By Kevin Estes

XYPN Live Summary

I had the opportunity to attend XY Planning Netowork (XYPN) Live again this year. It was the network’s 10th anniversary and held in Minneapolis!

The event was good again this year and included about 800 attendees.

This article explores:

• Reasons to attend

• My schedule

• Pros and cons of XYPN Live

• Conference tips

• Rise of the tuck-in

Reasons to Attend

People sometimes ask me why I attend two conferences a year. It’s tough to swing with a family!

For me, attending helps me:

1. identify blind spots

2. re-connect in person

3. meet new people

Below is more on how XYPN Live helped me with each of those.

1. Identify Blind Spots

One of the reasons I joined this industry was that it offers ample opportunity for me to learn for the rest of my life.

No-one can know everything. However, I’m reminded how much I don’t know when I attend a conference like this!

Two of the ways I learn at conferences are:

• presentations and

• conversations.

Presentations
Five of the sessions I attended stood out:

• Ross Riskin and Joe Messinger’s advanced education workshop

• Cady North, Erica Ryberg, and Inga Timmerman on efficiency

• Jason Howell on serving high net worth clients

• Ethan Miller and Autumn Knutson on student loan planning

• Michael Reynolds on his marketing process

Inga Timmerman, Erica Ryberg, and Cady North (left to right) presented “Running Lean: Stop Overthinking and Focus on What Works”:

Jason Howell presented “How to Prepare for 8 Figure Clients”:

(The room was quite large and few people sat in front.)

Autumn Knutson and Ethan Miller (left to right) presented ”How to *Actually* Do Student Loan Planning”:

(Another large conference room where few people sat in front. It, too, was well attended.)

Michael Reynolds presenting ”How to Build a Weekly ‘Content Marketing Machine’”:

Conversations
I was part of dozens - if not hundreds - of conversations last week.

Some that stood out for me were:

• Wilson Liu on creating and sharing resources for career changers

• Autumn Knutson on systematically building planning processes

• Edwin Choi on building advisor tech as an advisor

• Maggie Klokkenga onboarding over 50 clients in seven months

• Igor Smolyanskiy on the why behind financial planning

• Allen Mueller on determining his next steps

• Jamie Clark on U.S. cultural differences by region

• Brian Thorp on building an advisor support network

• Liz Plot on serving military personnel

• Tracy G. and Dedrick C. on pricing planning services

• Laura Lynch and Holly Davis on advising for alternative living

• Rebecca Conner on industry evolution and registration options

• Ari Weisbard on trialing individuals before hiring or partnering

• Ohan Kayikchyan on the many advisor business models

• Heather Walstad, Rhonda Moore, and Shelley Laakso on managing financials through rapid growth

• Lyubomyr Ostapiv on serving Ukrainians

• Steven Fox, Julie W., and Andy Moran on the rise of tuck-ins

• Kelly Palmer on deliberate growth

• Mike Staman on surprising success

• Monica Scudieri, Sarah Roller, and Mike Johnson on financial advisor / coach collaboration

• Jake Wagner on marketing and Nazrudin

• Brennan V. on marketing and cognitive effort

• Amber FitzRysler on workload and stage of life

• Katy Cook on company travel policies

(Last initial used for those preparing to launch for anonymity.)

2. Reconnect in Person

Another huge benefit of the conference was to reconnect. There’s no shortage of new things I learned this year about and from these wonderful people!

Three groups with whom I reconnected with include:

• online only

• at other conferences

• last year

Online Only
I met over 20 people I’d only ever met online!

Some of them include: Angie Furubotten-Larosse, Jason Hamilton, Scott Kawicki, Michael Powers, Kathryn Kubiak-Rizzone, Monica Scudieri, Eric Johns, Katie Braden, Wilson Liu, Andy Moran, Carl Richards, Nancy Bleeke, Dustin Bell, Joseph Boughan, Shannon Fleener, Sara Young, Kori Lennon, Kelly Palmer, Mike Bennett, Amber FitzRysler, and Brennan V.

