A NEW YEARA NEW START

Climbing the social ladder of success

The price of success; it ain´t always pretty

Your network is your net worth

ISSUE 5

THE MEDICIOF THE 21ST CENTURY

The leading Magazine for the Gulf youth By the youth, For the youth!

gulf elite

LETTER FROM THE EDITORISSUE 5, JANUARY 2014

gulf elite magazine

WELCOMEMESSAGE

What a stellar year 2013 was! Gulf elite is already 5 months old and we’re all excited to dive in 2014 with so

much energy and projects in the pipeline! It’s all about how you start they say, and starting 2014 in style is something we’re planning on accomplishing thanks to some exciting news we had in the past week! Our co-founders flew to Bahrain to work on a promising busi-ness venture, allowing us potentially to see the first print Gulf Elite Magazine in Bahraini stands in the next couple of months. More-over, we’ve been moving quickly on the uni-versity front, setting up point contacts across the UAE and the US to engage and recruit more writers and members, making the GE family bigger and bigger by the days! But eventually, what really makes Gulf Elite what it is today is our passionate audience and avid readers. We would like to dedicate this edito-rial to everyone who took not only the time to read our magazine and articles, but also to send us amazing messages full of love, en-couragements and admiration. Here are some of these messages, which we kept in their original format in order to keep them original and genuine!

Just have to say that I love Gulf Elite! Just sat down to read the latest number and it is sooo interesting! Sweden

Hey boys, just wanted to say it seems like you really have something good going with gulf elite. Much respect from the far north! Take care and keep it coming. Denmark

This is amazing! Dubai

You guys are doing a great job, the next big

thing! USA

I’ve been meaning to drop you a message for a while now telling you how much I abso-lutely love Gulf Elite and your articles. Also, I’ve been sharing it with all my friends here in Edinburgh! It’s incredible inspiring to see something like this enfold successfully and I can only imagine how much work must have been, and is behind it! UK

I LOVE what you’re doing!! Gulf Elite is AWE-SOME! USA

I was giving advice to a friend for a college interview and then he said I can see you read a lot of gulf elite, then am like you heard abt it ! And then his answer was : of course, it’s awesome, am a fan I read it everyday. South Africa

Gulf Elite is dope man! UAE

You can imagine my surprise when i hear a couple of people speaking of this “Gulf elite”, Congratulations, your success is swimming oceans. South Korea

Gulf elite is a nice mag, I read some articles there from time to time (especially the moti-vationnal ones) Singapore

Gulf elite is becoming the talk of the town. Saudi Arabia

Your posts about the Gulf Elite, seems like some awesome shit! Zimbabwe

I’ve been reading almost all your articles and they’ve been very helpful and inspiring. In fact

there are so many interesting articles it’s hard to keep up with the reading! Germany

J’ai commencé à lire Gulf Elite, franchement chapeau, c très bien fait! France

knowing your magazine, Gulf Elite for a month ago. It’s amazing work. Indonesia

félicitation pr le truc de Gulf elite et c mag-nifique ! bon travail. Morocco

Can’t wait for the next Gulf Elite magazine :)) Netherlands

Keep Calm and Read Gulf Elite. Morocco

I see gulf elite is going amazingly. Spain

Gulf Elite is the best magazine out there! Tunisia

I just heard about Gulf Elite and I am excited to attend one of your events. UAE

Congratulations on launching Gulf Elite! I’d love to find a way to partner up. USA/Elite Daily

Gulf elite is perfect... keep going! Iraq

I read some bits of Gulf Elite, and I have to say that I’m impressed by the quality of the journal. Morocco

Honored to support Gulf Elite in any capacity. I have a burning passion to create future start-ups and entrepreneurs world wide. USA

I read many articles on Gulf Elite. I have found some of them so unconventional and inspiring. France

Impressed with how far gulf elite has already come! UK

Boys!! Stellar work on Gulf elite!! I felt like I was reading the gentleman’s magazine, you guys

wrote some good shit and your style of witty writing is pretty awesome! South Africa

Congratulations on your Gulf elite , i’ve just read it! ,it’s simply amazing and youthful. Keep up the good work. Morocco

Hi guys. I just read your Gulf Elite online. Great work on it, it seems very professionally done. The format is easy to comprehend and the writing is good. It shines through that you put an effort into it. Denmark

MOHAMED AMINE BELARBI - EDITOR

Rebranding?

gulf elite magazine

issue 5

HOW TO MASTER YOUR TIME

CLIMBING THE SOCIAL LADDER

5 THINGS TO DO BEFORE TURNING 30

REWARD AND RECOGNITION

THE PRICE OF SUCCESS

ACCELERATE YOUR BUSINESS

ELITE PROFILE: BARRETT WISSMAN

A NEW YEAR, A NEW START

HOW TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR

Index

BUSINESS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

www.kairossociety.org

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A NEW YEAR, A NEW STARTMake the rest of your life the best of your life

Resolutions

Well, 2014 is here; you partied, cele-brated and enjoyed that little change in the calendar, but what did you

celebrate exactly? A number change or a well-spent year? You have to realize that a new year is not just another stage in your life like the past or next 30 years you’ll go through. New Year is a time for reflection, a time to weigh your actions and see how well you did in those past 365 days. If a New Year for you is just a time to pop champagne, then you can do that anytime, anywhere, but if it is a time where you can face yourself and seriously account for how you spent that year gone, then you’re on the right track to make this 2014 a time of glory and success.

