The world through the lens

Editor @ Global Man June 19, 2019 No Comments

Fadil Berisha -The world through the lens

By Fatima Gorezi

The successes of Fadil Berisha – internationally renowned photographer – are consecutive, as he has transformed his work into art, bringing a unique style of world-wide photography. While browsing his photos, whether of Hollywood celebrities, or people not necessarily with a public profile, create the idea of visiting a real art gallery where colors, energy, style, elegance, thought, sensation beauty, deep artistic spirit, and so on.

The conversation with her looks as interesting, as exhausted as possible (with returns on the past and the present), just as her photograph would surely know to withstand time and generations, changes and technological overthrow. He has a special relationship with Albania and Kosovo, two countries that he has always kept at heart. Undoubtedly, this explains why he is one of the most beloved personalities among Albanians, and his contribution to the Kosovo war, where by his art he managed to make the world aware of the size of the Kosovo tragedy of that period, thus sparking the political response.

Fadil has today the exclusivity of photos for Rolex and is the official photograph of Miss Universe and Miss USA; with contributions to sound magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Glamor, Seventeen, People Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Esquire, Vanity Fair, GQ and others.

He has also photographed many personalities such as Halle Berry, Tyra Banks, President Bill Clinton, Snoop Dog, Sugar Shane, Hostly, Jenifer Beds, Beverly Johnson, Robert Evans, Jamie Lynn Sigler etc., which further demonstrates the magnitude of his universal success.

Among the lines, you will learn from Fadil talking about his art and important moments that have marked his life and career, as an existential meaning for a man who has seen the world from the wonderful window of his camera.

How do you remember your early life, your childhood? You have left your country when you were 9 years old. What trace did Kosovo leave in what would happen next to you and your life in America?

I had a beautiful childhood … with very beautiful memories and surrounded with lots of love. These beautiful feelings I have taken with myself into the art of photography by pointing out the beauty.

Fadil, you’ve been working on many fashion fairs by promoting campaigns for global brands. Your work is featured into the front pages in many prestigious magazines. Going back in retrospect, how do you remember the beginning?

The beginning has been incredibly difficult … I did three jobs to get and collect income just so I could go to school.

What are the most difficult challenges you have faced during these years of your journey?

Among the hardships associated with the profession are many trips for work reasons in different places and coordination of photographs in my private studio, as well as my effort to help every young Albanian artist.

What would you classify as your most special picture, which carries a special memory for you personally, emotionally?

One of the most special pictures I have realised is a picture of Miss Albania, Hasna Xhukici and Miss Kosova Marigona Dragusha. Both girls qualified in the ten of the most beautiful girls in the world and Miss Kosova was second in this so prestigious female beauty contest.

What is beauty for you? Should the subjects of your focus be necessarily beautiful?

I like classical beauty! I think everyone has something beautiful… somebody’s eyes, somebody’s neck.

How much do you think has changed the image of women and the concept of beauty over the years?

I believe classical beauty goes and comes. As the saying goes: ” class is forever ”. At this time the concept of beauty is exotic, but always returns to the classics.

Has the technology changed / influenced photography? Is this a positive or negative change?

The digital photography has changed the art of photography and I think this change is positive.

As you look at the range of your photos, it seems that the portraits are your strong point. How easy or difficult is to point out their character/ personality?

It is difficult to point out the character’s personality, but it is important to gain their trust in highlighting the best that those people have.

Is it a public figure you want to photograph but still have not done?

Maybe I want to photograph Angelia Jolie, it’s a classic face to me.

What is the report that you have today with Albania and Kosovo? What keeps you connected tightly to your mother country?

I go back often because it is the passion and love that I have for my people.

People who deal with art, creativity, usually have a deeper understanding and perception of social life. How do you see the situation in Kosovo and Albania today? I mean from an economic, political and social point of view ? How is your image for them in your mind?

Albania and Kosovo have advanced a lot. There is art everywhere!

What is your greatest ambition in life, as a human being and as a photographer?

My personal ambition was to open the doors for Albanian artists to inspire them with my art and I think I have achieved this; in some ways I have become a tie.

How many photo albums does Berisha family count? How is your relationship with your children and wife?

Maybe not so much. I have many pictures of the children when they were young. We have a very good family relationship.

You are well acquainted with being a philanthropist and participating in charity campaigns. Can you share with us some more details about this?

I am always ready to support various issues, including organisations against various diseases. Charity is important to me. It is also important to give your contribution to the human community.

Shaping the future

Editor @ Global Man June 10, 2019 No Comments

Richard Sibalier – Shaping the future

By Fatima Gorezi

Founder of Richard Conseil Consultants, Senior Consultant Executive Coach and Corporate Trainer. He advises and helps leaders to make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in performance.

Richard believes that continued self-development is something very important and one of the pillars of growth. In this cover story for Global Man Magazine he shares with us some important details of his journey, his experience in coaching and why he believes that coaching can help people to get results in their projects, business and everyday life.

He speaks about how to build a real business and not just one to be self-employed. He also goes into detail about what’s needed at this time when technology is flowing and how some things in the modern workplace have changed and improved.

What can you tell us about your childhood and upbringing and how it has influenced you?

I came from business family: my father was a well-known businessman.

I grew up close to him, accompanying him in every step in his business life since I was child.

Being surrounded by this professional business life influenced me a lot to be an entrepreneur.

Who are your family today and what are your personal interests?

I have a beautiful wife with three adorable successful children. At the main time my personal interest is business clubs membership, voluntary work, community involvement, blogging and sports.

Being an entrepreneur, how much would you is due to nature, your genes, and how much is it instinct and nurture?

To be an entrepreneur is something to born with. It’s something in your DNA. But this alone is not enough. These genes must be refined with study, hard work and experiences.

What attracted you to become involved with coaching?

I believe in the power of sharing our experience. The key to make your life really unique Is to share what you know. I wanted to share my experience with the world, because when you discover something, it only has a value if it provides benefits to the society. The first thing that you should think about is: How can I share it with the world? And How can I make it available for everyone?

Why do you believe that continual personal development is so important for everyone?

I believe in change; change is one of the pillars of growth.

The continual personal development is a powerful tool to raise skills and competitiveness.

You are a very Corporate Trainer as well. What are the common challenges faced while training coordinators?

There is a big gap between what people learn in universities and in the real business life. The way of theoretical training must change.

Corporate trainers must be more than typical trainers. They have to be interactive course designers and must deliver real value.

After 20 years of experience, I express my corporate training philosophy in one sentence: “I don’t teach words, I teach a real business experience”.

What life and business lesson did you learn from these experiences?

Life is a journey of tenderness: the more you give, the more you take.

How do you see the role of women in business and as speakers on the big stages, now and in the future?

Nowadays we see a lot of successful feminine leadership across all business sectors. Women have started to take their real place in business life. It is inspirational to see keynote speakers on the big stages, help and influence more women into leadership.

Why and how did you find your passion for empowering people in business?

The idea to be useful, making an impact and changing the business life of someone to become better naturally attracted me.

My passion is to transfer my experience and to help entrepreneurs to fulfill their ambitions to achieve growth and to turn their passion into a successful business.

What words of wisdom would you give to our readers, either already successful or aspiring to succeed?

If you ask me to describe myself in one word, I will tell you that I am the risk itself. So take the risk and enjoy the journey of entrepreneurship.

As someone who’s built successful, large-scale teams, I’d be curious about your leadership and people-management philosophy?

“Human capital” is our most valued asset.

“My management philosophy is to provide an environment that leads to productive employees. Provide guidance, direction, leadership, and finally set an example to subordinates.”

Our group established a training center to train our employees. The programs cover all areas of:

Strategic management
Strategic Planning
Brand Management
Marketing strategy
Sales strategy
Customer Experience

What are some of the characteristics you look for in the people you hire?

Actually there are “10 Qualities to Look for in New Hires”

. Long Term Potential

. Enthusiasm

. Ambition

. Putting Skills to Action

. Team Player

. Responsiveness

. Communication Skills

But the most important thing is to be Passionate about our group and about what they do.

How do you ensure that you enjoy brand loyalty among your customers?

Loyalty Is not a given, it needs to be earned,

It needs to be earned and constantly nurtured. Loyalty is all about the customer.

The biggest misconception brands have when it comes to the loyalty question is the definition of where it starts and what it looks like.

Too many brands make the mistake that loyalty begins and ends with great offers and meeting the customer’s needs at point-of-sale.

Any brand can offer great discounts. Any brand can undercut competitors and make an offer a customer really can’t refuse.

That’s a good offer, but it doesn’t build loyalty.

Instead, the wider customer experience is key.

Customers don’t buy PRODUCTS !

They BUY Stories, Relations, Emotions.

We determine who we are and what our brands stand for.

Our group are loyal to our DNA.

Our brand identity tells our customers who we are, what we do and why we do it.

Best Brands are built on great STORIES. We have an authentic story, so they are passionate to be part of our story and to our brand. We built a strong strategy that makes our customer experience uniqueness in each visit to our shops.

What are the main reasons why people attend your workshops and seminars?

Actually I am not an academic professor; I am an executive with 20 years of concrete experience.

I don’t believe that one size fits all; every company is different. I have to design a customised & tailored training program for each company depending on the needs and the weakness points of a given company.

