Get Started Here!

Recap of my Experience at The Best Ever Conference

As I write this, I am sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for my connecting flight back to Buffalo from Salt Lake City after attending the Best Ever Conference. Attending the Best Ever Conference was my first experience at a non-medical conference.

Which made it really interesting and different for me.

So, I thought I might as well share my thoughts while they are fresh on my mind. No time like the present!

My Best Ever Conference experience

(And stay tuned until the end for my top investing tidbits that I picked up from the conference!)

What is the Best Ever Conference?

I have to be honest. Before making my plans to attend BEC 2023, I had never heard of it before. I think that is kind of embarrassing to admit as a real estate investor. Since it seems everyone else had heard of it and its leader, Joe Fairless. But I hadn’t.

best ever conference experience

Regardless, it is billed as “The conference where serious commercial real estate investors, at the intersection of institutional and entrepreneurial real estate, gather to learn, network, and invest.”

You can learn more about it here. I quickly realized how legit it was when I ran through the speaker list.

So, given my complete obliviousness, it begs the question…

How did I up even having a Best Ever Conference experience?

For that, I have to thank Vikram Raya MD and his team at Viking Capital. They were putting on a physician specific meeting within BEC. And they invited me to be one of the speakers!

I was and remain incredibly honored and I accepted eager to immerse myself in a pretty new environment…that of a real estate investing conference.

My initial impression at BEC2023

I unfortunately had a short stay at the conference in Salt Lake City. I arrived midday on Friday and was gone by Sunday at 8 in the morning. This was necessary as Selenid is about 2 weeks away from her due date with our third son. So, I had to minimize the chance of being gone when she went into labor. Which obviously would have led to my imminent death…

However, despite the short stay, I think I got a pretty good impression of the conference. Immediately on walking in, I was completely overwhelmed.

I’ve been to and spoken at tons of medical conferences, but this was very unlike that. The “industry partners” booths were right in the middle of the main concourse for the meeting. I couldn’t help but feeling like a fish in shark infested waters.

I started by going to some of the main talks. And I have to admit, I quickly realized that I was not their target audience. It seemed to me like most of the content was geared to those who were or were looking to become General Partners AKA money raisers in syndications.

This is not me. Either way, some of the information was useful.

The Physician Wealth Summit

As a result, I spent most of my time in the Physician Wealth Summit put on by Vikram Raya.

And this part of the conference was, as expected, excellent.

I think Vik and his team did a fantastic job of educating doctors holistically regarding how to create wealth as well as educating about investing in syndications. It felt a lot less “sales-driven” than other aspects of the conference.

Notable speakers included:

  • Tom Burns MD
  • Peter Kim MD
  • Param Baladandapadi MD
  • Letizia Alto MD
  • Kristina Kypuros MD
  • The whole Viking Capital team
  • And me

Best part of the overall conference for sure. And very worthwhile attending in the future!

The best part of my Best Ever Conference experience

Like just about any conference, the best part of my experience here was getting to meet and interact with so many inspiring people.

Virtual conferences have been great in terms of allowing more people to attend without the inconvenience of travel. But there is still nothing like talking with and meeting people in person.

It was great to finally meet in person and learn from so many people who it feels like I have known forever like Peter Kim, Vikram Raya, Veena Jetti, Joel Napenas, and many others.

These were definitely the highlights!

The worst part of my Best Ever Conference experience

It seemed to me like there were way more sponsors trying to gather contacts and capital at the conference than people there to learn.

And don’t get me wrong, I know that one of the biggest benefits of conferences is networking (see above). But this discrepancy permeated throughout the conference for.

And maybe this is normal for industry conference like this. It just struck an odd note for me given how used to medical conference I am.

Not necessary wrong, just seemed off to me.

Anyway…

Here are the top 3 little investing tidbits that I picked up at the conference!

1. Lots of syndicators and capital raisers are in trouble

I heard story after story of investors getting capital calls or losing money from their investments. There were also numerous horror stories of syndicators reaching out to others to borrow money to keep an investment afloat. This appears to largely be affecting those with variable rates who did not buy rate caps.

This is all a reminder that, yes, passive real estate investing can be a great wealth building vehicle. But you need to do due diligence and nothing is guaranteed. Focus on finding conservative, experienced, and diligent underwriters more than ever.

The suspicion is that rising rates in the short term will accelerate this trend.

2. The fall and winter 2023 are predicted to be good buying seasons

I heard this from multiple people all over the conference.

The thought is that now is a good time to hold onto assets you have and that buying and selling forces will align later in 2023.

What does this mean? Well, in reality nothing because no one has a crystal ball. But keep an eye out.

Related Post:
3 Best Ways to Invest in Real Estate Without a Crystal Ball

Selenid and I continue to look for deals but honestly haven’t found many great ones. Prices in our area are still smidgen too high to cash flow the way we want them too. So, whenever the tides do change, we will be ready. You should be too!

3. Look into how to buy foreclosures

This is biased because I’ve always been intrigued in buying foreclosures an investment strategy. And while people mention it, I found it difficult to find anyone with a lot of experience.

That happened to change as I picked up some information from an investor from South Dakota at the conference who did this a lot in the past. Bottom line is that it is pretty state specific in terms of specific steps.

But the opportunity is always there and is growing currently.

Will I become a syndicator?

In the end, my experience at the Best Ever Conference was definitely worthwhile.

It was a unique and different experience for me. It also helped give me a good reality check about what is “enough” for me. So many times I was asked if I was going to start raising money for syndications. At least for now, the answer is no. I got some surprised looks when I said that.

But I just don’t need to do that to reach my financial goals. I applaud those who do it well. And I support them by introducing any potential interested investors to syndicators that I trust here.

I think a danger of a conference like that is getting caught in the tidal wave and feeling like you need to keep up with everyone else.

Resist that urge and keep true to whatever goals matter most to you and your plan to get there!

In the meantime, here are deal analyses for our last three investment properties!

Have you ever been to a real estate investing conference? What was your experience? Were you at Best Ever Conference? Let me know in the comments below!

Love the blog? We have a bunch of ways for you to customize how you follow us!

Join the Prudent Plastic Surgeon Network

And accelerate your path to financial freedom with my free FIRE calculator!

    We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

    Join The Prudent Plastic Surgeon Facebook group to interact with like-minded professional seeking financial well-being


    The Prudent Plastic Surgeon

    Jordan Frey MD, a plastic surgeon in Buffalo, NY, is one of the fastest-growing physician finance bloggers in the world. See how he went from financially clueless to increasing his net worth by $1M in 1 year and how you can do the same! Feel free to send Jordan a message at [email protected].

    Leave a Comment