Conferences: Trick or Treat For Adults!

17 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this informal monologue, the speaker recounts growing up around a parent who was a "conference junkie" in the real‑estate industry. The speaker describes how conferences were treated like adult trick‑or‑treat, with endless giveaways of pens, balls, and other office supplies. The first conference attended was in Florida in October 1999, shortly after obtaining a real‑estate license. The speaker’s father would calculate how many houses needed to be sold to afford the latest conference technology, and would purchase large quantities of tapes and CDs that were never actually used. The anecdote ends with a reflection on the wasted money spent on physical media that was ultimately ignored, highlighting both the culture of conference consumption and the financial pressures tied to it.

Chapters

Conference junkies. My mom was a conference junkie. You know what that was? That was trick-or-treat for adults as realtors. Walk around with a bag of office supplies for a year. Pens, balls, like you name it, they gave away at those things. Like '99, I went to my first one. I got my license in July. Went to my first one in October in Florida. My dad would walk through that exhibit hall like, he'd be like, okay, so we need to sell one more house to afford this technology. And we go to the next one, We're gonna sell like 200 homes when we leave here just to afford the stuff that we bought. And then every time, like lock, stock, and barrel, he would do all the orders, the tapes and the CDs. And like, when we cleaned his office out, I'm like, look, all the money we spent on tapes and CDs that we never listened to because it was so good.