I help my audience to achieve sustained massive success with confidence & to take their business to the next professional level. They will benefit from my 20 years of international experience in strategic management & business development.

I design & conduct 100% innovative & dynamic tailored-made trainings, workshops, career paths, coaching programs that incite the desire to change. I am constantly looking to give something different to my audience, to add value in a way that others don’t. And I provide the best services by offering innovative solutions to answer their needs. I’m going to show them how they can make it happen.

Where is your company heading to in the next 5 years?

Since it’s birth to what is now known as the CHIC Group 1960, we made a promise that we will be the leading partner for luxury business across the Middle East.

After 50 years of doing business internationally CHIC group keeps building bridges and strong relationships between the Middle East & the West.

The wide experience and the unique history with the High reputation will led the CHIC group to become a REFERENCE for luxury business internationally in the next 5 years.

How have you incorporated technology to deliver a better experience for your customers?

Technology has had a major impact in the modern workplace, revolutionising the way businesses conduct their daily activities.

Whatever industry you are operating in, technology helps our customers access all the information they need to successfully interact with our group. It can also help staff perform their jobs more efficiently.

Technology allows businesses to speed up production processes, maximising productivity. Technology improves company’s flexibility to deal with queries quickly and efficiently. Interactive websites, online chat support services and 24/7 customer service via social media set us apart from our competitors and help us to increase our profits.

And finally email marketing can also be effective, allowing us to reach out directly to our customers with news, updates and special offers.

Building self leadership

Editor @ Global Man May 8, 2019 No Comments

Mark Stephen Pooler – Building self leadership

By Fatima Gorezi

Mark Stephen Pooler is a professional speaker, host, coach, author and international press and PR expert. His area of expertise is self-leadership and transformation born out of his amazing life and near death experience. He is passionate and dedicated to inspiring others to overcome their own adversity and find their inner entrepreneur to transform their lives. He helps entrepreneurs to create a mindset and belief system that makes their success a reality. He told the Global Man Magazine : ‘’Everyone is a leader we lead our own life everyday from getting up brushing our teeth to creating the day.’’ Mark’s early life was a less happy one because of bullying, something he has overcome to grow from a person of low self-esteem to be the outgoing and confident person he is today.

Tell us a bit about your background and how you became involved in speaking?

I was always the guy at school who got bullied about the way I looked and about my sexuality before I knew it myself. I suffered from low self esteem and low self confidence. Late teens, early twenties, my life had spiralled out of control. I was addicted to crack cocaine, heroin and many other drugs. At age 21 I collapsed and died from drug use: my heart stopped. That was a wake up call for me, as I slowly started to rebuild my life. I have always been a hard-worker and have worked for some of the biggest names in hairdressing in the UK. Aged 30, my entrepreneurship journey started. I set up as a freelance hairstylist. I then joined a network marketing company, which really opened up my world to social media entrepreneurship. After a couple of years, I decided to leave network marketing. I used to watch the speakers at network marketing events and knew that was what I wanted to do. It’s been a great journey of speaking the last 2 and half years. I am very proud to have built a successful professional speaking business and my passion is coaching entrepreneurs in public speaking. I have built a great public speaking coaching business. My one to one brilliance speaker coaching program is very popular and I am soon to release my brilliance speaker online program. I am super excited about the launch of my new book “Step into your brilliance”; a story telling how to positively influence. Additionally, there are public speaking and a social entrepreneurship course book coming soon. Doing international press and PR Radio are two things I love, and am currently working with big names in media, celebrities, business leaders, and contributing to big publications in business.

How do you develop yourself and continue to grow?

I read and work with great coaches and mentors. I have had a business coach, life coach, voice coaching courses seminars, and attend many events to grow and evolve.

How does the critical, self-sabotaging internal voice (the voice of self-doubt or lack of believing) limit your clients?

My public speaking coaching clients can let their self doubt hold them back from moving forwards. That’s why I love my job as their coach so much. I love giving them the skills and tools and self belief needed to create a successful speaking and social media entrepreneurship business.

A lot of people don’t consider themselves as leaders. What would you say to them?

Everyone is a leader: we lead our own life everyday from getting up, brushing our teeth to creating the day. I would like to say that we can create any reality or future that we desire. It starts with having positive belief systems and making good choices. With repetition, anything is possible. I would like more people to follow their true dreams and goals and lead a life of purpose that serves others.

So what can leaders do to create a more motivating environment for their people?

Firstly, as a leader, you must lead by example and do what you would like to be done. Have empathy and love, be a good listener, and most importantly, come from a place of service.

Which leader has had the biggest personal influence on your life?

I was recently lucky to meet and have dinner with Jack Canfield, and feel blessed to have spoken on the same stage as him this year. His work on moving forwards in business and in life is incredible.

What book would you recommend to someone taking on new leadership responsibilities?

Jack Canfield Success Principles.

What is special about your lifestyle?

Coming from the past that I have, I am a true example that your past doesn’t define who you are. Waking up everyday and coaching my clients in public speaking and social media entrepreneurship. Interviewing celebrities and big business leaders on Radio and contributing to international business publications. Speaking and sharing my story of self leadership and transformation. I am living a life I have created by design, taking action, lots of personal development, working on my mindset. I am living a life that makes me proud from a past of hardship to a future of serving and success. I am excited about an event coming end of this year – early 2020, with some big names in show business. I have to pinch myself sometimes because of how special my life is becoming.

What is the most important tip you can give for developing self- leadership skills?

Focus inwards on your own goals, your own dreams and desires; don’t look at your outside circumstances. Work on your mindset belief systems, be aware of the choices you make. Meditation, visualisation, and journaling are so important. Take big actions and never let anyone tell you you can’t achieve your dreams. Consistency and repetition are very important.

What are the secrets behind your success?

Hard work, failing lots, getting lots of no’s before the yes-es, personal development coaches, mentors, taking big action, never giving up, building good relations, and coming from a place of love and honesty.

You are a great advocate for supporting women as well. Can you tell us more about why you choose to do this, and the importance of it in today’s world?

Women today are really shining. Bright women throughout my life have always supported me. My grandmother, who I lost recently, was one of the strongest women I knew. My mom has always been a great support in my life. Women are close to my heart.

http://www.markstephenpooler.com/

https://www.facebook.com/MarkStephenPooler/

Les Brown – You have greatness within you

Editor @ Global Man September 17, 2018 No Comments

*This interview is transcribed from the Global Woman Show with Mirela Sula

Today I feel very fortunate to have met an amazing person called Les Brown. I hardly need to introduce him because almost everybody knows about him and the way that he has touched the hearts of millions of people around the world. I am so happy that I can now share my interview with him that I know is going to inspire all the women who support the ‘Global Woman’ platform.

Les Brown, thank you so much for being with me today and giving your time to ‘Global Woman Magazine’. You know women love your work so please tell us more about what you do.
I am very glad to hear that you appreciate my work and I am very happy meeting you. But there’s something important that you said to me. I asked you about something that I want to get done and you said, “Anything is possible” and you said it with such conviction. That’s exactly the mindset that people must have, because, according to psychologists over 87 % of people’s negative ‘self-talk’ goes undetected by the conscious mind. But you have deliberately programmed yourself to believe, as an optimist, that anything is possible. And when you said that I believed it because you didn’t just ‘say it’ but you spoke with great conviction. This is what I say to Speakers when I train them. That having conviction is more important than the actual words you speak. So – I guess what I need to say is, ‘Thank you for blessing me with your presence’.
Your own story is incredible – and probably there are a lot of people who are feeling a bit down and trying to find excuses or complaining about politics or the situation of the world or, of course, they come from a poor family background or from a dysfunctional family. There are lots of reasons to complain about things – but you never seem to complain.
I do talk about things that have happened to me, but I don’t allow them to stop me. My new book is called; ‘You have got to be Angry’ and it’s about saying to yourself, “Here’s something I want, and I am going to get it in spite of the fact that it’s an unfair world – and also it’s not right that women doing the same work as men in the USA get paid less than the men get paid”. We all know that such inequality is simply not right. I was once working in a job that claimed that if you are the number one salesperson you become the Sales Manager and you will then get a bonus and I did it for six months in a row but they passed me by and then I was required to train other people that they would put over me. Clearly that was not right or fair. The only reason they did it was because they had the ‘complexion of connection’ and ‘I had the complexion of rejection.’ However, I decided I was going to ‘make it’ in spite of everything. Helen Keller said ‘when one door closes another door opens’ but most of us spend time trying to open a closed door rather than creating a door ourselves that we can then walk through unchallenged. In other words, we need to be able to live our own dreams and there are many women who have always had to fight against all the odds to make it through. There’s a gentleman by the name of Fred Astaire and back during the time he was in Hollywood they said he was the greatest dancer in the world – but the young lady that he danced with – she had to dance with him step for step but backwards and in heels! So, what I’m saying is that women have always had to be persistent to make it against all the challenges they have had to face. My mother adopted seven children and I was one of the seven. She made it against all the odds and although she didn’t have a great education she definitely had a PhD in ‘Mother’s wit’ and she always found a way forward even when there didn’t seem to be a way! Women have always had to do that and that is why I am excited to be a part of this interview and to be in the presence of women like you.