New Year is the start of a new page, a fresh be-ginning where you can decide who you are now and who you want to be by the end of it. Here is how you can start 2014 with a clear vision for how to make it worth it, make every day count and be sure that in 12 months, you can proud-ly look back and know that it mattered, that today you are a better person than you were 1 year ago.

Dream big

Well, obviously this is not a request to go take a nap and dream for the next 12 hours. Let’s put the cliché aside and talk down to earth: when we say dream big, we mean it. Know that you’re powerful and invincible, and that all it takes for you to achieve a dream is to want to. The only one who can prove you right or wrong is you. If you don’t follow your dreams or have one in the first place, someone will hire you to build theirs. It is that simple. Saying that

your dream is to have a house, a job or a car is pathetic. Remember how your dream back in kindergarten was to become an astronaut, the president or a pilot? Well it’s never too late for that. We grow up full of aspirations, but new year after new year, we become dull, drop our dreams along the way and poison ourselves with mediocre expectations. This New Year, I want you to look back at those times in prima-ry school and remind yourself that some part inside you still wants to achieve that dream, to prove everyone wrong and show that you can indeed make it, that you are going to achieve success not because others will grant it to you, but because you deserve it. Your dreams are yours, so don’t be ashamed or afraid of letting them be genuine. Stop complaining, wipe out fears of rejection or failure, decide what you truly would die for and go after it. Chase your dreams until they come true. As long as you don’t achieve that dream, there is nothing to celebrate because a life without dreams is not worth living.

Put the effort

I might have mentioned dreaming big in the past paragraph, but if you don’t put the sweat, tears, heart and passion into chasing it, then your dream is no different than a wish, and you know what wishes are good for? Nothing!Nothing comes easy in life, because if they do, then they’re not worth it. There are billions of people out there trying to make a living, strug-gling to make ends meet or trying to barely survive, and they all want a piece of success. The competition is fierce and unlimited while there is not much glory to share with everyone. If you want to grab a big slice of the pie, then

mohamed amine belarbi

you better prepare yourself for the battle, the battle where losing is not an option. Whatev-er you do, you can always do better. You can always put more hours in. You can definitely hustle more. Only then will you truly appreciate your accomplishments. When you know you worked hard for something, gaining it has a far more rewarding feeling than stumbling upon it by chance. How hard did you work in 2013? Well this New Year is time to work twice as hard!

Network

We can’t stress it enough: your network is your net worth. Sometimes working hard doesn’t cut it, but knowing the right person does. In life it is hard to make it to the top alone or on your own, you’ll need people around to give you that boost or that much needed help to keep moving forward. Alone you can go fast, but with people you can far, and knowing that life and success is not a sprint but a marathon, you might want to settle for some nice company. You are the average of the people you hang out with or associate with, if you network is made of pessimist, dream killers, mediocre individuals who’ll suck the life out of you, then good luck making something out of your life.

But if the people you know are the kind who will set the bar high, who will give you a push when you think of quitting, who will have the advice, opinion or resource for whatever you need, then welcome to elite club. Your net-work should have startup CEOs, financiers, celebrities, high net worth individuals, nerds, closers and friends in all industries. Your net-work should be a pool you can tap into when-ever you need something. Remember the six degrees of separation? Well, you better start working on making that number even less, because all it takes is the trouble of sending an email, attending an event or getting out of your room.

Morale of the story, there are always ways to make the new year better than the past one. We should be able to celebrate 2014 because we know that we are a better and more suc-cessful persons than what we were in 2013. It’s all about making your life count; making sure that your movement is always forward. Our days are numbered, the question is, how well did we spend them?

mohamed amine belarbi

Make the rest of your life the best of your life

1. Have a goal in life

2. Take risks

3. Build relationships

4. Grow your network

5. Be passionate about what you do

6. Do not settle for average

7. Pick your friends carefully

8. Work smart, Not hard

9. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t

10. Start or create something

11. Take time to reflect on your actions

12. Never quit

13. Travel and experience new adventures

14. Make this year count

STUDINOV MARKETING STRATEGIESDESIGN, CONSULTANCY AND MARKETING SERVICESEMAIL US AT: STUDINOVSTRATEGIES@GMAIL.COM

simply the best

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Success

Now before you start speculating about how much of a hipster you are, disre-garding the so called “social ladder” and

how little you actually care about what soci-ety thinks of you, lets get one thing straight: We´re talking about a very multidimension-al ladder that crosses every single aspect of today’s society and lifestyle. The only ladder that the world’s norms and standards evolves around to satisfy societies needs and to sep-arate the bad eggs from the good ones. An undeniable divider that will influence you no matter how much you fight it, because at the end of the day, it’s society’ reflection of who you are that will determine who you will be.

