That speaker up front is often just a distraction.  

Ryan,Glad to see a follow up post-- interesting story about following up: when I began assembling my very first mastermind (it was a highly conscious act) we met at a coffee house and sitting next to me was a person who is now a highly successful internet marketing entrepreneur, national speaker, and so on.

I've worked for myself pretty much ever since i left school, i'm now a management consultant and keynote speaker in Western Australia, and for the past couple of decades i've run a fairly successful business.

@Chrissy Ertz You can likely find the details of this meetup on the events section here on BP, or on meetup.com.Hope you find it and can attend: meetings are a great way to connect with others and to learn from them/ the speaker...

I personally would like to have a club which was more based on networking rather than focused on guest speakers.

It helps to have investors or at least speakers with different focuses.  

Yes GaREIA has selling speakers, everyone has to pay rent and power bills.I've bought maybe 14 properties off auction.com REO side (on line auctions) not the live / trustee auctions. 

After that, I'm working on bringing in a guest speaker to tell us about their real estate business. 

We just announced the speakers and agenda for the Creative Deal Making Academy.

We've made a lot of great connections and learned so much from the speakers they bring in.Anyway, that's just my two cents worth.