08/08/2026
I spent about 4/5 of this week in Salt Lake City for Cetera's Connect2Peers conference.
The trip got off to a pretty good start when Enterprise upgraded me to a soft-top Mustang. That turned out to be useful. It was in the high 90s all week, but with almost no humidity.
I also decided that if I was flying all the way to Utah, I was going to make better use of the travel days than simply going back and forth between the airport and the hotel.
So when I landed Monday morning, I went directly from SLCIA to Walmart, bought hydration supplies, and drove straight into Little Cottonwood Canyon.
From there, I did a 7.5-mile mountain trail ruck with a 30-pound pack on the Red Pine Trail before heading back into the city for the conference.
Then it was three days of Connect2Peers.
The conference itself was worthwhile and, as usual, some of the best ideas came from talking with other advisors between sessions, over meals, and at the evening events.
I came back with a number of things I want us to work on at Emerald, particularly around improving the way we serve more complicated client situations, doing an even better job coordinating tax and estate planning, making better use of the specialists and resources available within the Cetera infrastructure, and continuing to improve the way our team works together and communicates with clients.
There were also several excellent sessions on serving multigenerational families, tax planning, practice management, and leadership—plenty that I'll be going back through over the next few weeks.
Wednesday night wrapped up with the closing event at the Gallivan Center, featuring Don Felder and Mike DelGuidice. Not a bad way to end the conference.
Thursday morning, I checked out of the hotel and did basically the reverse of Monday. I drove back into the mountains and completed another 30-pound trail ruck, this time to Lake Blanche. It was only 6.4 miles, but considerably steeper. Take a look at my uphill pace!
The only flaw in this plan was that I finished the hike filthy—and definitely not ready to sit next to another human being on an airplane for five hours.
So I drove straight from the trail to the airport, went through security, walked into the Delta Lounge, and put my name on the shower list.
They called me about 15 minutes before boarding.
Just enough time.
So that was the trip: three days of business meetings and conference sessions, two mountain rucks with some remarkable scenery, a convertible I didn't order, a lot of very good conversations, and one extremely well-timed airport shower.
Not a bad four days in Utah.
