Speakers

James Hickman

Founder, Sovereign Man – Keynote Speaker

He is an international investor, student of history, entrepreneur, and a free man. His daily e-letter, Notes from the Field, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity.

Hickman is a lifelong entrepreneur and investor that’s traveled to more than 120 countries on all seven continents. In addition, he’s started, invested in, or acquired businesses all over the world.

He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the US Army as an intelligence officer during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Salim’s quantum physics and philosophy education combined with his career experience gives him a uniquely macro vision of how the institutions that underpin our society and economy are broken and should be fixed. Moreover, his entertaining, irreverent, epiphany-inducing presentations are known for impressing even the most skeptical listeners.

Hickman founded a South America-based agriculture company that has become one of the leading producers in its industry. A few years ago, he acquired a prominent retail brand in Australia, purchasing the business from the former 1980s era rock star who founded it.

His other business ventures have included starting a boutique, private investment bank that boasts some of the highest levels of liquidity and solvency in the world, and investing in companies from Colombia to Uzbekistan. He also serves on numerous Boards of Directors, and previously served as Chairman of a company listed on a major stock exchange.

Writing under the pen name Simon Black, he has also written extensively on business incorporation and tax residency establishment in Puerto Rico, and is a proponent of investing in gold and silver as a hedge against inflation.

He is also a prolific writer on topics ranging from second residency and citizenship, Golden Visas and portfolio diversification, to estate and retirement planning, asset protection, tax optimization and US Opportunity Zones.

JeVon McCormick

Keynote Speaker

JeVon McCormick was born the son of a Black pimp father, and a white single mother on welfare. Poverty, abuse, eviction, and discrimination were a daily part of his life. Today, he’s the CEO of Scribe Media, a multi-million dollar publishing company that was recently ranked the #1 Top Company Culture in America by Entrepreneur Magazine. JeVon was also named 2022 EY Central South Entrepreneur of the Year. JeVon’s experiences shaped a mindset for modern leadership that now guides his service as the CEO of a massively successful company that’s redefining the world of publishing.

Viktorija Simulynaite

Breakout Speaker

Hailing from a small town in Lithuania, Viktorija became a globetrotting entrepreneur and executive. As CEO of Sovereign Research and Advisory Group, she travels to over 30 countries per year, exploring emerging markets and searching for new opportunities. Viktorija frequently writes as ‘the Sovereign Woman’ and is the co-founder of a charity teaching entrepreneurship called Sovereign Academy. She is also a new EO México City member.

Mark Gordon

Keynote Speaker

Mark Gordon believes in following one’s dreams.

Starting in childhood he imagined a life at sea. Today he is among the fortunate few who make their living pursuing their passion.

As one of the world’s foremost deep-ocean explorers, Mark knows the importance of patience, persistence, and teamwork. He also knows the thrill and learning from successes and failures that can come with following your dreams.

Audiences feel the excitement as he guides them through adventurous explorations. Whether an expedition leads to unimaginable success or a mission failure, there is always the exhilaration of the journey and always lessons to be learned.

Mark is an entrepreneur with a keen ability to build companies and lead them to realizing their true potential for success. He orchestrated Odyssey’s pivot from shipwreck exploration to subsea mineral resources by recognizing the opportunity to apply Odyssey’s core competencies in a more productive manner, selecting diverse and strategic key mineral resource targets for the Odyssey portfolio and securing the funding necessary for the company to achieve success in this new endeavour.

Mark became Chief Executive Officer of Odyssey Marine Exploration in 2014 and Chairman of the Board in 2019 after working his way up the ranks of this NASDAQ publicly traded company that he joined as an independent consultant in 2005.

Prior to joining Odyssey, Mark started, owned or managed four different entrepreneurial ventures from 1987 to 2003, including Synergy Networks which he founded in 1993 and served as CEO until September of 2003 before selling the company to the Rockefeller Group. He continued serving as President of Rockefeller Group Technology Services Mid Atlantic (RGTSMA), a member of Rockefeller Group International, until December 2004.

