Official Recap & Highlights
Official Recap & Highlights
Some experiences can be captured in photos and videos.
Others have to be felt.
Every day, the Greatway community shows up for one another in offices, on calls, and in the kitchens and living rooms of families across Canada. For three days in Calgary, all of that energy was in one room.
The music drops. The FIRE Dancers took the stage. Names echoed through the BMO Centre as award recipients walked across it. Between sessions, attendees filled the carrier booths, compared notes in the hallways and repeated the lines they did not want to forget.
The photos will show you what Convention of Champions 2026 looked like. They cannot fully show you what it felt like to stand in the middle of it.
This event would be not be possible without our Champion Diamond, Gold, and Silver Sponsors
More Than a Theme
The theme was FUTURE, but the weekend spent very little time trying to predict what the future would look like. Instead, it asked a harder question:
Who must we become to meet it?
Across three days, speakers answered through hope, discipline, faith, leadership, service and the courage to be seen. Some messages challenged the room to look inward. Others gave agents, students and guests something practical they could take with them as soon as they returned home.
Together, they pointed toward the same truth: The future is not something we wait for. It is something we build.
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Coach Russ Juson challenged everyone in the room to look inward before blaming what was happening around them. The circumstances we experience, the relationships we build and the results we produce are often reflections of what is happening within us: our mindset, beliefs, choices and patterns.
His message was rooted in personal mastery. If we want something in our external world to change, we must first examine the person creating it. That means taking responsibility for our choices, becoming aware of the beliefs shaping our behaviour and developing the discipline to respond differently.
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Jim Ruta brought decades of industry experience to the stage through Revelation Selling, his approach to conversations, discovery and client service.
He challenged agents to move beyond product-first explanations and ask better questions: the kind that help clients recognize their own needs, priorities and possibilities.
It was one of the weekend’s most practical sessions, giving agents a process they could carry directly into their next client conversation.
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Hamza Khan gave the room language for something many across the Greatway community have been practising for years.
Hope is not passive optimism. It is a discipline: the decision to look beyond present circumstances and act toward something better, especially when the outcome is not yet obvious.
That message carried special meaning in a room filled with people whose work, or future work, begins by helping others imagine something different. A family may not know what would happen if life suddenly changed. A newcomer may not know whom to trust. Someone considering the business may have stopped believing their career could become something more. The opportunity is not simply to present a product or a business. It is to help someone see a possibility they could not yet see on their own, then help them move toward it.
His message was rooted in personal mastery. If we want something in our external world to change, we must first examine the person creating it. That means taking responsibility for our choices, becoming aware of the beliefs shaping our behaviour and developing the discipline to respond differently.
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Matthew Calderoni reminded the room that lasting momentum is rarely built by chasing every new strategy.
It comes from purpose, consistent habits and accountability. Run the system. Schedule the activities that move the business forward. Measure whether you followed through.
Targets provide direction. Habits create results.
Matthew challenged attendees to stop promising themselves that change would happen someday and become people who keep their commitments to themselves and those depending on them.
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Real Talk Darbs brought the conversation into content and visibility.
Every agent has a phone, a story and people they may be able to help. Yet many continue holding themselves back because they fear judgment, feel uncomfortable being seen or believe their content must be perfect before they begin.
His point went beyond followers, views and going viral. One changed life matters more than a billion views. But how can you change people’s lives while continuing to limit your own visibility?
Content is not only self-promotion. It is a way to make your knowledge, experience and story available to someone who may need it.
Darbs gave the room a three-step framework simple enough to remember and realistic enough to use during a busy week. It was not another growth hack. It was a process for showing up with purpose.
The goal is not simply to be seen. It is to help someone else see what may be possible.
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Coach Max Salazar continued the conversation inward by exploring limiting beliefs and the agreements we make with ourselves and others.
Trust is rarely broken in one dramatic moment. More often, it erodes through small promises repeatedly left unkept: the call we said we would make, the habit we promised to begin or the commitment we quietly abandoned because nobody else was watching.
His message was a reminder that the future is shaped not only by the goals we set, but by the commitments we choose to honour every day.
Partners in Protecting Canadian Families
Convention also brought Greatway’s carrier and industry partners into the conversation.