At Other Conferences
I had a chance to connect with several people I’d met through other conferences, including: Ohan Kayikchyan, Avanti Shetye, Monica Scudieri, Mike Hunsberger, Brian O’Neill, and Kelly Nilsson.

Last Year
I also reconnected with dozens of people I met last year. Although XYPN Live was bigger this year, it felt smaller!

Some reconnections include: Wilson Liu, Lorri DeFloor, Maggie Klokkenga, Igor Smolyanskiy, Rebecca Conner, and Allen Mueller.

3. Meet New People

It was wonderful to connect with people I’d never met. Some of those included:

• advisors,

• XYPN team members, and

• tech founders.

Advisors
Some advisors I just met include: Autumn Knutson, Sean Gillespie, Marie Schuett, Jonathan Grannick, Laura Lynch, Sylvie Scowcroft, Razvan Mirica, Maren Madsen, Steven Fox, Amy Rosenow, Chad Gammon, Emily Maretsky, Greg Goff, Tracy G., Dedrick C., Mike Turi, Erica Ryberg, Brandon Montoya, Rebecca Yerby, Phillip Durbin, Alan Nelson, Vrishin Subramaniam, Liz Plot, and Becca Craig.

XYPN Team Members
It was great to connect with Heather Walstad, Shelley Laakso, and Rhonda Moore. We swapped corporate financial planning insights and stories! We also shared our favorite locations in Idaho and Montana.

While I’d met Rhonda previously, I was shocked she and Carl Richards hadn’t met! Hilariously, Carl asked Rhonda for embarassing childhood stories about Alan Moore. Of course, Rhonda didn’t spill any beans!

Tech Founders
As always, it was fun to nerd out on new technology. It’s wonderful to meet the founders who’ve developed supporting software!

Some of these founders included:

• Alex Bottom, founder of Finology

• Nate Hoskin and Nick Meyer, co-founders of N2 Content Marketing

• Edwin Choi, co-founder and CEO of Capitect

It was great to learn more about their services, share my perspective, and ask about future enhancements.

My Schedule

I don’t sleep much at conferences. There’s too much to do!

I was out late each night. The two hour difference helped. Thankfully, hotel lobbies are almost always open!

Since most conferences are on the Eastern or Central time zones, 6:30am is a common wake-up time. I can pull that off when breakfast (and coffee) is served at 7am.

I flew to Minneapolis on Monday morning and flew back Friday afternoon. Below was my rough schedule for the week:

XYPN Live Events

One thing that surprised me was how few of the events I attended over the week were organized directly by the XY Planning Network. Those 16 events are highlighted in light blue.

XYPN Live Facilitated Events

Many were certainly facilitated by XYPN Live! Those 23 activities are colored light green.

Several of the breakfasts and lunches were provided by XYPN Live at the hotel. They facilitated networking. Others were meals and activities organized at or near the conference by attendees.

Translation: I attended more informal activities than regularly scheduled events. That’s a feature, not a bug!

XYPN deliberately opened up the calendar to facilitate socialization - and I’m so glad. It made the event feel more like a conference and less like a series of presentations.

Whova - the app used for XYPN Live - facilitated these activities. It seemed relatively user friendly.

Precon

For the first time ever, I attended a pre-conference workshop. It was great!

Fortunately, I completed the Certified College Financial Counselor (CCFC) coursework before the event. I have one remaining step to take before (hopefully) completing the designation.

My goal for the pre-conference workshop was to deepen my knowledge. It certainly did! Another session provided even more tactical insights on student loans.

The attendees were also invited to a lunch afterward. It was great to connect with several advisors. The two events are in darker blue.

Travel

The other activities were travel-specific. Fortunately, they were limited to Monday and Friday. Those are highlighted in orange.