Now as the world develops, becomes more diverse and evolves more into a capitalistic sphere, it has, to an extent, canceled out his-torical obstacles that would have determined your ability to climb up that ladder. Forget about the color of your skin, the complexion of your hair and the nature of your pigment, the only true color that actually determines your social status are those green colored Benjamin’s. Even the name of your academic institute does no longer have a direct correla-tion with the number of zeros you have in your bank account. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Ingvar Kamprad – I can go on for-ever. So all seven-digit salary makers, venture capitalists, successful entrepreneurs and, well, IVY-leagues students are IVY- leagues stu-dents, probably make it to the very top of the ladder due to their qualified excellence and thereby cleared through society’s corporate check-list.

But what about the rest of the 99% that don’t

have the financial resources, technological benefits, geographical locations or any oth-er obstacle that restricts them from reaching the top? Do they forever remain inferior to the “high end” individuals, working for the arro-gant CEOs and bigheaded bosses? No - hell no. Wrap your head around this - there are no such things as obstacles, no such things as barriers – only mental limitation. You see the reason why the 1% is the 1% is because there are only so many people that have the will-power to fight through all life’s obstacles on the way to success. Only very few people that have the guts to take on the path to triumph and all the sacrifices that come with it. So next time you start gossiping about how much of an a-hole your boss is or how that Bentley makes your CEO look like a douchebag, think about what they had to got through to reach

CLIMBING THE SOCIAL LADDERCan you make it to the top?

that position. Don’t blame them for being suc-cessful; blame yourself for not having the balls to go out in the open and walk down the rough path that lays under the foundation of the ulti-mate accomplishment.

Yes, I haven’t forgotten about the silver spoon some rich kids are born with, but the world is not all rainbows and sunshine’s, someone will eventually receive the one-way direct ticket to success without having to lift a finger, but don’t see that as a disadvantage, see it as an advan-tage. Connect, mutualize and suck-up to these people as they might just open a few doors for you. This social ladder has its fair share of shortcuts, hidden high-ways and benefits when dealing with the right people, you just have to put your personal emotions and values away for a while to reach where you want to reach – sometimes you just have to fake it till you make it. It’s all about sacrifices.

But where do you draw the line in terms of sac-rifices? Do you give up sleep? Do you temporar-ily suppress your own morals in order to satisfy others? Would you give up family relationships and place work on a higher pedestal? How far off your comfort would you go to achieve that societal success? These are all very complex questions I can’t answer, but what I can say is that you will have to leave your comfort zone, you will have to ignore personal emotions and what some people might call “common sense” and just do it. Because there is no such thing as “common sense” anymore. Common sense is what people use as an excuse to divert the conversation away from the truth; that they’re afraid, that they’re not crazy enough, not hun-gry enough. That they can’t leave society’s comfort zone to achieve what common sense describes as unachievable.

Lets take a look at a real life example: Steve Jobs. The guy who started off Apple from his freaking garage said a very valuable and com-mon lesson, that everybody seems to know, but doesn’t follow. “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” Be crazy! If you

have an idea that just might work – go for it! You got nothing to lose but time – so instead “proactively procrastinating “ by watching doc-umentaries on Youtube or Instagraming your next meal, get to work, because chances are you just might be the next innovator.

The Social Ladder is a ladder we all really want to climb but can’t always admit to because of all the fears and obstacles found along the way. A ladder that obviously exists in today’s cat-egorized society, but that isn’t faced because the majority of you are seeing it from the same collective delusional perspective, a perspective that only shows one single highway when there really are thousands. Be the black sheep, be that awkward individual, pack your bags and prove that the social ladder is nothing but a ladder that can be climbed with the right men-tality and willpower. So what the hell are you waiting for – lets do it!

ibrahim naji

gulf elite magazine

Life

What you do in your late teens and 20’s really defines the type of person you are and who you will become. Where

you go, the people you meet, what you learn…it all sets the stage for the rest of your life. What you have to ask yourself is, how big of a stage do you want to be on?

I’m a 21-year-old college drop out that decided my life is too complex and sponta-neous to determine what field I want to go into or what major I want to try. There were three things I did know:

1) I wanted to have fun 2) I wanted to do what I want, and finally 3) I wanted to live a life people would be envious of.

So far…I’m doing just that, and I have to say, I’m loving it. Many people ask how…how do I figure out what I want to do, how can I travel to these places, how can I get away with not working for someone…And the simplest answer I have is, don’t think about it.Put all your doubts and fears aside, close your eyes, count to three and say, “Fuck it!” Then go out there, do it, and get yours.