Jorge Pablo and Jeffrey Fox from ivari explored how agents can help create financial confidence for Canada’s growing and increasingly diverse population.
Many families understand that protection matters but remain uncertain about how insurance works, where to find reliable information and whom they can trust. That is not only a protection gap. It is a confidence gap.
It does not close with a better illustration alone. It closes when agents begin with questions, understand a family’s responsibilities, culture and goals, and earn the trust required to guide them. Trust is the strategy.
Throughout the weekend, attendees also connected with partners including ivari, Foresters Financial, The Co-operators, The Edge Benefits, TrusStage and more. Booth conversations turned into new knowledge, stronger relationships and fresh ideas for serving clients.
Some of the weekend’s most powerful messages came from Greatway’s own leaders. These were not theories delivered from a distance. They were lived stories of faith, sacrifice, grief, perseverance and decisions made long before the results became visible.
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Goreth Katungye shared what it means to believe in a future before there is evidence that it will arrive. She spoke about immigrating to Canada, starting over, building through rejection and continuing through the unseen hours that come before success.
The world often sees the result. Her story honoured everything that happened before it.
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Adeola Monofi brought the room into a deeply personal journey through grief, healing and the decision to imagine a future again.
Her message was not that rebuilding happens quickly, but that even the hardest season can become the place where growth begins.
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Richard Sampang gave Convention one of its defining lines: “I will keep planting.”
Regardless of comparison, imperfect execution or whether the results have appeared yet, his message challenged the room to choose consistent action over perfection and recognize the value of mentorship and accountability.
The line followed people home, showing up in conversations and social posts long after Convention ended. It stayed because it said exactly what many people needed to hear:
Keep planting.
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Eunice Dator reminded attendees that worth is not determined by rank, performance, recognition or someone else’s expectations.
Before people can confidently build a future, they must understand the value they already carry into it.
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Melvin Sotto asked the room to look beyond achievement and consider what their leadership would leave behind. “The strongest part of the tree is the part nobody sees.”
Growth is visible. Roots are not.
They form beneath the surface through faith, character, family, relationships and the people a leader chooses to develop.
Melvin’s challenge was not simply to grow faster. It was to grow deeper.
Success may leave memories. Legacy leaves footprints.
Beyond The Life Insurance Market Panel: Expanding the Opportunity
Moderated by CDO Pearl Rebollos, Eden Perez, Gurdeep Sekhon, Marina Geronazzo and Oludare Fasola explored opportunities across assets under management, high-net-worth solutions, small business planning, and funeral planning.
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Their discussion pointed toward a larger truth: clients rarely have only one financial need. Their protection, savings, businesses, families and long-term goals are connected. Success in these markets requires more than adding another product. It takes education, consistency, strong relationships and the willingness to build confidence in unfamiliar spaces.
Exploring new markets is not only about creating another source of business. It is about becoming more useful to the clients who already trust you. The goal is not to offer everything. It is to recognize what a client may need next and help connect them with the right solution. When agents expand their expertise, they expand their ability to serve.
CELEBRATION OF CHAMPIONS
Across three days, Greatway recognized Rising Stars, Rookie of the Year honourees, top producers, agency builders, promoted leaders, Ring Earners, Champion Award recipients, Legacy Circle inductees and the first-ever Wealth Builder Champions.
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Every name called carried a story: a first client, a difficult season, a family that sacrificed alongside them or a moment when quitting would have been easier.
Some walked the stage for the first time. Others reached milestones they had been pursuing for years. Teams rose to record the moment, families cheered and the room celebrated each name as proof of what sustained effort can build.
One first-time attendee shared, “I realized they are just ordinary people like me who choose to do extraordinary things. I realized I am capable too.”
An LLQP student put it even more simply: “I genuinely believe I could be on that stage at the next convention accepting an award.”
Recognition changes the person receiving it. It also changes what the person watching believes is possible.
Between the awards came prize draws, music, dancing and the unmistakable energy of a Greatway Convention. The FIRE Dancers brought the room to its feet, the hosts and emcees kept the program moving, and people celebrated one another as loudly as they celebrated their own wins.