Thank you. So basically, you are saying that there is a lot of injustice out there in the world, but our duty and responsibility is not to complain about the unfairness women face but to prove that we can make anything possible if we face up to the challenges.
Yes. You have to do it ‘in spite of…’ Communities and countries are created by people and they can be changed by people and the secret is to maintain commitment through all the frustrations and disappointments we are going to encounter. We must all attempt to change the way that we function and also attempt to change the way women are treated – and in attempting to change the way we treat each other we need to understand this is a human problem. Human beings created it and human beings can therefore resolve it!
Well, as human beings we usually tend to see the problem not the solution. But not all the people have this ability to turn their perception in a direction that can guide them to the solution. Is there a secret to making this happen?
You know Einstein said “I don’t think I am so smart. I just have more patience than most people.” Most people want change to happen directly but it’s not that kind of world. You have got to be willing to be patient and it takes persistence and it takes going through some frustrations and disappointments and setbacks and things happening to you that you cannot anticipate. Some setbacks and problems just keep coming back again and again and I believe that sometimes angels are dispatched – and I believe that those angels support us by saying, “You know what? She’s really determined and she’s not gonna stop or ever give up.” That’s tenacity!
They did this study once and found that with a certain mathematical angle a spool of thread – after it’s released – hits against a two-ton steel beam. After so many hits – ‘pip pip pip’ – eventually it will begin to vibrate and then eventually the beam will move. Well, that’s what you are doing. That’s what we are doing in tapping into the consciousness of people and helping to create a different kind of world and changing how women should be seen not as just ‘receptacles for men’s orgasms’ but as thinking, feeling human beings who have something to give and something important to contribute to life. And it takes time to reverse that conditioning. I saw in the newspaper yesterday an article about a beautiful young lady that was raped and killed by her uncle. What kind of society have we created and what kind of mindset can give someone the permission to be that inhumane to another human being? It’s going to take time to reverse that sort of thinking and that type of behavior.
It feels that the shift is happening in the world and that more and more women are waking up. It feels like we have been sleeping for a long time. Now it’s time to wake up, to come to a higher level of consciousness, to connect with ‘higher self’ inside us and to see things like you just said. But sometimes we can’t anticipate things and we don’t have control over things. We can take responsibility for certain things we do in the world – but how can we coordinate and co-create with men? Not by feeling that we are against them or that we are separate but by working together. As we all know – we have left the world in men’s hands for a long time and it looks very messed up. So how can we get to the level when men see us as partners?
Think about where the world would be now if those who are in control had been inclusive in their thinking rather than exclusive. In other words, if women were allowed to participate and if people were allowed to participate even though they’d had an accident, even though they had slanted eyes, even though they came to the table with different sexual orientation, even though they might be in a wheelchair. Where would we be if all the thinking that’s available on the planet came together to collaborate and to work together with a mindset that said; ‘We can solve this. We can create a different kind of world’. Where would we be now? It’s like the way it was in the USA for coloured people in the USA. I am 73 now, but when I was a kid I would get on the bus with my mother and people would be seated in the back and there were seats up front where white people sat and even though there were some free seats there, mama said, ‘’keep walking Leslie’’ and I had to go past a yellow line to sit down. I said, “Why we can’t sit up there?” and she just said, “You can’t”. But the only reason we couldn’t sit there were because we were black. So that culture effectively said, ‘you are less worthy’. That culture and those laws in Society were designed to make people like me feel inferior.
I was invited to speak at the beginning of my career in Florida and unbeknownst to me they thought I was a different Les Brown. So, when I knocked on the door at the back of the theatre a guy said, ‘’May I help you?” I said, ‘’Yes, I am Les Brown’. He said, ‘’You are Les Brown’s driver?’’. I said, “No – I am Les Brown”. He said, “You are not Les Brown the bandleader!” I said, “No I am not”. You know he looked at me and then he was trying to spit on my shoes. I was so glad that he didn’t spit in my face because if he had I wouldn’t be here now. I would have grabbed him. He said, ‘follow me’ and people were already seated in the theatre and they had these album covers of Les Brown the bandleader. And this guy went at the microphone and says, “Ladies and gentlemen – Les Brown!” He then looked at me with contempt and walked off without shaking my hand and greeting me. So, I walked up to the microphone and I’m thinking, ‘How am I gonna deal with this?’ Everyone in that room were shocked because they only knew black people as football or basketball players but not as a Speaker. I am the only black face in the room and then I looked up and there was a sign that says, ‘You have the power to seize the hour’ and then I looked at the audience and I said to myself, ‘Right, I need to take control of this room. So, I said ‘I want you to think about why we are here. We have the power to seize the hour, to recognise your children and to give commitment to these young people because they are being moulded into who they will be in the future. I said, ‘Let’s give them a tremendous round of applause’. I knew they were gonna clap for their children. I needed to be strategic, so I said, ‘And all the parents would you please stand up? There are many people that loved you and believed in you and prayed for you – right up until this moment where we are now. Let’s seize this opportunity to recognise them with love and respect. Give them a tremendous round of applause!’

So you created this crazy energy in the room?
I just increased the energy by taking over the room and filling it with love and appreciation. After that they looked at me as if to say ‘Okay. What are you going to do? We will listen to you now.”

All this power and this energy. Where does it come from? What is the source?
The source is in all of us, who we are behind our eyes. We are all the same and so what I do is call for that source which I call ‘greatness’. I believe that when you are pursuing greatness you don’t know what your limits are – so you act like you don’t have any limits. And then I looked at the audience and I said, ‘You all have greatness in you. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know anything about you but I you all have greatness in you and we all speak from that place – the universal language of acknowledging each other and seeing the value in each other and loving each other.
That began to dispel the rejection, the hostility, the racism in the room and they began not to focus on my colour but focused on me as a human, because at the end of the day and – Jane Elliot said this – it’s not a black race and a brown race or a yellow race and a red race – it is just one race and it’s called the human race. It is brought together by love and God is love. Women are the greatest embodiment of love for me and I am here because of two women. One gave me life and the other gave me love. God took me out of my biological mother’s womb and placed me in the heart of my adopted mother and I think that there is a shift that is taking place and women are the pioneers of that shift. Women will help move us into a different future that Mother Teresa spoke about when she said, ‘’Lord I know you know how much we could bear, and I could bear”.

I am sure a lot of women will resonate with you and so much admire you for the fact that you speak so highly about your mother and the way that you put her on a pedestal. Can you share with us something that you never shared before about your mother?
Interesting that you said that. I had a moment with myself last night praying for my son and I asked myself is there something I have not done? As a kid I had a congestion of the lungs and another friend named Gramps he had the same condition. We were ten years old and we would sit in the back yard with two chairs side by side. One day I came to the backyard and Gramps had died. I remember that night when Doctor Johnson came over as doctors used to make house calls at that time and said, ‘Mamie give Leslie these drops every two hours’ and she had to be up all night to do that. Then she had to go to work on Miami Beach to cook for families with hand-me-down clothes and I remember distinctly my mother hands trembling as she was getting the drops out and putting them into my mouth and she‘d wrapped me in some leaves called ‘Palmer Christian’ leaves and was saying, ‘God don’t take my son, take my life, let me die, but don’t take my baby”. She didn’t give birth to me, she didn’t carry me for nine months and she is asking God to take her life and allow me to live. So, when I was praying for my son the other day I said, ‘God I had not asked you to do this. What mama can love me more than I love my son Calvin. I beg you take my life but give my son more time. I am 73 and I am an old man now and I am okay with going now so take my life instead.” I told this story on the Internet and a lady texted back. ‘God don’t listen to this fool. The God I serve could do it all – he could save you and your son. We don’t serve a limited God”.
What I learned from, my mother is that we must push forward in spite of everything. She believed everything is possible and that’s the kind of mindset that we must have to leap and grow our wings on the way to understanding. If you are not willing to take risks, you can’t grow. And if you can’t grow you can’t become your best, and if you can’t become your best you cannot be happy and if you can’t be happy then what else is there but to walk by faith and not by sight alone.

So you sometimes have to say ‘yes’ but you don’t always need to know how you are going to get there?
The key is to make a commitment. That’s what it will take for us to create a culture in our cities, in our countries, in the world and in the work place for women to be seen as equals. We just need ‘the will to do it’. What will it take for us to reduce the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the domestic abuse and violence to women and children – those who are powerless and voiceless. Just the will to do it! What will it take for us to stand up to the universal bullies – the most powerful bullies on the planet? Everything that exists is because somebody had the will to do it.

You seem to be enjoying your life a lot now?
Yes. Because we don’t know how much time we have. Someone asked me, ‘What do you want your legacy to be?’ and I said, “I aspire to inspire until I expire” and I always tell my children that when they say ‘Your dad is dead’ don’t allow them to embalm me for three days! Come down to the funeral home and bring a microphone just in case!’ I’m here to teach people to live fully and not die empty. We have to develop the courage and the willingness to follow our life purpose in spite of the fact that we might live in an environment where women are treated inferior or in an environment of racism that does not recognise humanity. You must decide ‘I’m gonna do this no matter what’.

