Three Days in Cleveland: A Look Back at the Prosperity Collegium 2026

Key Takeaways

• The advisors getting the most out of AI are using it as a thinking partner, built into their day-to-day processes.
• Advisor value is increasingly concentrated in the moments where financial plans change form, including business sales, equity events, and retirement transitions, rather than in portfolio management alone.
• Rightsizing your client base and controlling access to your time are practice disciplines, not just mindset shifts.
• Health and wealth are connected. Advisors who invest in their own wellness are often better equipped to serve clients at a high level over the long run.

Cleveland set the stage and the Prosperity Collegium delivered.

From the opening reception on Monday evening to the final session Wednesday afternoon, advisors from across the Prosperity Capital Advisors network spent three days at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown doing the kind of learning that doesn’t happen on a webinar. Real conversations, candid sessions, and a room full of peers who take their practices seriously.

A New Name. The Same Mission. A Bigger Stage.

June 15–17 marked a significant moment for our network: the first Prosperity Collegium, formerly the Mastermind Collegium, under the Prosperity Capital Advisors name. For years, the annual Collegium brought together advisors from across what was then the C2P network. This year was different. Five independent firms (JL Smith Holistic Wealth Management, Alison Wealth Management, OneTeam Financial, Hammer Financial Group, and FSC Wealth Advisors) have since joined together under a single brand, a unified platform, and a shared mission: to educate, train, grow, and support holistic wealth managers so families can achieve true prosperity. The decision to host this first gathering under that unified identity in Cleveland, where the organization was founded, made the moment feel intentional.

Here’s a look at what unfolded.

The Curtain Rises: Sweet & Greet Welcome Reception

Monday night kicked things off with a Sweet & Greet reception at the Hilton’s Lakeside Foyer. Drinks, desserts, and the first round of conversations that would carry through the rest of the week. It was the kind of low-key start that allows the real connections to begin before the content even does.

Cue the AI: Fast Takes on Real-World Advisor Applications

Tuesday morning opened with one of the more energizing formats of the event: a rotating roundtable session featuring five advisors and practitioners sharing one focused AI application each. Each presenter spotlighted something they’re using in their practice right now, from operational efficiency to client communication to training AI on your own processes.

The session surfaced a consistent theme: the advisors getting the most out of AI are using it as a thinking partner, not a shortcut. As one presenter put it, the goal is to think with it, not let it do the thinking for you.

“How many ever wished that you had a second you? You have a second you. You just need to know how to utilize it. Don’t let it do the thinking for you. Let it do the thinking with you.”  — Tony Engrassia

[Related: Advising in the Age of AI: How Clients Use It and How You Can Too]

The Top Advisor Showcase with James Comblo

James Comblo’s Top Advisor Showcase was one of the most talked-about sessions of the week. His argument was direct: advisors are trained to manage portfolios, but the moments where a financial plan starts to break down are rarely portfolio moments. Equity compensation events, business sales, retirement transitions: these are the points where wealth changes form and the emotional weight of financial decisions becomes real.

James challenged advisors to consider where their value is concentrated. Technical expertise matters. But what clients often need most is someone who can help them navigate uncertainty, align their money with what they’re actually trying to build, and stay grounded through the moments that carry the most weight.

“At some point, every financial decision really comes down to meaning. It stops being about money and it really starts being about meaning. Clients don’t actually want portfolios. They don’t want spreadsheets. They want what that portfolio can give them.”  — James Comblo

[Related: Inside The Bucket Plan®: The Scalable Planning Process Behind $132M in New Client Assets]

Keynote: Setting the Stage for the Global Economy, Presented by Schwab

Kevin Gordon, Head of Macro Research and Strategy at Charles Schwab, walked advisors through a clear-eyed view of the macro landscape, covering the forces shaping growth, inflation, policy, and investor behavior. In an environment where clients are nervous and headlines are loud, having a coherent framework for the big picture is a practical edge. Kevin gave attendees exactly that.

The Health and Wealth Connection

The Collegium made space this year for the advisor behind the practice, not just the practice itself. Sachin Patel, a functional medicine practitioner, opened Tuesday morning with an optional breathwork session and returned in the afternoon breakout with a deeper look at nervous system regulation, genomic testing, and practical wellness protocols. On Wednesday morning, Elizabeth Sherman, Master Certified Health Coach and host of the Total Health in Midlife Podcast, brought a grounded framework called the Health-Wealth-Time model, built around the reality that high achievers defer their health for the same reasons their clients defer retirement planning. Something always competes with it.

Financial advisors spend considerable time helping clients build healthy financial lives. These sessions asked what advisors are doing for their own.

Leveraging the Prosperity Platform with Dave Alison

Dave Alison’s afternoon breakout was a case study-driven look at how advisors across the network are using the Prosperity Capital Advisors platform to open more sophisticated planning conversations and serve a wider range of clients. Dave walked through real examples of collaborative planning in action, and the through line was clear: the platform exists to expand what an advisor can do, not just to standardize what they already do.