I don’t know everything, and I don’t claim to, if there is something I need to know, I figure it out, sometimes the hard way, but I still figure it out. People have this notion in their heads that entrepreneurs are these really smart people that know all the answers and make good deci-sions, but that isn’t necessarily true. Sure, you have to have some smarts and know

quite a bit, but we surround ourselves with mentors and friends that think like we do and who all have had different experiences but at the same time very similar. And very quickly we realize that a lot of what we do is trial and error, and you have to hope that you can push through the errors.

So what’s the big secret? Entrepreneurs are the biggest procrastinators in the world. That’s it, not much to it is there… Now before some people get raving mad at me, I say that be-cause if you think about it, we do everything we possibly can so that way we don’t have to work for someone else and so we can do what we want with our lives. That includes what someone said a little while ago (I don’t remember who or when, but they said it) about how an entrepreneur is the only person who is willing to work 80 hours a week to keep from having to work 40.

I have come up with some things you need to do and determine before you turn 30 that will help you get to where you want to be in life:

Figure out what keeps your heart beating For you medical people, no I’m not being lit-eral. What is it that you do that makes you happy? If you get excited over derivatives and anti-derivatives and somehow understand how calculus was created to make algebra easier, then (go you) you should be a mathematician. For me, I like woodworking, and was raised in construction so its no wonder that I now build

5 THINGS TO DO BEFORE 30Our 20s are the most crucial part of our life, make the best of it

5 THINGS TO DO BEFORE 30Our 20s are the most crucial part of our life, make the best of it

houses, but doing that gives me the freedom to still sit at the coffee shop and write this article in the middle of the “work week” and travel and have the fun that keeps me going. But I also have fun creating different things, wheth-er it’s a product, a house, a bar, a website, or a work of art, all of it gives me that fuzzy little feeling inside when it’s done.

Determine if you are willing to be broke

When you do what you want, and take a risk of any sort there are no guarantees, so you have to determine, are you willing to be dirt poor in order to do what you want in life and take the chance to get exactly what you want and earn however much you want, if not, if you are unwilling to take that risk, then it may be that you shouldn’t try to be an entrepreneur. It is scary but you will almost certainly lose money, the question is, will the money you lost bring more money in? A friend of mine was talking to me about his business idea and how he wanted his website to be. Now he doesn’t have much money to start a business and when I told him how much it would cost for him to do what he wanted, he was shocked, but he had the deter-mination. He spent everything he had to make his website the way he wanted it to be and to get his company going.

Now his clients hire him for $100/hr to fix or wire any electronics they need him to in their airplanes, yachts or small boats. He is also look-ing to expand his company.

Travel

This is a must, you don’t even have to answer the first two questions, those can take some time to figure out, but traveling is imperative. Traveling, as anyone can tell you, broadens your horizons, allows you to see other cultures and other peoples’ point of view, and lets you incorporate any life lessons and culture you’ve picked up into your life and business. In fact you can check out my article on Quebec here. I used to own part of an inflatable rental fran-chise and when the owners of the corporate company went to China to see manufactur-ers they also got to experience the Chinese culture, which allowed them to tap into the Asian-American market of Chinese New Year bounce houses and other inflatables, giving them more customers and ultimately more profit.

Write down all of your ideas

Another must do…and this doesn’t only apply to when you’re in your 20’s, writing down your ideas in a little book is a good thing to do at any stage in life. This allows you to not only remember that million-dollar idea, but lets you expound on it, make modifications and perhaps grow it to fruition. My father told me when I was younger to do this after always forgetting a dream I had or an idea I was thinking of while in school and followed that up by telling me, “For every 100 ideas I write down, there is at least one good one.” And I can honestly say it’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received and has allowed my to start two ven-tures of my own thus far.

brandon jolicoeur

Let people call you crazy

Like most of the people in this strange world we live in, I’m trying to figure out what to do, and no one really knows what they want 10-20 years from now, but you know your goals and so you set out to achieve them until those goals are completed or you change your mind. Many times I have been told to buckle down, do one thing, and stick with it…but the people who tell me this will be working for other peo-ple their entire lives, which there isn’t anything wrong with, but it’s just not me. So what do I do…at any point in time, I have 4-5 (maybe more) projects that I’m working on to diver-sify my portfolio which is the key to making a substantial amount of money (if they are done right, you can’t expect to do something half-as-sed and make money with it). Plus, anyone in the construction business will tell you it’s sink or swim, Sometimes you have a ton of money coming in and other times you struggle to get an appointment. So what am I working on right now:

