As we ramp up to next week’s INSITE conference I’ve been talking to a few people who are thrilled to see Magic Johnson. Show architects BNY Mellon Pershing made a great choice there.
After all, a good celebrity keynote is all about sending the audience home with an extra buzz of energy. Motivation. A thrill.
Education is secondary. Sure, Earvin Johnson Jr. has become a great investor and philanthropist with plenty of inspirational stories to tell about the ways of wealth . . . but people aren’t secret about hoping the man who reinvented basketball will shine through.
That’s not a bug. It’s a feature. We all work every day with people who accumulated wealth in quieter and less interesting ways. Their money is real, but it’s hard to wrap a compelling story around the numbers.
And we all interact with great investors every time we review a mutual fund statement. A lot of those investors are going to be at INSITE running educational and informative breakout sessions.
I’ll go to as many of those as I can and hope if the presenters are reading this they’ll get me the slides so I can make sure to communicate your thoughts to advisors who can’t make the show.
But that’s where the education comes in. The celebrity keynote needs to do more than fill the brain with facts. This is the speech where all the facts come together and we leave the show with the energy to take the facts back out to our everyday lives.
Earvin Johnson can educate. He’s a rich guy and does interesting things with his money.
“Magic” Johnson can inspire. And if you’re feeling especially ambitious, think of “Magic” as a potential client . . . we all know how coveted sports figures and other celebrities are as prospects.
It's more than the reflected glamour or the tangible AUM. A client who has lived an interesting life will keep surprising you. They bring different perspectives.
They aren’t the typical MBA who worked hard and will fight you harder on fine points of terminology. The celebrity client will push in unique directions, bring unique challenges to the relationship.
That’s invigorating. It’s good to think outside the box and come back with solutions. I don’t want to say it keeps us young, but it keeps us from getting brittle before our time. Flexible. Adaptable.
I don’t think Pershing could have gotten either Johnson to the table without their relationship with his partners at Loop Capital. While Magic is listed with motivational speakers bureaus, you get the feeling a few favors were called around the network.
For one thing, the fit is too tailored for this to be just another $200,000 ticket phoned in on the fly. You’ll probably get Magic to provide a little coaching on the power of winning but I suspect Earvin will really dominate the stage.
This is a conversation with Earvin’s investing partner Jim Reynolds. It’s going to dig deeper than usual into the world of wealth that we all inhabit every day.
Envestnet brought in Tom Brady. Last year, Schwab found Bob Iger. Over the decades, we’ve probably all sat through endless gurus, celebrities and coaches and brought something useful away from the experience.
Where it gets interesting is when we find the gurus and celebrities in our everyday careers. Not everyone has a celebrity client or even a hundred-millionaire on the list. But they all have stories to tell and ways to inspire.
They’re motivational figures. We just need to spend a little time in the coming year figuring out how to let them coach us. It’s been a long decade. Stay flexible. Keep adapting.
We can win together. Every industry conference has a theme. This one is GO BEYOND.
The last few years proved to everyone still in the industry that we can survive nightmare shocks: rolling bear markets and bubbles, insane Fed gyrations, total lockdown, endless volatility. If you haven’t quit yet, you have the right stuff.
Now it’s time to GO BEYOND all the routines and habits (good and bad) that got us through it. Get something more, something extra. Dream a little higher. Take our brains to the educational panels but open our spirits a little wider afterward.
Learn how Earvin did it and how we can do it too. Then do it. GO BEYOND.