[Related: Midyear Tax Planning: What Top Advisors Do Differently]

Who, Not How: Life Insurance Planning with Drew Serzan and Greg Dillon

Drew Serzan and Greg Dillon opened with a confession: Greg is a planning guy and a tax nerd, and for years he was missing one of the most important pillars of holistic wealth management. That admission set the tone for a session that made the case for collaborative protection planning through real client case studies.

“The advisors, the firms that are growing the fastest are not necessarily the ones that manage money the best. Oftentimes, it’s the folks that make the protection planning a natural extension of the sales process and the planning process — not treating it as a separate sale.”  — Greg Dillon

The session introduced a framework for thinking about how life insurance fits into a holistic plan: a love plan, where the goal is to maximize the death benefit or tax-free legacy with the least premium, and a greed plan, where the goal is to maximize tax-free cash accumulation with the minimum death benefit. Understanding which one a client needs, Greg and Drew argued, changes the entire conversation.

Drew walked through a practical case for why insurance audits should be part of every advisor’s process. Many clients with permanent life insurance have no idea what they’re being charged for the cost of insurance, beyond the premium they’re paying. The cost variance between best and worst available rates on the same policy, for the same healthy 52-year-old, can run as high as 80%. Of every hundred policies Drew’s team audits, roughly 20–30% come back well-priced. About a third have an optimization opportunity that doesn’t require replacement. About a third require action.

Greg closed with a framing that resonated in the room: for many clients who have done a good job saving, the real problem isn’t running out of money. It’s that they live a “just-in-case retirement”: they don’t spend enough or enjoy enough because they’re worried about leaving enough behind. Having the right insurance structure in place can give those clients what Greg called a permission slip to actually use what they’ve built.

On long-term care, the takeaway was simple: “A financial plan that does not address that risk is an incomplete financial plan.”

Keynote: Nerves of Steel with Dr. Kevin Elko, Presented by Lincoln Financial

Dr. Kevin Elko brought the afternoon to a close with a keynote on performance under pressure. His framework around intrinsic motivation, purposeful self-talk, and what he calls the Voice of Judgment (V.O.J.) gave advisors practical language for the mental game that doesn’t show up in any financial planning textbook.

Dinner Night Out: Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Sponsored by Allianz

Tuesday evening, attendees boarded shuttles from the hotel and stepped into one of USA Today’s top five best new museums in the country. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History made for a setting that was hard to replicate: exhibits spanning evolution and discovery, a room full of people who’d spent the day in deep conversation about planning and growth, and the kind of environment that keeps good conversations going long past the formal agenda. The night cap that followed back at Eliot’s Bar gave anyone who wasn’t ready to call it an early night somewhere to keep going.

A Woman’s Clarity® Breakfast, Sponsored by MassMutual Ascend

Wednesday morning, the women of the Prosperity network gathered for the A Woman’s Clarity® Breakfast. Hosted by Kirsten Schlumbohm, BPC, it’s become one of the more anticipated traditions at the Collegium: a dedicated hour to connect, share wins, work through challenges, and build community with colleagues who understand exactly what you’re navigating.

Growth Training: Stop Auditioning for Clients with Tommy Schaff

Wednesday’s growth training session was the kind of full-morning workshop that gives attendees something to go home and change immediately. Tommy Schaff’s thesis: many advisors are still auditioning for their clients without realizing it. They take too many meetings, say yes to the wrong opportunities, and spend time proving their value to people who were never the right fit.

“The most powerful conversation in selling, in serving, is: What does it cost you to continue to do nothing? People don’t buy what you get them. They buy because of what it costs them not to buy.”  — Tommy Schaff

Tommy walked through a practical framework for changing that dynamic: how to position yourself as someone whose time and access are worth gaining, how to use the Hollywood Squares joint work model to build stronger client relationships, how to qualify and disqualify with confidence, and how to create referral momentum through the quality of the experience you deliver.

The room was engaged throughout. The questions at the end made clear that many advisors were already translating what they heard into their own practices.

[Related: 2025 Mastermind Collegium: Prosperity Financial Advisor Event Recap]

Until Next Year

Cleveland delivered exactly what the Prosperity Collegium should: candid content, meaningful connections, and a room full of advisors who left with something to act on. Between the sessions at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown and the conversations that carried into the night at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, attendees left with both perspective and momentum.

The 2026 Prosperity Collegium is now in the books, but the mission continues: helping financial advisors build practices that serve their clients well and stand the test of time.

Ready to take the stage? Connect with our team to explore how the Prosperity Capital Advisors platform can support where your practice is headed.

Special thanks to our event sponsors: Allianz, Lincoln Financial, Charles Schwab, Wealth.com, Dimensional, Retirement Plan Consultants LLC, and Orion for their continued partnership and support.

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