You mention a lot in your speeches that lot of people probably hope to have an easy life because it is difficult to lead a hard life, but you have turned this around and said that when life is hard work then your life is going to be easier. I really love that idea. Can you tell us more?
If you do what is easy your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard, your life will be easier, and we must be willing to do hard. Let’s talk about struggle. I am reminded of a little boy going through an area in the forest when he saw a caterpillar trying to come out of a cocoon. So he watched and he observed and after a while a butterfly came out of the cocoon and hit the ground of the forest fluttering its swings and then flying off. And a few weeks later he came through the same area and saw another butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon and naively he decided that he wanted to help it to come out faster. He took a safety-pin out of his pants and he made a little incision and the butterfly fell out of the cocoon, hit the ground and fluttered his wings and died because it was the struggle itself that gave it life. The struggle itself – when the dream is big enough – means the odds don’t matter. In life you will always be faced with a series of god-ordained opportunities brilliantly disguised as problems and challenges. Challenges will introduce you to a part of yourself that you might not know right now. We must embrace the challenges because we grow through the challenges of life.

Thank you for this area of our discussion because this is very important especially for women who have realised that if they want to connect with their power and to stand in that power they also need to become more entrepreneurial. Financial freedom is where get most of the power because a lot of women are abused because they are dependent on the finance of other people. A lot of women are starting their own journey as entrepreneurs and starting their own business, but they are facing a lot of challenges. A brilliant idea is not always easy to achieve and so they give up. What is your advice and your wisdom to share with women entrepreneurs to motivate and inspire them to keep going and to be successful?
Three things. My mother was an entrepreneur when she could no longer work at Miami Beach for these wealthy families because they fired her. So, my mother had to become an entrepreneur and she didn’t have multi-level marketing during that time it was like a lottery. She sold moonshine and she sold homebrew. I never talked about it on stage because I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to do it without crying because at one time she went to prison. So, one of the things that I am training Speakers is never tell a story that you are not emotionally capable of handling yourself because this is no place for therapy. What I learned from my mother is she always said, ‘Every tub must stand on its own bottom’. My mother become an entrepreneur and she made a commitment to my birth mother that we will that we will never go to bed hungry – and we never did. We always had a roof over our head and we always had clothes on our back.
Women have always been the catalyst to say, “I am going to provide for this child or these children.” I remember talking to a man who should have been paying ‘Child Support’ and he said, “Oh they’re gonna let the mother take care of him instead.” I said, “But she didn’t get a child through immaculate conception – so you played a part in this child’s life too – so you should participate.” But a lot of guys who I call ‘sperm donors’ just walk away and leave the woman to struggle and make life difficult for her. That’s why the ‘Global Woman Magazine’ is so important in teaching women. Now is easier than before because of technology. These are women who are becoming entrepreneurs and becoming healthy through the comfort of their home with a computer. There are more women now that have a level of independence and more women who have a strong sense of identity. When your life has a sense of identity it gives your life a sense of purpose and a sense of direction and so they are now women who don’t just see themselves as wives or as mothers but as a global entrepreneur. They are living a life of contribution, not just standing in the shadows but can live and be fulfilled and make a difference to the planet. Women now have more access in certain areas of the world than ever before and that’s a good thing.

RJ Harper- Leadership and Living Your Best Life

Editor @ Global Man August 7, 2018 No Comments

RJ Harper- Leadership and Living Your Best Life

By Fati Gorezi

Robert Harper Jr, is a NYC- based award-winning filmmaker and producer from Germany. He is an alumni of Brown University, Digital Film Academy and Harvard Business School where he studied film, finance and international economics. He has also worked on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs in their prestigious investment banking division as an Associate and later developed and managed international banking conferences while with Euromoney, LLC in both NYC and Hong Kong. In 2007 he produced the film “Typecast,” an “Official Selection” at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. He is a passionate environmentalist and has appeared regularly on American television with MSNBC, NBC, VH1, MTV, TeIeMundo and Dateline NBC. I had the pleasure of speaking to him and asked him to tell us more about what drives him, the challenges he has faced, his future plans and more!

Tell us about your childhood, your parents, and what shaped you into who you are today
I was reared in Nuremberg, Germany, the Bavarian town famous for the Nazi tribunals of 1946. I have, since then, always had a keen sense of right and wrong. During my youth, I spent some quite idyllic summers romping around with friends and family in the Black Forest, France, Switzerland and other parts of eastern Europe. My nomadic family moved a lot but I still call places like California, Italy, Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, Oklahoma and Germany home. I also lived in Costa Smeralda, Italy for a time as well and after visiting more than thirty countries, I don’t think there is a more paradisical place on the planet than the scattered islands of the Mediterranean. The summer of my junior year in high school, I was a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Business in their LEAD Program. Living in NYC that summer changed my life and I have cherished living in the NYC area ever since. It’s great for children to experience the planet in their youth and those many live-abroad experiences still govern much of how I see the world today.

How would you describe your career as a filmmaker and producer?
I took the career road less travelled and wouldn’t change it for anything. My career has been a winding road, a path that no other professional has been down before. I’m proud of that fact on many levels. I’m very curious by nature and firmly believe our existence as humans is a life-long learning process. I worked on Wall Street as an Investment Banking Associate at Goldman Sachs for a time doing $300M municipal bond deals in cities across America. However, filmmaking was my real passion, so when I barely survived the World Trade Center bombing in 2001, I went back to film school in NYC at Digital Film Academy to brush up on my skills in editing and directing. I’m an alumni of Brown and Harvard University and Brown, in particular, has one of the best Semiotics departments on the planet. I’ve been spending time recently filming underwater as well. I just edited some great shark footage from the ‘National Association of Black Divers’ (NABS). A few years ago, a film I produced and directed won the “Audience Award” and “Best Musical Score” award as part of the NYC Film Race where more than 200 experienced film professionals compete to make a film in just 24 hours. That film contest is a gargantuan production and planning undertaking and I had thirty crew members working for me. It was great to win those filmmaker awards in NYC and many doors opened for me in the film business after that because I think I’m still such a Goldman Sachs-type workaholic.
Sometimes filmmakers make sense of things in their own lives through their work. Do you feel you do that?

On some levels, modern life in America doesn’t make a lot of sense but having a great sense of humour about it all often keeps me smiling. Passionate, filmmakers strive to tell unique stories, so our lives do show up in the work. I produced an award-winning comedy that screened at the Cannes Film Festival a few years ago and it centered around two Italian-Americans trying to make it big in Hollywood. The film was a combination of fiction and non-fiction but some of my own comical adventures in the entertainment industry was certainly thrown into the plot. I have a very funny (and random) story about me and Robert DeNiro drinking solo for an hour at the Supper Club that, looking back, became a life-changing interaction for me. DeNiro is the nicest Hollywood icon ever but during our conversation he made me realise that, in many ways, anyone is acccessible to me in the movie business. Eventually, I went on to work with acclaimed music video director, Hype Williams, NAS, MethodMan and Diddy on “Belly” and many other independent films as well. Senator Cory Booker also hired me to do a lot of very successful Democratic political Ad work in New Jersey and now there are several politicians in office who I’m proud to say, “I helped win their elections.”

Photo: Jon Stulich / Location: (Novado Gallery) / Stylist: Thorne Nugent / Designer: StevenLand.com
/ Hair: Felicia Verna – EllureZion

What has been the biggest challenge you faced and how did you tackle that challenge?
In 2011, a group of environmentalist friends and I sued multi-national, PPG Industries in federal court for dumping over one million tons of toxic chromium 6 waste in a largely Black community in America. Chromium 6, if you don’t know, causes lung cancer and the toxic waste had been there for more than thirty years. Critics said we were crazy and would never win in court because that multi-national firm makes about $14 billion dollars a year and Jersey state courts are very corrupt. I, however, kinda knew we could win because I understood the power of the media and social media and I felt like we were on the right side of justice as well. And Obama was in the White House. I made some shocking environmental Youtube films about chromium that got the national press interested and five years later, one of America’s top polluters, settled that federal case in record time to the tune of $600M. That chromium 6 case was really the Erin Brocovich story on steroids.

How important is having the right motivation to be successful?
Passionate motivation is critical for success! Cutting corners never really works out too well. You just have to always want to outdo the competition. Be smarter, be more curious, be more strategic and most importantly, do your homework better than everyone else. I’m confident I learned that formula in high school and from my parents because I graduated third in my class. Adult life really begins in high school and many adults wake up to that fact too late in life. I have worked alongside some of America’s top billionaires including Alex Rovt, David Tepper, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Rudin. I’ve learned those industry titans are principally motiviated by the work they are passionate about. Bloomberg will go down in history as one of the best mayors of NYC and he was earning a $1 a year from that job. His passion was fixing the fixable things in New York City while in office and you can only do a job like that for so long with the right motivation.

Who have been your greatest influences in life and why?
God, Sade and time! British/Nigerian singer Sade had been my wife in way too many dreams of mine (lol). My parents and grandparents have also certainly influenced me most intimately but my personal heroes are an eclectic group of global icons of history like: Shaka Zulu, Huey Newton, Queen Amanirenas, diver Carl Brashear, Thomas Sankara, Piye (Nubian King of Kush), Hannibal (the Godfather of Strategy), Steven Biko and boxer, Muhammed Ali. They were all pretty unapologetic and proven leaders with a vision. They were true BOSSES!! And that’s a rare commodity today. And as for film influences, my favorite films are “Cinema Paradisio” and “The Red Balloon.” My former girlfriends have accused me of being a mushy, film romantic sometimes. I’m also a big fan of the legacy of films by Jean-Luc Goddard, Helmut Lang and Akira Kurosawa. I’ve come to realise that my tastes in film tend to be a curious mix of film genres. I gotta say that director, NYU professor and Hollywood activist: Spike Lee also impacted a large part of my early inspiration.