*Currently building three houses as well as doing work on four other houses *Developing a construction app, and gearing up to roll out a product on our website. *Developing two other websites, one dealing with gourmet food and the other with travel. *And finally the last and most immense thing I am working on is lining up investors and doing all the legwork for a real estate deal in Nicaragua. (This is a multi-million dollar deal, and will take years to come to fruition, but I’ll tell you more about it in another article) So people see me working on all of this, (not to mention these articles) and they think I’m wishy-washy and I don’t know what I want to do and/or they call me crazy. But I don’t see it that way, when I put these things on my draw-ing board, I put them there so I can go over them tediously and decide if I want to move

forward with the project, then IF I decide it’s worth it, I will put the gears in motion and start delegating what needs to be done to accom-plish the ultimate goal. People can call you crazy all they want, but most of them just wish they had the guts to risk everything and do what you are doing to have that extraordinary payout. And you may not get that payout at first, but you have to keep going; keep trying and you will get the reward.

So go out there people!

TRAVEL! HAVE FUN! WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN! FIGURE OUT WHAT MAKES YOU HAP-PY AND COMPLETELY DISREGARD WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING TO HELP YOU DETER-MINE THIS! AND FINALLY, LET PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE INSANE!

Ultimately, you will be better off for it!

Hacks

The secret to time management is simple: Jedi time tricks.Imagine you were a Jedi master called

Bob (your parents, whilst skilled in the ways of the force weren’t the best at choosing names). The love of your life – Princess Lucia – is trapped in a burning building as you hurry to save her.

You might think of Lucia as the embodiment of your dreams, your aspirations – she is the most important part of your life.Unfortunately, before you can reach her an army of Stormtroopers opens fire. The incom-ing stream of lasers demand your attention, if you fail to dodge them, you’re dead. You might think of them as an urgent distraction from saving your princess.

We all know how a hero resolves this dilem-ma. If he takes his eye off the ultimate goal – his princess – then all his other efforts are for nought. He can engage an army of Storm-troopers, cut them down with graceful ease, but their numbers are limitless, and whilst mo-mentarily satisfying, they eventually distract him. If he’s delayed too long, his princess will die.

And so it is with your life. You have things that are most important and The secret to master-ing your time is to systematically focus on im-portance and suppress urgency. Humans are pre-wired to focus on things which demand an immediate response, like alerts on their phones – and to postpone things which are most important, like going to the gym. You need to reverse that, which goes against your brain and most of human society.

Look at what you spend your day doing. Most of it, I’ll warrant, is not anything you chose – it’s what is being asked of you. Here’s how we fix that, young padawan:

Say no

Most of us follow an implicit social contract: when someone asks you to do something you almost always say yes. It may feel very noble, but don’t forget there’s a dying princess you need to save, and you just agreed to slow yourself down because you were asked nicely. You may need to sacrifice some social com-fort to save a life (as a bonus, people tend to instinctively respect those who can say no).

Unplug the TV

I haven’t had a TV signal for 7 years, which has given me about 12,376 hours more than the average American who indulges in 34 hours a week. I do watch some shows – usu-ally one hour a day whilst eating dinner – but only ones I’ve chosen and bought. You can do a lot with 12,000 hours, and still keep up with Mad Men.

Kill notifications

Modern technology has evolved to exploit our urgency addiction: email, Facebook, Twitter, Quora and more will fight to distract you con-stantly. Fortunately, this is easily fixed: turn off all your notifications. Choose to check these things when you have time to be distracted – say, during a lunch break – and work through them together, saving time.

HOW TO MASTER YOUR TIMEAt the end of the day, time is your most valuable asset

gulf elite magazine

Schedule your priorities

Humans are such funny critters. If you have a friend to meet, you’ll arrange to see them at a set time. But if you have some-thing that matters to you more than any-thing – say writing a book, or going to the gym – you won’t schedule it. You’ll just ‘get round to it’. Treat your highest priorities like flights you have to catch: give them a set time in advance and say no to anything that would stop you making your flight.

First things first

What is the single most important (not ur-gent) thing you could possibly be doing? Do some of that today. Remember there’s a limitless number of distracting Storm-troopers – don’t fool yourself by think-ing “if I just do this thing first then I can”. Jedies don’t live by excuses.

Less volume, more time

There’re always millions of things you could be doing. The trick is to pick no more than 1 – 3 a day, and relentlessly pursue those. Your brain won’t like this limit. Other people won’t like this limit. Do it anyway. Focusing your all on one task at a time is infinitely more efficient than multi-tasking and gives you time to excel at your work.

Ignore

It’s rude, unprofessional and often utterly necessary. There are people you won’t find time to reply to. There are requests you will allow yourself to forget. You can be slow to do things like tidy up, pay bills or open mail. The world won’t fall apart. The payoff is you get done what matters.One final lesson from the Jedi: they’re he-roes.