At least as many of the activities were social as travel both days!

Pros and Cons

As with any event, there were many things that worked well and some that were a little clunky.

I co-founded a half marathon and have hosted other events. However, I only have a sense of just how hard it is to run an event like XYPN Live. This more balanced view is in addition to the many other positives of the event.

Pros

I feel there were six huge positives of the event:

1. ample opportunity to connect

2. meals provided

3. open spaces

4. access to thought leaders

5. vendor receptions

6. closing party on the last night

Below is more on each of them.

1. Ample Opportunity to Connect
XYPN went out of its way to facilitate conversations.

Wednesday Afternoon Networking
The organizers largely left Wednesday afternoon open to connect with other members from noon to 3pm.

Activities included:

• Exhibit Hall 9:45am-5:30pm

• Lunch Noon-1pm

• Meet-Ups 1-5pm

• Speed Networking 1-4:30pm

Several of the other events planned at the time were led by XYPN employees. The implicit message was clear:

Here are some resources. However, this time is reserved for you to connect with other conference attendees.

Supper Clubs
Coordinating dinners was a brilliant idea and well executed!

Special thanks to Kassy Betterley, who organized these meetups. The dinner was nice and I met some wonderful people I might not have otherwise.

There were a couple people who cancelled for our dinner. It sounds like that also happened with other supper clubs. However, there were many other people who joined those groups in the lobby!

BC Brokerage was setting up for their party a while before we needed to leave for the supper club. They encouraged us to stop by for a drink, which we did. It took longer than I’d hoped to leave for dinner.

I felt badly that we were late to the supper club, as it was a decent walk away. The group had ordered drinks but thankfully not dinner.

It was wonderful of XYPN and Kassy to organize these supper clubs! It was a nice touch that one of the receptions was across the hall from the dinner and a couple more were on the walk back to the hotel.

2. Meals Provided
Although dinner ware rarely provided, breakfast and lunch usually were. Simply providing food and tables was enough to start conversations.

Kassy also had sections set up for specific groups to encourage collaboration. Some of the reserved tables were oversubscribed while others were used less. However, the suggestions seemed to help people connect with like-minded advisors.

3. Open Spaces
Hosting at a hotel with plenty of hallway, lobby, and seating areas also helped people mingle.

I invited people to lunch for a combined “supergroup” at a location XYPN reserved for people to meet.

4. Access to Thought Leaders
Michael Kitces and I stood in a long line for kabobs together at the Welcome Reception. I met Carl Richards, Kristin Harad, and Katie Braden at that even as well. Nancy Bleeke launched her latest edition of Conversations That Sell in the Exhibit Hall. Dr. Preston Cherry attended a vendor reception…

5. Vendor Receptions
These were awesome this year! That may be the result of many supporting companies growing along with the XYPN membership.

BC Brokerage’s party was excellent and did a good job of separating the dance floor from the bar to allow both dancing and conversing!

Wealthtender’s reception before the closing party was in a nice, intimate setting. The only downside was that many more people attended than RSVP’d. It was still a great event.

6. Closing Party
The last official event was interesting. It was a three-floor extravaganza, with food on each floor.

We spilled out into the courtyard behind the first floor. It didn’t rain!

Each of the floors was distinctive. I liked the middle wooden floor best.

Cons

No event is perfect and XYPN incorporates feedback for future years.

Some of the least wonderful parts for me included:

1. little sleep

2. no precon breakfast

3. repeated presentation

4. limited support attendees

5. single-sided nametags

6. next year’s date and location

Below are more of my thoughts.

1. Little Sleep
I’m a West coast night owl. It wasn’t a problem for me to stay up late on the Central time zone.

What was tougher was making it to breakfast at 7am. Most attendees are from the Eastern and Central time zones so the time difference was less of an issue.

However, I wasn’t alone. Few of the conference attendees were at breakfast at 7am. I even heard some grumbling from the hotel staff at about 7:30am:

I’m sure everyone will show up at 10am.