The world is being shaken up with some momentous changes coming. How do you see the future, the role of women, and is it bright?
I’m a realist. Thanks to the internet, world communities are waking up and organising revolutions and I think some of this global turmoil presents an incredible opportunity for visionary female leadership to emerge and there is now, more than ever, room for broader diversity in our global, state and local institutions. Women wield incredible power on this planet. Some of that power is still untapped though and I’m not completely sure why. I’m excited to see more women working together and prospering. I am very inspired by the incredible life story of Global Man founder, Mirela Sula. She is such a big personality and business trailblazer for women around the world. It’s so refreshing to see leaders like her that fully understand that diversity matters. I look at women like Meghan Markle, the new Queen of America, and have high hopes that women’s growing influence will continue to shape a better, more peaceful and sustainable planet. I really like that t-shirt that says “The Future is Female” because global power surely can’t be “all-male” forever if we as a species intend to stick around.

Photo:Jose Pagan (Hunks4Hope.com)/ Location (NYC)/ Stylist:Lila Green

Can you tell us a little about your out-of-work life and your personal interests?
I’m a proud PADI-certified scuba diver and a board member of the ‘National Association of Black Scuba Divers’ (NABS.org). I hope that global marine conservation is part of my legacy but equally as important, I hope more Americans learn to swim and/or teach their children to swim. Statistics show that about “65% of Americans can’t swim the length of an Olympic pool.” My fantasy is to make basic swimming a requisite for high school graduation – starting with Americans. “Nine people die each day from drowning in this country and six of those nine people are minorities.” These alarming statistics have to change! It’s July, summertime, so let’s teach our youth to swim. Save a life! Promoting scuba diving all over social media to my 60K followers and beyond is my way of nudging people softly to “be cool” and learn to swim because you can’t get to certified scuba diver status without knowing how to swim.

What is your experience of working with women? And what is your opinion about their talents and skills?
I have some incredible and talented sisters whom I love very deeply. Throughout my career I have worked closely with women and I have high hopes that the brilliant global women leading the charge for equality in the workplace will continue to prevail. As an African-American male, I understand the role that discrimination plays in the workforce against women. Businesses need to be held more accountable in our court systems for the on-going global wage discrimination that is a sad fact of life for too many women. However, women need to continue to band together and support each other on all levels of the corporate, political and financial landscape in order to make meaningful and lasting changes. A tremendous opportunity was potentially lost for all women when Trump won the presidency but the tide is turning on many fronts for women internationally and the #MeToo Movement has driven a necessary stake in ground that frankly says, “Enough is enough!”

Can you tell us more about “MEN AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE”?
I was selected by activist, Lila Green to be Mr. October 2018 for the annual ‘Hunks4Hope’ calendar (www.Hunks4Hope.com). The calendar’s mission is to raise awareness and critical funds for persons (both women and men) affected by domestic violence. I’m honoured to be among such a committed group of sexy male model “Hunks” who stand as advocates and spokesmodels against domestic violence. The calendar has been a great way for many of us men to finally talk openly about our personal views when it comes to domestic violence. My journey with this very successful annual calendar has been educational and very inspiring. There are so many complicated layers to the constant struggle of trying to address these kinds of traumatic relationships that I have found myself being called in the middle of the night numerous times this year because someone heard about the calendar and had a friend that needed to be rescued. I certainly don’t have all the answers yet but its been been great working with a network of organisations that support our mission. Abusers themselves often require an intervention themselves. Too many men grow up watching loved ones get abused and think that is tolerable behaviour. At the end of the day, domestic violence is really an issue of trauma…and it affects both sexes. I have learned a lot in the last year and actively engaging men in this controversial conversation is frankly critical. Men do have views on domestic violence and it’s important to explore those experiences as well. For far too long, men have been seen as the potential enemy when it comes domestic violence but ‘Hunks4Hope’ is actively challenging that notion in a big and very refreshing way. The “Hunks” have supported all of the annual galas celebrating domestic violence survivors and when we show up, all the ladies in the room invariably want their calendars personally signed. I gladly sign but I always give a kiss too. The 2018 calendar I’m in has been ‘Hunks4Hope’s’ best-selling year and I’m happy to have been given the opportunity to represent the growing community of males standing up against domestic violence and sexual harrassment in any form.

Matthieu Kaczmarek – Finding Business Success and Building Loving Relationships

Editor @ Global Man May 2, 2018 No Comments

By Fati Gorezi

Matthieu Kaczmarek was born in Lille in the north of France where he lived until he was 20 years old. He then moved from Lille to Limoges, in central France, in order to follow a master’s degree in ‘Computer Science and Engineering’. He started his professional career in IT consultancy in Brussels in 2008 and worked for major companies such as ‘BNP Paribas’, ‘Orange’ and ‘Total’. In 2013 he decided to create his own company to continue working in IT consultancy and to generate some new ideas. He also launched ‘Consult & Event’, a wedding planning agency, at the end of 2013. Since then he has organised and coordinated several weddings in Belgium. At the end of 2016, he decided to launch ‘Le Grand Amour’, which is the brand that he is currently using for all the marriage events that he organises. In 2017, with Stella Bida, he decided to create ‘Innovation Strategy Results’, a company that helps business owners and their staff to be in control of their innovation cycle in order to get more clients.

How do you remember the beginning of your career?

During my studies I had the opportunity to travel for my different internships in the UK, Turkey and other countries. As I felt like a world citizen I wanted to continue travelling and working away from France in order to develop my mind within different cultures.

I had the choice between two opportunities: one in Columbia and one in Brussels. It was a hard choice to make but I decided to go to Brussels, the “European capital city”. It was a great symbol for me to live in a place with more than 170 nationalities in order to continue developing my mind. I have never regretted this choice as I met my wife there and built my own ecosystem there.

What motivated you to follow your dreams and to create your own company in IT consultancy?

After five years as an employee, I wanted to have the ability to choose my clients following my own expectations and to complete my own training plan from a technical point of view.

I started with a first client, then a second one and since then it has never stopped. When you have the feeling that you are doing the best for your clients then you are aligned with your mission. Now I have accomplished one of my goals in life: having my own company.

At the end of 2016 you launched ‘Le Grand Amour’. Can you tell us more about this brand?

The objective of ‘Le Grand Amour’ is to create unforgettable moments for couples with amazing romantic surprises and marriage proposals. Frequently, men and women want to surprise their loved ones but cannot split themselves between the organisation of the event and the surprise itself – or they have an idea but don’t know how to make it happen.

My personal objective is to provide happiness to couples and special moments where they feel fully connected to one another in order to experience true love. When your partner takes time to think about your relationship and finds the idea that will make you feel in love again, that’s a beautiful situation to be in.

Since the end of 2016, ‘Le Grand Amour’ organised multiple surprises across Europe and so far, we have never heard a “No” to a marriage proposal! 2018 has now been launched with a lot of new romantic events planned and we are very excited about it!

What are some tips that you can share with us in order for people to improve their business?

The first one is to ‘WOW’ your clients in order to make them press the ‘buy again’ button. That’s why I have launched, with Stella Bida, ‘Happy Clients = Higher profits’ a Company that guides small and medium B2C business owners to improve the client experience they provide to their clients.

The second one, learned and adapted from one of my Coaches, JT Foxx, is the speed of implementation of your ideas. If you implement ten ideas a month while your competition implements a maximum of one or two how far ahead of them will you be after a year? Even if an idea is not a good one, you will grow because you know quickly if it works or not.

A lot of people see only the success that you have achieved – How many times you had to fail before this?

When I started my wedding planning company, I was struggling with the marketing and the business strategy bits and I lost a lot of time and money in trying to do things without consistency.

The most important thing is to learn from your failures in order to grow. So, when I started to learn and was coached by another business man, my sales started to grow. I also met wonderful people that are helping me to develop my skills and providing me with opportunities like Mirela Sula, the founder of Global Woman Network. From that time, I haven’t faced any major failures. As mentioned before, I implemented a lot of ideas every month to develop my businesses. Sometimes it doesn’t succeed as expected but I have limited the risk.

What is your vision for the future?

From a business point of view, I am sure that the ability of a Company to offer tailor made experiences and products to their clients will be a key factor. But most importantly the human factor will be the key element. In the hyperconnected world, it will be so easy to have everything we want in a short time that the human relationships provided by a Company will be the key differentiator. People buy from people even if there is a lot of technology involved.

From a personal point of view, the future appears exciting. The development of knowledge in all scientific domains will provide opportunities that we cannot even imagine yet. I am sure that those developments will lead to big changes in the way we think about the life we have on earth.

Q7-What are three steps that you encourage women and men to take to empower themselves?

The first step is to assume that you have to change something in your life if you want to achieve new challenges. Either you need training because you are not good in a domain or you need to change the people you are surrounded by.