Heroes inspire us for many reasons: they make tough decisions, they keep going and they get done what matters. But there’s another reason we love our heroes. Inside us all, we know we have the power to become one ourselves.

oliver emberton

Barrett WissmanTHE MEDICI OF THE 21ST CENTURY

prof ilegulf elite

At a time when there is an outcry at how much fine arts and refined music has been neglected, and how the art indus-

try has turned into a moneymaking machine riddled with the cheap tastes and easy profit seeking record labels, an entrepreneur and American impresario is changing the rules of the game. Barrett Wissman is not only a busi-ness visionary, but also a patron of the arts who could easily be described as the Medici of the 21st century.

Barrett Wissman is an individual who sees innovation in differentiation. Attempting to convey a new meaning for performance arts, Barrett decided at an early stage to start his own festival, not in Edinburgh or Milan, but in a calm rustique village all but familiar with prestigious music performances.

Barrett Wissman has been leading a paradigm shift in performing arts monopoly. Shifting from conventional settings and trying to bring arts and music to new places, Barrett vowed to promote refined arts and world class per-formances as universal and borderless. Start-ing with a small performance in Tuscany in an abandoned 18th century opera house, the fes-tival soon turned into the globally acclaimed “Tuscan Sun Festival”. Wissman genius was soon sought across the globe as he was asked to launch a festival in North California that turned to become the Napa Valley Festival del sole.

“It’s a mission in my life to have more and more people enjoy and love the arts.”

Barrett Wissman’s passion is unequivocal and only matched by his business know-how. In order to reach a wider audience and take his

work to the next level, Barrett is also the vi-sionary behind IMG artists, an artists manage-ment firm that represents more award-win-ners and global best-sellers than any other company in the world.

With 500 artists, 200 specialists, 30 years of experience, 10 offices, 6 divisions, 5 con-tinents, Barrett invested time and effort into turning the company from a one among many to a leading player in the performance art scene. The story doesn’t end here. Barrett Wissman helped turn IMG artists into a com-prehensive one stop shop firm for art. Among the services IMG put in place are Ballets. IMG manages some of the greatest companies spanning across the discipline, from the grand Bolshoi Ballet and National Ballet of Canada to the innovative LA Dance Compnany, Gallim and Ballet Black.

IMG also books and manages tours for the world’s most prestigious orchestras and en-sembles including the Vienna Philarmonic, The Cleveland orchestra and the London sympho-ny orchestra.

How do you distinguish yourself from the doz-ens of festivals taking place across the globe? Barrett has an answer for that as well!

IMG is not only about music, but also about a wholesome experience for the senses. Bring-ing music and performance, fine food and wine, film, art, literature and wellness together in stunning locations, providing unparalleled, luxurious experiences that stimulate each of the senses is what makes Barrett’s festivals so special.

Festivals set by Wissman are meant to delight

all the senses, that is why you not only en-joy refined music and arts, but also exqui-site meals, stunning settings and elite com-panionship during the events. “It’s meant to be a festival of all the senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste – everything together”

The entrepreneur in Barrett has done well expanding IMG’s operations and scope, but the artist within also proved useful in intro-ducing IMG and the Festival del Sol to new lands.

Under Barrett’s leadership, IMG helped develop events worldwide, form the Abu Dhabi festival and Festival of the Arts Boca to the Placido domingo festival and others. Moreover, IMG helped develop world-class performing arts and lifestyle centers like the Star in Singapore, Napa Valley per-forming arts centre at Lincoln theater and the west Kowloon cultural district

With success comes the fear of arrogance and delusion of grandeur, something Bar-rett has avoided eagerly on a personal and cultural level.“It would be arrogant for us to come in with all-western music. The collaboration between western and eastern music and

arts is one of our driving philosophies. To show that performance arts lives within all boundaries is our core value. We cannot claim the world is our stage unless we ac-tually work towards that goal.”

Deepening the commitment to cultural de-velopment in emerging markets is one of Barrett’s agenda, because artistic expres-sion is one of the most efficient ways to fight against the vices spreading in various social settings. Fighting hate and violence with love, music and the celebration of hu-man artistic creativity is far more powerful than weapons and tanks.

This brief outlook on Barrett Wissman’s life and philosophy reminds us that there are visionaries out there promoting great tastes and leading the way when. Barrett sums up eloquently what a leader, as he is, should strive for:

“One has to lead. When doing something important. No matter what your job, no matter what your work is, you have to lead.”

mohamed amine belarbi

mohamed amine belarbi

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SuccessTHE PRICE OF SUCCESSIt ain’t all pretty!

Now let me tell you something, as much as we all long for success and glory, once you have a taste of it might not

be as enjoyable as you think. Cars, stacks of cash, fame, fulfillment, relationships, par-ties by the pool and endless vacations in the Caribbean: sounds familiar? I hate to break it down for you but success as you visualize it isn’t an easy ride, and can come at a cost-ly price, especially if you’re after it only for the money. If you are one of the Wall Street wannabes or a dreamer whose only aim is to make it to the top and be able to afford seven Ferraris, one for each weekday, then hear me out because with every product comes a dis-claimer, and if it says that “cigarettes can kill you” on your morning pack, then here is the disclaimer for the success you are dying for.

