive simulation, participants step into the role of advisory firm leadership teams and work through realistic client scenarios involving wealth transitions, family dynamics, and evolving client expectations. Through a series of facilitated challenges and strategic decision points, attendees will explore how relationship continuity, trust, and client experience influence growth and retention in today's advisory landscape. Rather than focusing on marketing tactics, this session examines the relationship strategies that help firms build stronger connections, create greater client confidence, and remain relevant across generations.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify relationship continuity risks that can emerge during wealth transfer, widowhood, retirement, and other major life transitions.

• Evaluate client engagement strategies that strengthen trust, confidence, and long-term retention among women and multigenerational families.

• Apply relationship-centered business development practices that support sustainable firm growth in a changing wealth landscape.

Education Breakout Sessions | Block Eight

When Plans Collide: A Theory of Integrated Financial Planning

Speaker: Michael Kothakota
Description: Financial planners already intuit what academic literature has struggled to formalize; financial plans are not six domains stacked next to each other but one integrated system where every decision ripples across the others. This session introduces Interdependent Integrative Financial Planning Theory (IIFPT), a formal framework that treats cash flow, retirement, tax, estate, risk management, and investment planning as structurally coupled rather than independently optimized.

Through a live case study of a mass-affluent business owner, attendees will vote on client priorities and on which external shocks they expect to most affect the plan, watching the recommended strategy shift in front of them. The session closes with what the framework does not solve, specifically, how not knowing your client or failure to gather good information error discovery can lead to measurable value loss.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe how interdependence among the six core financial planning domains changes the planning process compared to a siloed or sequential approach, and identify three categories of decision in which cross-domain coupling materially alters the recommendation. 

• Explain how a client's ranked priorities across planning domains function as formal inputs to recommended strategy, and demonstrate, by working a case, how two clients with identical financial facts but different priority rankings arrive at different optimal plans, including how elicitation error in priority discovery generates quantifiable value loss. 

• Apply the integrated-planning lens to a business-owner retirement scenario, identifying at least two specific interactions between business value, tax posture, and retirement income that a siloed analysis would miss or mis-size, and evaluate how the ranking of plans changes when external shocks are introduced. 

Closing General Session | A Journey from Never Eat Alone to Never Lead Alone

Speaker: Keith Ferrazzi

Twenty years ago, Keith Ferrazzi revolutionized professional networking with his book "Never Eat Alone." Now, this #1 New York Times bestselling author is set to transform the leadership landscape with his latest paradigm-shifting concept: "Never Lead Alone."

In this captivating talk, Ferrazzi will take you on a journey through two decades of insights gleaned from extensive research and hands-on experience coaching Fortune 500 companies. He'll unveil a fresh approach to leadership tailored for today's dynamic and interconnected business environment. Keith's insights will equip you with the tools to thrive in an era where connectedness is key.

Closing Reception