For instance, regarding training, I noticed that it was important to always be in learning mode. Why is it that we concentrate so many years learning in school, but when reaching adulthood and during career years, so many people abandon training and treat it as the last level of priority? It is fundamental for me to encourage people to sharpen their actions continually, by learning critical business skills such as marketing, accounting, strategic thinking, branding or negotiation.

Regarding the people that surround you that I mentioned above, it is sometimes difficult to admit it, but there will always be some people around you that are not happy and excited by your new way of thinking or your wish to evolve. It can be due to jealousy, fear of losing contact with you, or because you might expose their own failures. So, you need to take care of your mind by filtering out the people that are don’t need advice from.

The second step is to believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself or your idea it will automatically be reflected in the way that you present yourself and your Company. The first reason why customers don’t buy is because they don’t trust the credibility of the offer you have offered them. Lack of personal confidence sometimes means you will listen to anyone that might have an opinion about your business even if they have never launched a business themselves.

The third step is to find a good Coach that is a more successful than you – and that will help you to think about new ideas and prevent you from making mistakes. I started without any training or a good Coach and I have therefore lost time and money – but once you have a good Coach you will shine like the star that you are.

Luca Spaghetti- A name to remember

Editor @ Global Man April 30, 2018 33 Comments

Luca Spaghetti- A name to remember

By Fati Gorezi

Luca Spaghetti was born in Rome, Italy. His name, but above all his nice surname, has become famous thanks to his meeting with Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the bestseller “Eat, Pray, Love”, which then became a film with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem, in which Luca was present as a character because of his name. Being connected to a great book (and later a film) brought many changes to his life. Now Luca is a completely charming writer too. His first book “Un romano per amico”, is published in thirteen countries.

‘Eat, Pray, Love’, The story of Elizabeth’s life, literally, became a sensation in many countries captivating millions of readers (and later viewers) All of the “characters” in her book are real people and you are one of them. How do you feel about that?

Well, first I have to say that I didn’t know I was going to be in the book. When in 2003 Liz explained to me her project she told me that her book was going to be a ‘sort of biography’ but I couldn’t imagine a “real” biography. When she sent me the draft of EPL and I read my name for the first time I fell down from my chair. Then I started to appreciate it and the book became a phenomenon and people began to search me out and asked me: “Are you the Luca Spaghetti of EPL? Do you really exist?”

Then the movie came out where I am depicted as being bald and fat – but the problem wasn’t that I’m bald and fat in the movie but that the production team tried to make me become a Roma fan!!! Probably you know that in Rome there are two soccer teams, Lazio (The Good) and Roma (The Evil). And when we went with Liz on the movie set in Rome one night to meet Julia Roberts I met “myself” for the first time and I saw the actor who played me (Giuseppe Gandini) coming with a yellow-and-red Roma’s scarf on his (my!) shoulder.

At that time I said laughing: “I need a lawyer! It’s okay being bald and it’s okay being fat – but I’ll never be a Roma fan!” So they took mercy on me and I returned to being a Lazio fan in the movie.

You became a tour guide/guardian angel to Liz (the protagonist) How would you describe your relationship and friendship with Elizabeth Gilbert?

A gift! When a common friend wrote to me to say she was coming to Rome for three months and asked me to take care of her I was scared. I knew she was a writer and I thought of her as a very boring, intellectual, snobbish and a sophisticated person. Then, day by day, after some “penne all’arrabbiata” and a few glasses of wine I discovered how wonderful she is. I learned from her how to stop hiding my feelings and now I’m not ashamed to say: “Leave your door open always and take care of those you love.”

And we also found out a lot of things that we have in common: we have the same way of protecting our friendship deeply and strongly and we have the same sense of humour and we love eating. Most of the people remind me how lucky Liz and I are to have such a great friendship. And I completely agree. Even after her great success she’s still the same girl I used to know.

Being a person in a great book (and later film) what changes have been brought to your life?

First of all, I am now at peace with my last name! When I was child I suffered a lot, then, on becoming an adult, I learned to laugh about myself and I started to think that it wasn’t such a giant problem, and now I am a good friend with my last name. My grandmother always used to tell me, “Your last name is going to bring you luck! When people meet you it will make them happy and a little bit hungry too.” Now I can say that is absolutely true!

It has brought me luck and a lot of new friends and experiences like becoming friends with my idol James Taylor, becoming a member of the ‘Carbonara Club’ as Ambassador, and it has given me a funnier and happier life.

The book marks a revolution for women. An uprising and a rare search by Elizabeth Gilbert about how women should rise again after every failure and seek success. In your opinion what are the biggest challenges that women face today?

Probably their equality with men based on all the recent stories about abuse in the media and economic factors in terms of pay and remuneration. In a civilized and equitable world women should be paid the same as a man but I’m afraid it still isn’t so. Economically there are some tasks that have different remunerations if the worker is a man or a woman. My wife, for example, is the Director of a chemical laboratory with two hundred people. She is the first woman trusted with this task and she’s happy and appreciated. But many of her colleagues are sure that if her job was done by a man he would have better pay. Personally, I prefer to work with women. I have two girls who work for me and I would never change them for men. Every day I work with clients who are women and every day I appreciate their skills. I’m happy that Liz is a fantastic living example of every positive thing a woman could dream or plan to be.

You are a completely charming writer too. How would you describe your experience of writing books?

Thank you. A fantastic experience and the realisation of a dream. When I was a kid I dreamed of becoming a soccer player, then a songwriter like James Taylor, and at 40 years old I discovered that writing was easy for me. This was, and still is, a great lesson to me. I tried and I loved it. I started just to tell the EPL phenomenon seen through my eyes – the story of an ordinary guy with a special last name, who was born and grew up in the most beautiful city in the world and how a friendship and a book changed his life. Then I found that writing is one the best ways for me to let my emotions come out and so I went on. I’d love to write more, but often my other work doesn’t leave me so much time to do it – so I try to exploit every free minute I have.

What we should know about Italian women and men?

You should know that Italian women are the most beautiful women in the world and that Italian men are the most charming men in the world (not me of course!) Italian women and men are the funniest creatures on the planet, the best cooks, the most elegantly dressed, the insuperable wine makers and of course, the most romantic lovers in the universe. Of course I’m kidding, but I can swear we all have a great sense of humour too.

Charles Ward- Great Ideas Work

Editor @ Global Man April 30, 2018 No Comments

Charles Ward- Great Ideas Work

By Gulia Lucci

Charles Ward is uniquely suited to his position at the helm of IWG. With a background in TV news, public relations and advertising in Texas, Ward founded “Idea Works Global” (IWG) in 1980. From then until now, here are a few of his notable accomplishments: He changed the marketing strategies of yachting after raising $16 million in sponsorships to help Skipper Dennis Conner win the ‘America’s Cup Yacht Race in 1987’, in Western Australia. He also executed a cross-marketing strategy that aligned ‘Bombardier Aerospace’ and luxury brands such as ‘Graff Diamonds’, ‘Cartier’, and ‘Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ to create an annual three-day party held in a hangar where private jets land to deliver business moguls and celebrities to the Super Bowl. He was also recently named the exclusive sponsorship agency for the ‘Federation of International Polo’ (FIP). Represented in 88 countries, FIP’s 19,000+ members include Royals, Generals, Business Executives, and some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. Idea Works Global is a marketing and brand-development firm focused on facilitating strategic partnerships between heritage brands to reach the most affluent connoisseurs of art, autos, fashion, travel, jewelry, spirits and sports.

Tell us about your business and why you started your business in Texas 38 years ago?

We were always interested in luxury products and services and decided to start a company that brings together the wealthiest families and unique luxury brands through strategic alliances. ‘Idea Works Global’ was born with creating corporate partnerships for America’s Cup Yacht Racing.

What has been the biggest challenge you faced as a businessman in Texas and how did you tackle that challenge?

Since we are involved in events around the world, from Australia to Sardinia, sometimes remote co-ordination is a huge challenge. We are constantly learning and improving in this regard.

Who has motivated and inspired you towards success?

I believe some of the entrepreneurs who are our clients continue to inspire me personally and I have learned so much from them in thousands of hours of meetings.

Can you tell us more about your marketing strategies and what is the formula for your international success?

We look for opportunities that are not crowded with competition already. For example, over the past two decades we have achieved an international reputation in marketing strategic alliances for the sport of polo, often overlooked by the major luxury brands. In fact, we’re told we are the only independent company in the USA with a specialty in polo branding. So, we found an incredible niche with practically no competition.

What is your experience of working with women? And what is your opinion about their talents and skills?

Our Houston office had 30 employees: 29 women and me as the only male. I find women more organised and often more creative in the fields of advertising and marketing. It has contributed to our success.

What is special about your lifestyle?

Ah, my lifestyle. It is incredible because our events are in the most desirable resorts of the world and our clients manufacture the largest private jets and most luxurious cars. And that makes up our world.

What ’motto’ in life do you live by?

Always stand for excellence and exceed client expectations and you’ll have business for life.

Adam Strong-Women are better communicators, negotiators and analysers

Editor @ Global Man April 26, 2018 No Comments

By Reem Soliman

Adam Strong is without a doubt, the man to be talking right now in the world of business development. As an ultra-high personal productivity authority, a former elite athlete, author and entrepreneur, he has evidently mastered the art of productivity and high performance. I got the pleasure of speaking to him and asked him to tell us more about what drives him, the challenges he has faced, his future plans and more! Read on for my interview with Adam.

