Ringmaster Ross Marino on the Keys to a GREAT Conference

It’s easy to see Ross Marino loves conferences. It’s why he’s made it a part of his life’s work. Bringing people together, talking shop, “geeking out” as he likes to call it on best practices to help participants achieve their goals and dreams.

If it sounds Pollyanna it’s because it is, and Marino’s unrelenting optimism translates to the structure and flow of EXCEL 401(k): The Advisors’ Conference, an annual event with a unique format meant to feed the advisor’s brain and business with cutting-edge ideas to ensure optimal performance.

Produced by North Carolina-based Advisor 2X (until recently Rekon Intelligence) it takes place this year at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center just outside of Dallas, October 27-29, 2019.

Marino, who maintains his own 401k and wealth management books of business, knows what advisors want, and he built the show to reflect it. It means a “snappy” pace with actionable items and even a session dedicated specifically to how those items are implemented once attendees are back in their office.

He doesn’t let you off the hook and has a vested interest in helping your practice grow, knowing it means you’ll be back next year.

Marino sat with 401(k) Specialist—full disclosure: we’re the media sponsor for the event—to talk about how the event is different and well worth your time.

Let’s get right to it. How is your event unique?

We made an effort to connect with advisors that are doing great work but haven’t necessarily spoken at major conferences. It’s great because they’re out there.

We’ve learned two things as we create the advisor experience—the first is that advisors love to hear about what other advisors are doing. The second is that advisors who love what they do, like me, are more than happy to share.

Do they see it as a competitive threat by giving away the keys to their success?

Maybe in some industries, and I’m sure certain people think that way in our industry. But if you’re a high achieving, successful advisor, you know you can’t copy anybody else’s business, and nobody can copy yours.

The art of business is leadership and execution. It’s everybody working together. The concept, or “the what we do,” isn’t as important, because what we do as advisors is similar. Successful advisors look at other advisors more as peers than competitors. And let’s face it, we all love to talk shop. We geek out on our business.

So, you reach beyond the ‘speaking circuit’ to get fresh faces?

We always look at feedback from the previous year, and we want to make sure we have our ear to the ground on trends and who delivered value to the advisor attendee.

There are certain speakers that advisors love to listen to, and it prompts thoughts and ideas and they take notes back to their office to make decisions.

The goal for a breakout session is to ensure that people in that session have great ideas and they follow through with action plans. Whether it’s 40 people in a breakout session or 240, we want to make sure they put their time into that session and they were able to receive value for it.

You close with a session on how to implement the ideas discussed. How do you keep the pace so energetic?

I always stress at the outset the reason that we’re all here, which is that you have to get away from your business in order to work on your business. We’ve designed our conference planner for you to take notes, key takeaways, make decisions and then create an action plan to use once you get back to your office. The entire experience is designed to help you distill your ideas into key decisions to set the framework to actually create the action plan.

Can you pick out a few sessions that really excite you this year?

[Laughing] No, no way. We just had one of the speakers comment about how we put that person up against so many awesome sessions. We hear that regularly and we joke that we’re like the television commercial, “Sorry, not sorry.”

It’s why advisors come to our event; they know four tracks are running at all times and each of those sessions is unique and relevant to what we’re doing today.

Does that foster competition among the speakers?

We have extensive conversations with speakers. We review every PowerPoint presentation, every slide, and their notes. We give them feedback on what we think will improve what they have to say and make sure it’s relevant and actionable for advisors.

The wonderful part is everybody we speak with wants to know what will make their session better. Everybody wants to bring their best.