At least one West coast advisor I know took a nap in the middle of the day. Others ducked out of presentations to take a break.

I simply slept less. There are worse things!

2. No Precon Breakfast
It wasn’t a huge deal that we didn’t have breakfast. However, it was tough to start the workshop at 8am the first day. That’s 6am Pacific.

Coffee and/or juice would have been welcome. There weren’t many people in attendance yet so it might have been manageable.

It sounds like it was left up to the precon organizers. It also sounded expensive… to be expected, given the location.

A happy accident was that another swim dad from Seattle was on a trip to visit Target’s headquarters. We grabbed breakfast together!

Having lunch offsite was a nice and welcome touch. It was great to connect with more of the precon attendees.

3. Repeated Presentation
The Opening Remarks and 2024 Benchmarking Study sessions repeated content for long stretches. Several of the data points, comments, and jokes were the same.

I’d recommend striking the benchmarking items from the Opening Remarks. It convinced me to skip more of the major presentations in favor of hallway conversations.

4. Limited Support Attendees
There’s good news and bad on this one:

• Good: there some new attendees this year.

• Bad: it highlighted some potential absences.

I meet two financial coaches, one of whom I’d already met through FinCon. It seems like a wonderful opportunity to have more coaches attend, as they and advisors could be good referral partners. Coaches might even find they have an interest in investments.

Unlike at FinCon, I didn’t meet any reporters. That seems like another opportunity.

There were advisor-facing trust and insurance companies. However, where were the business valuation firms?

Something else I heard from vendors was that their badge type prevented them from attending events like the Welcome Reception. They were surprised.

5. Single-Sided Nametags
My roommate pointed out that the nametags could have been printed on both sides. Mine kept flipping:

Sorry, I’m backward again!

It’s understandable that our emails aren’t on the badge. However, it was a bit tough to exchange contact information in the app. Many of us just connected on LinkedIn or typed out our emails.

6. Next Year’s Date and Location
Both are problematic next year.

Date
An attended pointed out in the Q&A session that next year’s dates conflict with Rosh Hashanah.

Several of the members I met through XYPN Live are Jewish. My public high school had the holiday off.

Unless the date changes, XYPN Live will likely be without many great colleagues.

10/24/2024 update: After this post was published on Wednesday, 10/23/2024, we received an email from XYPN leaders that the dates for 2025 XYPN Live had changed to no longer conflict with Rosh Hashanah! Thank you, Kori Lennon, Vince Hockett, and the rest of the XYPN team for making it right.

Location
The location of Austin, TX is also less than ideal.

XYPN seemed to do a great job with families this year! My child is now a teen. However, I enjoyed seeing several children with their advisor parents. I also appreciated that there was a childcare room just outside the main conference ballroom.

Abortion is no longer federally protected and is against the law in Texas. Many pregnant women attended the conference this year.

Someone who’s pregnant might be risking their lives to attend the conferences in Texas. At least, that’s the perspective some female advisors shared.

Conference Tips

This was my sixth conference as a financial planner. I also attended several in my previous career.

Some things have come in handy for me.

Extended Conference

A conference neither starts with the opening remarks nor ends with the closing party.

Before

• Many people reach out beforehand to connect in person

• Some people visit nearby family before the conference

• Several teams fly in early to add a corporate retreat

• Some advisors meet with local clients in person

• Other attendees are often on the same flight

• Some catch a ride together to the conference

• Attendees meet in the hotel check-in line

• Others attend a pre-conference workshop together

This was the first year I attended a precon and it was wonderful!

After

• Many people fly the next day, which may be necessary

• Some people connect with nearby family after the conference if they have the energy!