Sorting out friends

First things first: you are the average of the five people you hang out with. Plain and simple. So if you are used to hitting the gym with your best friend or grabbing a bagel with your besties, once you start playing the game on an upper level, things change. You cannot move your average up unless you change the five people you hang out with. Your new friends will have to push you further in order to keep up with the level of success you achieved. You cannot expect to play in the major league if your entourage still wants to be satisfied with an average life in an av-erage house, working an average car. The question now is not changing your friends and rebuilding your social network, but how? You’ll either have to make it quick and smooth, or you’ll have to drag on forever in a painful process god knows you’re too busy

to afford. Once you start making more mon-ey, allocating more time to your work instead of hanging out, attending meetings without necessarily having your friends included or mounting projects without having your best friend awarded an executive position, that’s when things get rough. The negativity, accu-sations, and hostility grow bigger and bigger. You’re seen as arrogant, too good for your friends or too busy to be a real buddy. You start doubting yourself, thinking that maybe they’re right, maybe you’re having a delu-sion of grandeur. Maybe friendships are more important than pursuing your dream and that it’s time you drop off everything and get back to the old habits. This is how it unfolds, and in most times you’re the loser since you live and die alone no matter what others tell you. As harsh as

this process can be, it is possible to go the oth-er way and avoid being eaten from the inside. You can make it quick and cold, professional in another word. Cutting friendships down is something you’ll do again and again through-out your life, whether you like it or not. Know who is of no use to you, who’s going to drag you down. You have to identify the weak ring and drop it down. Maybe that friend is good at cheering you up when your feeling down or is fun to be around when pranking your next door neighbor, but as you set your sight on making money and climbing the ladder of success, that might not be as beneficial as you thought. Hu-mans are selfish by nature; our survival instinct overrules any moral considerations. A friend who is going to hold you from moving forward is no different than an individual pointing a gun at you: what’s at stake is your life, your dream, and as it turns out, no matter how kind hearted you are, your drive for survival will dictate your next move. Your kindergarten BFF doesn’t have to be your life long partner. When it comes to business, money and success, you have to pick the right team, period.

Money and relationships

Some call them gold diggers, I call them col-lateral damage. As you grow bigger, wealthier and more successful, the dollars in your bank account will attract all sorts of people. Some of these people are like sharks, they smell blood miles away. You might grow up believing that people will love you for who you are, that you’ll earn respect just because you’re a decent indi-vidual worthy of it, that the love of your life will stand by your side for better or worst. Wrong.

Sometimes you’ll think you have friends but in fact what you have is a mutual friend. You know who’s the friend you both know? Your fat pock-ets or shiny suit under the spotlight. Remem-ber that day when you show up to class with a nice car and suddenly everyone wants a ride? Those who barely talked to you are now com-plimenting you on that amazing piece of engi-neering you got rolling? Now imagine what the case will be when we’re talking about a level

of success and wealth much bigger than that. You want to have terrific goals in life, you don’t want to settle for less than a billion or a CEO position at that Fortune 500 company?

Then be ready to lose the ability to distinguish who’s your friend and who’s not. They’ll all put on happy faces and big smiles, but inside each has a different intent. You’ll have a hard time sleeping because you don’t know wheth-er that beautiful person who came and invited you over for dinner is doing it of kindness or selfishness. Your lifelong partner might not be in it because of love but because of financial security and fame. That’s a tradeoff you have to make, unless you want to declare bankruptcy every month in order to see who will leave you and who won’t, but then again who’ll take you seriously after the 3rd time?

Work becomes your pastime

You know what’s funny? We think that the more money we make, the more successful we be-come, the less we’ll have to work and the more time we’ll have to enjoy our lives. Sorry again but I have to stop you here. The more money you make, the farther you reach, the less you can afford to have a pastime or a break. People become invested in what they do, and they lose track of when to work and when to call it a day. When you breathe, eat, sleep, see and smell money, you become an ATM, a money machine whose job in life is to make more, more and more.

When you run your business or make it to the top, you realize that maintaining that stature is possible only if you give more of your time to reach perfection. You invest so much time to reach that standard that you become the best at it, the only issue is you stop doing anything else where you cannot be as good. Taking a coffee break? The first thought that comes to your mind is that you could be using that time to do something productive. You cannot afford spending a minute which otherwise could be invested in making you greater. In other words, you become a workaholic. Some do this not because they have a compulsive drive to do it,

but simply because they love doing what they do best. People are comfortable when they can be on top of their A game, when they can do something nobody else can beat them at. Comfort breeds confidence, and confidence breeds happiness. Why spend time listening to someone who talks and talks about something you’re not even remotely interested in, in a café you hate sitting at, when you can be making magic happen in your workplace or office?

