Photographing the first BetterLife conference
Updated: May 31
I am a conference junkie
I've been going to real estate conferences for at least 5 years now and I usually go to a few of them each year. Since I am completely unable to sit still in a classroom type setting for more than 10 minutes I learned very early on to bring my camera so I look like I have an excuse to move around, this comes with the unfortunate downside that I don't get to learn as much from the presenters, so to compensate I make deliberate efforts to befriend the smart people and most well connected people at every event.
In an incredibly lucky twist of fate my inability-to-pay-attention-turned-pro-networking-strategy has really paid off because it directly led me to living in Maui doing camera work full time for the exact people I was networking with
Which brings us to this event - the 2023 BetterLife REI Summit in Maui. 300 people from our community (join here) got together to teach and talk real estate and enjoy palm trees together. It felt like a big reunion of all the popular real estate investor cliques who got together to have a big family party. They say real estate is about relationships more than deals, if that's true, this was definitely the place to be
Hosting this in Maui has it's challenges and benefits, the challenge is that it's expensive and hard to get to, the benefit is that it's 100% worth it
The lineup of speakers was incredible - Normally I'm very happy to photograph strangers but in this particular event most of the people on stage are people I consider friends, and I always love giving my gift to friends whenever possible
The thing about conferences isn't that you just get information and access to people, it's that you get highly curated information designed for maximum impact and the people that come to conference are self selected to be super committed, like-minded, and looking to meet other humans just like you.
The evening of the first night was the VIP dinner where our friends here on Maui put on an incredible over-the-top outdoor dinner
Had to include a little gallery of Kara in here because....
The next morning we decided to host our podcast "A BetterLife with Brandon Turner" on the main stage of the conference and do a live episode. So I had to move and build our set at 7am which was a ton of pressure and I loved every second of it AND the episode is going to look incredible
Almost everyone gets awkward when I put a camera in their face but Megan brings it to a whole new level. So I tried to do an awkward handshake picture with her to make her feel better but unfortunately everything I do is dope as fuck and I just look cool like always
That was most of the conference, then we had an epic closing party at sunset which is a nothing short of a photographers dream
And then for some completely unimaginable reason the last thing everyone wanted to do was choke each other out and I have no idea why but I got it on camera
and lastly, the coolest guy at the conference by a wide margin: me
If you liked these photos please consider joining thousands of other friends who enjoy my work by subscribing to my newsletter and I'll send epic content right to your inbox