The Fireside Chat: What It Actually Takes
Carol and Hector Villarica joined Bernard and Magdalene Fafila for an honest conversation about marriage, business and what it takes to lead at a high level.
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The pairing carried special meaning. At Convention of Champions 2025, Bernard and Magdalene stood on the same stage teaching Breaking the Plateau. Twelve months later, they returned having broken through their own.
The panel did not focus only on the highlight reel. It explored seasons that did not work, what building a business together requires from a marriage and the moment a team stops needing a producer and starts needing a leader.
The top of the business is not a destination someone reaches once. It is a standard they continue choosing.
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Greatway Founder and Lead Mentor Marlon Antonio brought the room back to a principle that reaches far beyond business: “a permanent solution to a permanent problem.”
Some problems cannot be solved by temporary motivation, quick fixes or avoiding them until they return. Whether in our finances, relationships, health, careers or personal growth, lasting change often requires us to address the root of the problem and build a solution strong enough to outlast the circumstances that created it.
That same principle has shaped Greatway from the beginning.
For families, it means helping create greater financial protection and security. For people looking for a different path, it can mean introducing them to a business opportunity that creates new income, choices, confidence and possibilities for their future.
And when someone enters the business, the impact can multiply. They gain the opportunity to serve families, develop others and eventually give someone else the same chance that was once given to them.
That is why the message was bigger than simply selling or recruiting. It was a challenge to look at the problems in front of us and ask whether we are applying temporary fixes or building lasting solutions.
In business and in life, meaningful change begins when we stop managing the symptoms and start working on what can change the outcome for good.
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Before asking the room to look forward, CEO Danica Antonio invited everyone to remember how Greatway arrived here.
She spoke openly about her first year as CEO and what leadership requires: difficult conversations, decisions nobody sees and questions that follow a leader home.
The title, she reminded the room, is the smallest part of the responsibility.
She then honoured Greatway’s founding leaders and original pioneers. As they stepped onto the stage, the room rose with them.
These people believed before there was proof. They stayed when things became difficult. They built the foundation thousands across the Greatway community now stand on.
Legacy is not what is written into buildings. It is what is written into people.
The best way to honour those who came before is not to stand still. It is to steward what they built and hand it forward in better condition than we found it.
As technology, the industry and client expectations continue to change, Greatway must remain adaptable without losing what makes that progress worthwhile.
Innovation should never come at the expense of compassion. Growth should never come at the expense of character.
Protect is what Greatway does. People are why Greatway exists.
The surprise promotions brought tears, joy and some of the biggest reactions of Convention, as the room celebrated each name announced. That same sense of community carried throughout the weekend, from a Rookie of the Year testimonial by Charles William Trudel-Gendron and Luisa Quita to the Mirror, Patch, Button and Phone Booths and Convention Bingo, where completed cards qualified attendees for the prize draws.
Moments to Remember
Thank you to our generous prize draw donors for helping make the experience even more memorable.
Convention was carried by the people on the microphone and the people working behind the scenes.
Our hosts, Joey Amor, Shay Garcia, Luigi Sanvictores, and Adams Adesoye set the tone. The FIRE Dancers brought the energy. Production and AV teams turned months of planning into what appeared onstage.
Staff and volunteers answered questions, redirected lineups, guided guests, solved problems quietly and kept thousands of moving parts in motion.
Much of their work was invisible. Their impact was not.
The People Who Made It Run
Convention does not happen without the people onstage. It also does not happen without those beside the doors, behind the curtains, at the registration tables and everywhere in between.
You Had to Be There
Eventually, the lights came back on, the music stopped, the stage emptied and everyone began heading home. But Convention was never meant to stay inside the BMO Centre.
Its impact will show up in what happens next: the conversation you finally have, the family you help protect, the person you choose to mentor, the opportunity you share and the next seed you plant.
Danica left the room with one final challenge:
Who do you need to become next?
Whatever your answer is, choose one action that proves it.
To everyone who joined us in Calgary, thank you for your energy, your stories, your families and your belief in what we are building together.
Every person in these photos was once someone who had not done it yet.
Next time, be in the room.
Be one of the stories we celebrate.