• Still others connect with clients in person, even if it’s just social since they may be tired

• Attendees connect in hotel check-out lines as well

• People often share rides to the airport

• Even more connect at the airport

I had wonderful conversations at the airport both this year and last! There always seems to be at least one conference attendee flying back to Seattle. Another advisor and i both had delayed flights this year and were able to have a nice lunch together.

Conference Hacks

Below are a few things which work for me I thought I’d share. Your mileage may vary.

• Get a hotel room nearby - they’re often much less expensive and walking gives you a chance to explore the city

• Bring a water bottle and snacks - if you wind up not needing the snacks, you can always give them away!

• Never eat alone - it’s not always possible but is ideal

• Look for superpowers - where do people you meet really excel?

• Prioritize good hallway conversations - that’s especially true if the presentations are recorded!

• Limit the number of conversations - there’s a reason school lets out early in the afternoon

• Organize fun activities - the closer and simpler, the better

• Connect in realtime - introduce people in the moment

• Try the hotel lobby - it’s a great place for conversations

• Share contact info - connect on LinkedIn, exchange emails, etc.

• Follow up on great conversations - find ways to stay connected

Rise of the Tuck-In

This year accelerated a trend I noticed last year.

Many XYPN member are starting to band together to create big firms. That’s especially the case for planners who don’t manage assets.

It’s common for one advisor to invite another to join the company to share systems and expenses. Advisors are starting to fold businesses into one larger entity.

Last Year

At XYPN Live 2023, I met:

• Jay Zigmont, who’s creating an enterprise with Childfree Wealth

• Eric Simonson, who’s built the advice-only firm Abundo Wealth

Continuation

Even before the conference started this year, Steven Fox shared that he’s launching the Transparent Advisor Network. That’s not to be confused with the Transparent Advisor Movement, of which I’m a part.

In addition, Guy Penn has created Core Planning. It’s another interesting ensemble business model.

At this year’s conference, I was able to learn more about these tuck-ins from non-founder members:

• Maggie Klokkenga with Abundo Wealth

• Andy Moran with Core Planning

Benefits

There are some big benefits to scale in the advisory space.

Doing so:

• Streamlines compliance - especially for SEC registered firms

• Divides marketing effort - each advisor might create less content

• Enables specialization - address multiple topics in-house

• Fosters collaboration - there’s value in learning from each other

• Provides socialization - entrepreneurship can be lonely; working with a team can help

Tensions

The biggest tensions I hear these tuck-ins face are:

1. tech flexibility

2. marketing and pay

3. hours and productivity

1. Tech Flexibility
Sharing technology is efficient and cost effective.

However, some advisors strongly prefer a specific technology. Limiting the tech stack could restrict the number of users who would join.

It’s a balance between operational efficiency and flexibility.

2. Marketing and Pay
Several of these tuck-ins have many new clients!

Firms that source clients often pay a lower percentage of the revenue advisors generate. If the advisors bring in the clients, the firms often pay a higher percentage of the revenue generated.

They’re simply different models.

3. Hours and Productivity
If the company takes over administrative tasks, it frees advisors up to focus more on serving clients. That’s especially the case if advisors don’t have to spend time attracting clients.

That’s good and bad. While it focuses an advisor, it can remove other elements they may enjoy like content creation.

Many advisors start a firm for the schedule flexibility. Heavy workloads may not support the lifestyle they seek.

Use Cases

I feel tuck-ins work best for advisors who:

• dislike the backoffice / support tasks,

• enjoy working with clients and coworkers,

• are flexible with the technology they use,

• have a specialized skill (cash flow, equity compensation, student loan planning…), and

• thrive working with many clients.

Some characteristics of an individual who might lead a tuck-in include:

• success attracting clients,

• strong communication skills,

• a desire to build an enterprise,

• willingness to develop teammates,

• ability to delegate effectively,

• flexibility in working with stakeholders, and

• the resources to invest in technology.

I hope this helps!

Disclaimer

In addition to the usual disclaimers, neither this post nor these images include any financial, tax, or legal advice.