You seem to have merged your love of athletics and health with high achievement in business; What advice would you give to those trying to find their passion?

Firstly, you need to have clarity and purpose. When I was younger, one of the main reasons I was so successful in my athletics career is I wanted to win and be the best. Do something that you enjoy and makes you happy. In order to gain clarity, ask yourself these questions:

“What is the goal?”

“What is it you want to achieve?”

“What is your purpose?”

Secondly, you must condition your mindset on a regular basis with positive affirmations. My advice is to read personal development books for at least thirty minutes a day, attend regular business conferences and reverse engineer the process the goals you want to achieve.

Thirdly, in order to get a head start against your competition, learn about the mistakes of people that are more successful than you, so that you won’t repeat any yourself, it will save you time and money years from now.

Fourthly, is to do your research! Create a business idea based on solving people’s problems. Richard Branson launched Virgin Atlantic because he was frustrated about the poor service that customers were receiving when flying abroad, or American businessman Vernon Hill, that launched Metro Bank to disrupt the banking industry in the UK by offering extended opening hours, great service and a pet friendly environment.

What new idea do you have? What industry could you disrupt? What problems can you solve for society? Once you have your idea execute it quickly through speed of implementation.

Lastly, you should never chase money. Create a higher purpose and you will reap the rewards in the future to come.

You’ve been named a ‘serial entrepreneur’ as you run 5 businesses, how do you keep the balance in your life while maintaining such high productivity?

You are a great advocate for supporting women; Can you tell us more about why you choose to do this, and the importance of this in today’s world?

I think that women in business are often better than men. Women have great attributes and bring a lot of different skills to the business world. One of the advantages that most women have over most men is their use of empathy and optimism, crucial in business. Empathy in business can help you grow trust in relationships with partners, clients and customers. You can use feedback to improve and make things better. I’m a big supporter of gender equality. One of the first countries to recognise the need for gender equality was Norway. They brought in the gender equality act in 1978, giving men and women equal opportunities. In 2013 they also introduced a new act stating that both sexes shall be represented on company boards by 40%. Also, Iceland introduced a law recently that states men cannot be paid any more than women.

There is still a long way to go before we see a fair balance of gender equality. However, did you know that twenty of the top Fortune 500 companies have a fifty percent balance of men and women on their board of executives? With women like the amazing Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo), Arianna Huffington (Co-Founder of the online newspaper ‘The Huffington Post’) and Indra Nooyi (CEO and chair of Pepsi Co), they are transforming companies and achieving phenomenal results.

Women are also better communicators, negotiators and analysers. They often get into the nitty gritty details of any matter, analyse it and come up with ideas promptly. This is instrumental, as this often brings more profits for the company by making more sensible deals and profitable decisions. Unlike most men, they also allow employees to share their point of view before making any decisions. Improved communication with employees increases business relationships, retention and loyalty factors.

If support of women in business is good enough for these successful and most profitable companies, then it’s good enough for any organisation.

What gives you a sense of purpose to live the life that you do?

Being a previous elite athlete has given me a great platform to transform me into results driven individual. I get really excited when I use the same skills I learnt as an athlete to deliver the same results for business owners and entrepreneurs.

I love to solve problems and come up with new and innovative ideas that help business owners become unstuck. I also love to empower people and help people achieve success, whatever I feel and look like to them. We all desire and deserve happiness in our lives and I believe becoming an entrepreneur is one way you can achieve your vision and ambitions.

Showing gratitude on a daily basis is important to me, as I wouldn’t be as successful if it wasn’t for the opportunities and knowledge given to me by my coaches, clients, friends, family and mentors. On an annual basis I participate in challenging sports events and raise money for my preferred charity, such as the Alexander Devine Children’s Hospice or The Debretts Young Achiever Programme, a great cause that teaches gifted teens from poorer backgrounds business and life skills.

I owe it to myself and to the people that have touched my life to keep going, keep evolving and more importantly to keep learning.

You’ve been named a ‘serial entrepreneur’ as you run four businesses. How do you keep the balance in your life while maintaining such high productivity?

One of the main advantages that I have is the ability to focus, which is a skill that has taken me years to master through regular training and discipline. I developed this skill from a very young age when I became an elite athlete and now use this skill, years on in business. I focus most of my time inspiring people around the world and consulting with companies that want instant results. Through relationships and social media I continue to help people with their energy management. And finally, on a daily basis, I use my time in the morning studying business trends and creating innovative business ideas (I call this strategic thinking) that I want to build for the future.

In order to eliminate distractions and procrastination, I block activities into 30-minute segments and co-ordinate my calendar with my assistant. I estimate how long each activity takes and then allocate my activities into segments. These may include meetings, networking, writing articles, sales calls, reading, time for family and hobbies. The night before my day, I take my notebook and write down the ‘Top 5’ things that I need to do on the left-hand side of the page and the less important tasks on the right. This allows me to deal with the most important activities first. The reason I do this the night before is it allows me to have a day that is more organised and less chaotic. I feel more excited and less stressed and I’m able to eliminate procrastination throughout the day. I can get a large amount of work done in one day compared to the average entrepreneur who can only achieve the same amount of work in a week. However, if you follow my advice, you too can achieve a work/life balance as well as high productivity.

When I first started my journey as an entrepreneur, I made the mistake of wearing too many hats, whether it be sales, marketing, web design, finance, you name it I did it. I simply didn’t see the point of getting help, I just kept on using money as an excuse not to take action. If you want to achieve some balance in your life you have to understand the importance of valuing your time and being paid your worth. I can’t emphasise enough the importance of building a strong team, to be able to focus on your strengths and delegate your weaknesses. Even if you have just started in business, you should always be thinking of how you’re going to recruit your first employee, intern or consultant. You will save valuable time and money by learning this skill early on.

What advice would you give to women looking to pursue a career similar to yours?

Be prepared – there will be ups and downs. When you’re down, just step away, refocus and try the next day, and when you’re up, keep the momentum going. Becoming an entrepreneur is not an easy thing and is not for everyone! If anyone tells you its easy, it’s a lie. There are three things you need to follow for the same path to success.

Firstly, you have to develop your ability to be mentally tough and this enables you to be able to adapt in hard times.

Secondly, to be consistent in everything you do enabling you to work smart and not hard.

Thirdly, the most important thing, which is having a coach or mentor who can help guide you and give you some much needed hand holding, which is crucial, especially at the beginning.

When I first started out in my athletics career, I needed to know the key ingredients. I needed to make a recipe for success. Coaching to me is as important as oxygen. Developing a coaching culture will enable you and your team to grow together. No matter how ambitious you may be, everyone needs a coach or mentor in his or her life.

What has been the most challenging aspect you have faced in your career, and how have you worked through it?

When I started my first business, I became a fitness coach and loved helping people achieve their health goals, seeing a transformation from beginning to end. However, as the years passed, I fell out of love for my passion and needed to find something new. I started by coaching other health coaches on how to grow their business. In a short period of time they were getting more clients and making more money than they ever had done before. One of my toughest periods was transitioning from a fitness coach into a business results coach, as I still couldn’t decide if this was the right route to achieve the success I wanted. This is when I made a decision to invest in a coach, someone who was more successful than me and be able to advise me. He gave me exactly what I needed, which was a winning formula on how to build my consultancy empire.

Who has been your role model and has supported you on your journey?

JT Foxx (“The world’s number one wealth coach”) – is a great role model. He has gone through a lot of hardships and seems to understand how a lot of people in business feel. Also, Jason Gilbert (a former eight figure CEO and philanthropist, who is – my current coach. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am now.”
What plans do you have for the future?

I’m very excited this year as I begin to grow and scale my consultancy practice; we will be recruiting new coaches and consultants to help more people take their business to the next level. Also, we will be setting up business and health retreats, that will help business owners accelerate their results through the knowledge and experiences from other successful CEO’s and coaches. I want to create further business opportunities in a learning environment through high-level networking and partnerships. I’m also going to be advising and investing in more growing companies, so they can see higher returns by working with shareholders and investors that want to eventually exit their companies. And finally, IAdam haveopes to execute some plans to launch a new business venture with myhis partner in the energy, health and organic food industry.

Ben Chai- The Success Magnet

Editor @ Global Man April 25, 2018 No Comments

Ben Chai

Sometimes enthusiastic extrovert but mostly thoughtful introvert

By Trevor Clarke

Ben Chai is a man of many parts, who has lived a full and varied life through an eclectic mix of activities, from IT to property, to acting, writing books, as a speaker sharing the stage with the biggest names, and more. Ben has achieved great success in many fields and has made his wealth through smart property investing and deserved good fortune in the beginning. He was featured recently in a BBC TV documentary about landlords living in one of their tenant’s properties, on a low budget. Yet, as you will read here, Ben’s early life was a less happy one because of bullying, something he has overcome to grow from a person of low self-esteem to be the outgoing and confident person he is today.

What was your childhood and upbringing like and how has that has influenced who and what you are today?