Mark’s path to his dream has been deliberate. During his college days and through his MBA program at American University, Mark worked as a shipwreck diver with the National Diving Center in Washington, D.C. where he conducted hundreds of dives and explorations on shipwrecks along the Atlantic Coast and off the island of Bermuda. His underwater adventures include being the first person to discover and dive on the SS Proteus, a ship that had been missing since the early 1900s, which further fueled his passion to stop at no depth.

Mark and his wife Sue make their home in Saint Petersburg where they enjoy life on the shores of Tampa Bay.

Tiger Lee

Breakout Speaker

Tiger Lee of the South China Sea be a pirate at heart. A renegade who skirts the edge of society by running the largest pirate store in the seven seas. After travelling the New World vending at over 150 pirate related events, he be now settled in Tampa, Pirate Fashions sells authentic pirate garb. Most pirate stores only sell t-shirts n’ plastic trinkets with skull ‘n crossbones. In filling up this pirate store, he brings you the best of what this world has to offer, with some of it be made right inside the shop.  He wrote a column fer 3 years in Pirates Magazine called “A Siren’s Call”. Tiger also be a master of combinin’ photography with digital manipulation in his “Hot Pirate Babes” Calendar fer 6 years. 13 year ago with $1000 to his name, he has built up tiny niche business that has sales over $1Million. His products have been used by Disney, Black Sails, Cross Bones, WrestleMania, Pirate Voyage Dinner Show, Gasparilla and many more.

Eric Crews

Breakout Speaker

As Founder and CEO of Crews & co., Eric is passionate about helping businesses grow. Eric has guided 100+ organizations to increased and sustainable profitability while simultaneously optimizing their operations and instituting elevated quality of life for their leadership teams. Working in industries such as technology, finance, marketing, manufacturing, education, and construction, he has helped convert many unorganized, underperforming ventures into streamlined, revenue-generating enterprises.

Building on decades of successful entrepreneurship and eight years as a Certified EOS Implementer® with over 1000 session days, Eric led Crews & co.’s 2021 launch of the Growth Method℠, a proprietary business operating system designed to propel companies to increased revenue, profit, and salable value.

Eric is also the Co-Founder and CEO of CE Painting, one of the largest commercial painting businesses in New England. Both CE Painting and Crews & co. have been honorees on the Inc.com list of 5000 fastest-growing businesses.

Nick Friedman

Breakout Speaker

Nick Friedman is a renowned entrepreneur, movie & TV producer, best-selling author, motivational speaker, actor, and TV personality. He is best known as the Co-Founder of the multi-million dollar franchise ‘College Hunks Hauling Junk,’ which has over 200 franchises worldwide and does over $200M in annual sales. Along with his business partner Omar Soliman, Nick published the best-selling book ‘Effortless Entrepreneur’ (Random House, 2010), and also Co-Produced the award-winning Netflix documentary, ‘Beware of Mr. Baker’ (2012). More recently, Nick executive produced and acted in the biopic movie about Jeff Bezos, which is the first movie ever made about the wealthiest man in the universe and the founder of Amazon.

Nick has also appeared on numerous unscripted reality television programs, including the very first episode of ABC’s Shark Tank, Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, AMC’s The Pitch, HGTV’s House Hunters, CNBC’s Bluecollar Millionaires, and his company has made appearances on several other television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, A&E’s Hoarders, and TLC’s Hoarding: Buried Alive.

Nick appears as a frequent guest on FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, and various other programs and has been a regular columnist and contributor to Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, Huffington Post, Inc, Entrepreneur, and Time, among other major publications regarding topics such as business and entrepreneurship.

He was named among the Top 30 Entrepreneurs in America Under 30 by INC Magazine and was on the same list as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell in a Newsweek article entitled “College Kid to Millionaire.” Nick is a three-time Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Finalist, and he won the prestigious award in 2018, and he continues to be an active Board Member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO).

