Tyler Wagner
24, Author, Speaker and Founder, Authors Unite
San Diego
After attending his first conference, Wagner dropped out of the University of South Carolina to make his way in the meetings industry. Now, he’s a teacher of sorts for attendees looking to maximize their ROI at events. The 24-year-old’s book, “Conference Crushing,” a self-help page-turner for inexperienced and nervous conferencegoers, became a best seller on Amazon in 2014. It also catapulted Wagner from interning at events (to stave off registration fees) to attending and speaking at meetings about networking, leadership and marketing. He’s an expert after all, as the self-starter’s book was, naturally, self-published. The 17-step “Conference Crushing” was a compilation of the lessons he learned after attending 20 events in a short amount of time. The professional attendee, who is now up to more than 50 and armed with additional knowledge, says he may someday write a sequel. In the meantime, he’s currently busy assisting other aspiring authors with a group he recently founded called Authors Unite.