I grew up in London and was bullied a lot. Later, we moved to Singapore, but the bullying continued due to my being very tiny and very different from the rest of the children. At the time, I decided that the concept of race was very divisive and elected to be a citizen of this planet. Being bullied you learn a lot about people, about survival and develop a sense of when something is not quite right.

You also develop very low self-esteem, which results in a vicious cycle – the lower your self-esteem, the more you distance yourselves from others, the less you develop social skills and become a target for more bullying. Being bullied also taught me much about “isms” sexism, fatism, classism, ageism, and all varieties of exclusivism. My parents had their own challenges to deal with, which made it difficult to get much support in this area. Life was pretty dark in those days.

When I graduated, my parents did not feel I would amount to much due to my shyness and lack of confidence. At the time I had just scraped a degree, and my dad tried to get me a job in government through one of his contacts, where he thought I would be safe. I found the whole thing very disheartening and demeaning and said I would find my own way in the world. Today I realise that nobody was really taught about being good parents and he was only doing the best he could.

For the first few years I did not earn much. During that time, I cycled ten miles to work and slept on a friend’s floor with several other people. My diet consisted of porridge for lunch and corn flakes for dinner. For treats, I had a pot noodle and would suffer from pot noodle rage if someone had eaten one from my supplies.

Due to the bullying, I became mostly a recluse, or would only spend time with retired folk. The retired folk used to teach me to play games, shared their life stories with me, and educated me on how to avoid problems they faced when they were younger. Their life stories would later help me become successful in any venture.

As a young boy, playing games was a way to escape. I learned that if I helped the retired folk complete their chores faster, they would have more time to teach and play games with me.

At an unconscious level, winning at these games taught me how to be successful in life and business. For example, the Game of Diplomacy taught me that the only way to consistently win was to tell the truth without offending others. The game of chess taught me to think five, ten, twenty moves ahead of everyone else. Scrabble taught me how to maximise any situation no matter how bad.

You are a man of many parts and roles, and mystery. Your LinkedIn profile states: Actor; Author; Speaker; Business and IT strategist; Content creation specialist; Property specialist. Tell us more about these.

My very first acting role was as a baby in a James bond film. Since then I’ve been in media in most places I’ve lived either for technology, cyber security, gaming, dance, theatre or other television and films. My great aunt and uncle were members of an acting union and used to get me parts with famous people such as Madonna and John Cleese. We didn’t have selfies and the internet in those days, otherwise my celebrity album would be bursting!

After university, I managed to get a lowly paid position as an administrator in an IT company. My manager told me it would take two years to learn his position. Due to my early gaming days, I created a strategy to learn everything he knew within a month. The game of Diplomacy taught me not to demonstrate this accomplishment for another two months just in case he felt threatened. I soon took over purchasing and was able to get great deals due to collaborations with other IT companies. This joint purchasing put me in front of many CEOs of small to medium IT companies.

In the eighties, the phrase “knowledge is power” was rampant. The technical department would not tell me how to repair simple computer problems, such as the type of cable, because they felt their jobs were protected if people didn’t have their knowledge. The engineers blocking behaviour incensed me so much that I said to myself, one day I will share your entire knowledge with the world. I spent my evenings learning every single software the company was selling. After a while customers would call me for technical help.

One day the company trainer fell sick and I volunteered to train the course. They were surprised about my software knowledge but declined my offer and said they would get a freelancer. Unfortunately for them no freelancer was available and the customer had flown their executives in to learn the software and were threatening to sue the company. Opportunity met preparation and I got to give my first course. Afterwards, the customer requested that I be the only person to teach their entire organisation. This began my speaking career and since then I have spoken to audiences of up to 14,000 for Microsoft and large churches.

My degree is in mathematics and computer science. As a young boy, I was the only one in my class to beat the computer at chess. At the time, I had a much better understanding of computers than anyone else. A new manager was impressed with my ability to learn and train the software, and trained me in sales. Because my knowledge of computers was superior to the competitors and I was spending until 5:00am learning software and hardware, we were able to quickly grow the business. Another IT company headhunted me to run their entire sales and technical team. Being the CEO’s right-hand person taught me much about running a business. Later the CEO would ask me to run further businesses with him.

From there, I moved to a senior executive position at Kodak, in charge of the marketing and training of new IT products in EMEA. This position involved the creation of marketing strategies, educating and speaking to all Kodak sites, distributors and outlets on how to use and market the products. The role also involved authoring all their product and training manuals. Which is where I began a new skill in authoring. Later this content creation combined with my film, TV and radio experience would later blossom into a skill which would make me a seven-figure income as a content creation specialist.

As a systems and business speaker and educator for Microsoft and Learning Tree International, I’ve had the good fortune to rub shoulders with, teach, coach and mentor many diverse companies, from small single entrepreneur companies to global multi-nationals in banking, pharmaceutics and many more.

What drew you to such an eclectic mix of activities? Were they all part of your intention? In my twenties, I decided to be retired by my mid-thirties. To be retired you need ongoing income. At the time, I thought about what businesses would provide residual income or what is known today as passive income. These businesses included Rental properties, royalties from film and music, licenced intellectual property, network marketing, a great pension, royalties from books, royalties from games and merchandising. To make my plan fool-proof, I created several related businesses which would provide passive income.
Property was fantastic as there weren’t many property investors in those days. My parts in films with people like Madonna and John Cleese used to pay repeat cheques on every broadcast. My time at Kodak, taught me how to write books and create training manuals for technical educational companies. These training manuals were written about the most popular software of the day and provided me with a large amount of passive income whenever the training manuals were used.

How and why did you get into becoming a property landlord?

In the late eighties, there were hardly any property investors to learn from. My initial thought process, was if property prices always go up then all I needed was to buy four or five properties and create a strategy to hold all the properties as they appreciated in value.

Once they had appreciated, I would sell one to pay off all the others and so be financially free, by having incoming producing properties which fitted in my residual income model. At the time, I never thought to make income from rental. The rental would just pay for the mortgages. It is probably why I still have the lowest rentals in many of my investment areas.
When I graduated, I asked for a loan from my parents to buy an investment property. I was categorically told that property investment was a stupid idea as my parents had always lost money whenever they moved. I never got that loan. I was still too young and naïve to realise that my parents (and the rest of the world), didn’t really understand property.
In the late eighties, a couple in their mid-thirties knocked on my door and asked for a cup of tea. I thought they were the Mormons coming to convert me, but it turned out that they were the grandchildren of a dear old lady from next door. Apparently, their grandmother had passed away. She used to tell them many stories about how I used to mow her lawn, have cups of tea and do the odd handyman job when she needed someone. The grandchildren said that they would like to bless me for looking after their grandmother and asked if I would like the house at a price substantially below the estate’s valuation.
My reply was “no” because my parents told me investment property was not a good thing. They said it was my decision, but they would give me a week to think it over. At the time there was no concept of buy-to-let mortgages, so I could not get a mortgage on the property, however my brother agreed to take the mortgage and we had a signed agreement that the property belonged to me.
When my parents found out I’d bought the house next door, they were very angry with me as I had no knowledge what to do next. For a while, I just used the house as an extended house. I was so naïve at the time that I thought, if I bought several houses in a row I could convert them into a hotel.

You were featured recently on a BBC documentary, The Week the Landlords Moved In. What can you tell us about the experience overall and including the off-camera moments?

There are some things that I’m not allowed to talk about, but it was a fantastic experience.
My coaches advised me and many others not to do the show. There were many discussions in the property forums that said the show is designed to make landlords look bad. My attitude was that there is no such thing as bad publicity. If I was doing something wrong as a landlord I’d rather find out, plus I hoped it would put me in touch with some producers, as I’d like to resurrect my film and acting career from my early days.
According to the camera crew, I was one of the more authentic landlords they’d met but a conflict was required to make the episode watchable. There are many unpublished parts. One unpublished part was my reaction to the £47.00 they gave me to live on for the week. My response was to thank them for their generosity, I could live on less if they wanted. It turns out I was able to live on £14.47, so I was asked what I would do with the rest of the money.
My response was to invest the money. Either create a nest egg and invest the larger sum, or invest in a sponge and bucket and create more wealth by washing cars.

Who is the real person inside of Ben Chai?

Firstly, there is no real me. All of me is real and false at the same time. We grow, and we evolve. Who we are today is not necessarily who we are tomorrow. I am literally the person you see. Sometimes an enthusiastic extrovert but mostly a thoughtful introvert. As one person commented “Ben when I first met you, you were so quiet. I didn’t think much of you…but when you got on that stage you had so much energy and education, you blew every other speaker out of the water. How is this possible?!”

You have written a book called Social Magnetism. What are your top secrets for social success that you would care to share with Global Man readers?

No….but okay you twisted my arm. My top tips are:
-Don’t be boring – look at their eyes. The eyes glaze over when you are boring someone, or they begin to look away from you. You don’t need to explain everything because they aren’t listening anyway. Their heads are nodding but inside they are far away from the conversation.
-Add value and don’t be a douche bag. Being a douche bag worked when you were a kid but the older you get the more others want authenticity.
-Learn to walk from people who don’t care about you.
-Give so much value but don’t give to a level where people abuse your time or feel guilty because you won’t let them give back to you.
-Learn to receive.
-Understand that you are a wonderful person and learn to properly love that wonderful person. If you love yourself in a healthy manner you would treat everyone else in the same way.