In terms of charitable involvement, Nick launched an innovative solution that provides free moves for Survivors of Domestic Violence and has completed over 200 free moves since the program began. His company also donates 2 meals for every completed job to US Hunger, having donated over 2 Million meals since launching the program.

Robert P. Miles

Breakout Speaker

Robert P. Miles is an internationally acclaimed keynote presenter, author and distinguished authority on Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. He is currently an Executive in Residence at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Through his study and personal interactions with Buffett, journalists and media moguls often seek Miles’ commentary on Buffett’s investment moves and management strategies. Miles is a long-term shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway [nyse: BRKa/BRKb]. One of Miles’ greatest honors comes from getting to know Warren Buffett, the man and the remarkable wealth-building strategist.

The author of three books, Miles has created assorted audio and video programs, and has appeared on many radio and television programs on five continents. His media appearances include NPR, CNN, CNN International, CNBC, FOX Business, Channel News Asia, Sky Business News, Shanghai Today, CNBC Asia, CNBC Africa and Bloomberg TV. Miles’ Buffett CEO book was recommended in Warren Buffett’s 2001 Letter to Shareholders and featured as a special on National Public Television’s “Nightly Business Report.

Miles has authored the top-selling books, ”The Warren Buffett CEO: Secrets From the Berkshire Hathaway Managers” and “101 Reasons To Own the World’s Greatest Investment: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway,” all published by John Wiley and Sons. Each of his published books require 2,000 hours of researching, writing and editing. His professional and travel presentations take a minimum of 40 hours of preparation for each hour of lecture. His unrelenting passion, commitment to excellence and attention to detail has brought Miles great success.

Miles is the author and presenter of “Warren Buffett Wealth: Principles and Practical Methods Used by the World’s Greatest Investor,” a Wiley published book and audiobook by Nightingale-Conant and distributed by Audible.com. He is host of the “Buffett CEO Talk” video series, conversations with the Berkshire Hathaway managers filmed before live studio audiences and broadcast on public television.

Many of Miles’ live keynotes, along with his hardcover and paperback books have been translated into several foreign languages, including Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese.

Known for his subtle wit and entertaining stories, Miles considers himself a man without borders. He has shared his valuable insights, strategies, philosophies, and anecdotes with enthusiastic audiences throughout the world.

For over two decades, Miles has given hundreds of live presentations throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania in over 20 countries, over 45 cities and 20 universities. One of his crowning achievements was presenting live on Carnegie Hall stage in New York City to a sold-out international audience.

Miles is the founder and host of the original Value Investor Conference and Berkshire System Summit held each year in Omaha, Nebraska immediately preceding the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Attendees from all six continents enjoy this unique retreat-style forum featuring presentations from Berkshire Directors, Warren Buffett CEOs, global investment managers and best-selling authors.

In the fall of 2011, Miles created the curriculum and began teaching a graduate Executive MBA course at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Based on Miles’ worldwide lectures, he titled “The Genius of Warren Buffett: The Science of Investing and the Art of Managing.” This one-of-a-kind program features a distinguished speaker series, multiple valuation case studies of actual businesses and stocks purchased by Warren Buffett, and for the final exam, student presentations of businesses they think would best fit into the Berkshire family of businesses. Executives and lifelong learners have traveled to Omaha from over 45 countries to take this course. Course has been featured by CBS News Omaha.

A dedicated lifelong learner, Miles holds a degree from the University of Michigan Business School. While his homebase is in Tampa, Florida, Miles’ zest for adventure and passion for travel has taken him all over the globe through visits to more than 100 countries. One of his greatest pleasures comes from immersion into cultures and customs of the people he meets on extended stays across continents. While circumnavigating the world eight times, Miles has presented interactive multimedia travelogues that highlight the people, their culture and local customs.