Over the past week, I have been at a small conference in Phoenix attended by a small group of entrepreneurs from around the US. Attendance is small at less than 30 people, but very powerful.

It is a unique event where all attendees are required to present a topic within their area of expertise. I discussed a topic near and dear to my heart, “Developing Your Own Geo-Arbitrage Strategy”. I shared my ideas about planting multiple flags explaining the benefits and freedom that can be achieved through internationalization of yourself and your assets.

Hopefully my presentation exposed the attendees to a concept they were unfamiliar with or if familiar, educated them on some of the ways to create this type of lifestyle. My goal is always to provide value to my readers and attendees at speaking events, let’s hope I was successful.

Admittedly though, not all presenters were top notch. Some were not well done and some provided little or no value. However, there were several that were just eye opening.

There were several presentations related to web-businesses like;

• Drop shipping service and informational products
• Experiential selling
• Lean startup
• Publishing e-books
• Avoiding customer disservice
• How to build e-commerce stores with no experience

Some of the topics were more lifestyle focused like;

• Enjoying the journey
• Mind hacking
• Finding the entrepreneurial sweet spot
• Managing your emotional and physical state
• Secrets of health and wellness

Each of these speakers could have easily given a much longer presentation or even written an e-book about their topic. They were each experts in the subject matter of their presentation.

Even more important though was the conversations that occurred between presentations, sitting at the pool, or over a beer in the evening. You don’t get this type of interaction sitting at home on the weekends watching sports on ESPN.

This group of entrepreneurs is truly an amazing bunch. The level of creativity is truly amazing. I won’t give away any secrets from this trip, but suffice to say there are people in this group living life to the fullest.

I frequently hear people complain about the monotony of their life, how broke they are, or how they just cannot find a job.

From this group, I hear how they are hiring new people because they are overloaded with work. I hear how some are outsourcing mundane tasks so they can focus on the most productive parts of their business.

I hear about buying distressed real estate, getting your hands dirty, and renting the property out for a 22% ROI. One guy in the group has apparently found his own money machine and is building or buying e-commerce stores with his profits and generating exponential returns.

One guy decided to take an unusual vacation and was so enthralled with the trip he built a website reselling the same travel package and now earns more per month than he paid for the adventure.

The quote of the week was when one of the attendees stated, “If you aren’t earning 1000% per year, you are doing something wrong.”

The common thread among this group is the lack of limitations.

These people see opportunity where others see roadblocks.

Most see an expensive vacation where one sees an opportunity to earn 1000’s per month.

Many are frustrated looking for a job related to their degree, while one attendee at this event is buying distressed businesses at less than 1x earnings and turning them around creating 10-20x the profits seen by the previous owners.

A lot of people are reeling from falling housing prices and a decline in net worth, while one sees bargain prices and isn’t afraid of hard work to generate 22% annualized return.

Who are the people you spend your time with? Do you tend to gravitate towards the problem finders or the problem solvers? Maybe it’s time to get out of your comfort zone and live the life you always dreamed of. You may consider upgrading your sphere of influence.

One rule of thumb I have heard many times is to look around at your 5 closest friends. What is their net worth? What is their income? It is likely that your net worth and income is approximately the average of those that you associate with.

Are you intimidated by those that are considerably more successful than you? The irony is that those are exactly who you should be spending time with because you won’t learn a whole lot from your beer drinking and weekend warrior buddies.

Until next week, live well.