Careful about every step

You wish you could be Jay-z or Beyonce? Lis-ten to them complain about the paparazzi or about how they can’t say or do anything else without having their actions passed under the microscope in the late night show. He crossed his hands? That’s an illuminati sign. They put on a green sweater today; they must be making a fashion statement. They ate at that low-end restaurant? They must be going broke. Every word you say can cost you your career or your business deal. How you talk and wear clothes must be in line with the financial and social status you are hovering in. Nothing can be left to chance, because chance opens up oppor-tunities for interpretations that can backfire anytime. You cant talk politics or religion be-cause the people your cashflow depends on, the giants who play in the major league you play in, are of different opinions and orienta-tions. You have to be a republican when dealing with a republican group, and you have to be secular this day and right wing fanatic the next. Your choice, your freedom of thought is a lux-ury you cannot afford, because a lot is at stake here. Always picture a lens over your shoulder, a microphone under the table. If you make the mistake of thinking that your words and ac-tions are insignificant, then you’ll be sure to be kicked back to that insignificant social circle of yours when your tweet on topic X or Y goes viral because you happen to be so and so. You wanted to draw attention, you wanted to be taken seriously, well you got it, for good or bad, so use it wisely.

Morale of the story, there is a tradeoff when you pursue grand ambitions. Nothing in life comes for free, and neither does success. You’ll have to give up a lot in order to gain what you want, and it will not be an easy process. Money can’t buy happiness or family, but being power-less because you could not buy that treatment or because you didn’t get the attention you deserved can’t make you happy either. It’s all about knowing what you want and what you’re willing to sacrifice for it. It is in some sense like selling your soul to the devil, you might enjoy it at first, but soon you’ll realize that it wasn’t such a great bargain after all.

mohamed amine belarbi

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EntrepreneurshipHOW TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEURThe ultimate guide

You don’t need qualifications, money, a planet-sized-brain or even a particular-ly good idea. All an entrepreneur ever

does is create something that consistently makes money.Think of a company as a machine you design and build. Here’s McDonalds:Your ‘machine’ always has certain parts. It sells something to someone, and re-invests some of that to help make more sales in fu-ture. What’s left over is profit for the owners. Here’s Google:If you can design, build, own and care for such a machine, you can become very rich indeed. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but most of the barriers that you think will stop you won’t. Interested?

Let’s talk about you

Are you young, poor, unqualified – a student, or hating your job? Maybe a touch of rebel-lious? Perfect. You have no bad habits, and will work until your fingernails fall out and your eyeballs roll onto the desk. The world awaits you.Older, wiser, bit of money saved, experienced with a stable job? Maybe a mortgage and kids? Your job is much harder. It can be done, but it might feel like you’re trying to dance backwards through quicksand.The most important qualities of a good en-trepreneur are energy and determination. It doesn’t hurt to be persuasive, but this can be learned. I started as a shy uber-nerd aged 21; I soon learned how to sell when it was the only way to feed myself.Enough preamble. Let’s make you a bajillion dollars:

The idea

Please forget all of the terrible deluded non-sense you’ve heard about the value of ideas. Ideas are cheap, fleeting things; by itself an idea is worth less than a half-eaten sandwich. At least you can eat the sandwich.You do need an idea of course. But under-stand that even the most successful com-panies were not founded on wild or brilliant ideas. Starbucks chose the brazen path of selling coffee in Seattle. Facebook built a better MySpace. Google built a better Yahoo search. Microsoft copied Apple – who copied Xerox.

Original ideas are overrated. What isn’t overrat-ed is timing. Google chose the perfect time to build a better search engine – good luck trying to do that now *cough* Bing *cough*. What you want, therefore, is an astute awareness of a need that is currently underrepresented in the market. You want to spot a product or service that can go places – original or not. It’s usually easier to refine an existing idea that isn’t fully realised than to create a wholly original one. People fear setting up a business wherever there’s competition, but competition can be a good thing. The best place to setup a new restaurant is right next to another successful restaurant; they’ve kindly done the hard work for you of building an audience. Many good businesses has ridden to success on the coat-tails of another – it is usually better to have some rivals over none. You just need to become 10% better.

I personally recommend trying to deliver some-thing that you and your friends would buy in a heartbeat. You’ll know more about your field, you’ll understand your customers, and you’ll be passionate about what you do. If you can make your company about a why - not a what – you’ll inspire yourself and those around you. And to survive the next step, you need a fair sprinkle of inspiration:

Starting

Starting a company is a bit like parenting; ev-eryone assumes you know what you’re doing, but babies and companies don’t come with instruction manuals. You stumble through it, learning as you go.It’s at the start where you’re most likely to fail. Your aim is to build that magical money-mak-ing machine, but you probably don’t have all the parts and the ones that you need may cost more than you have. Your idea is probably at least half wrong too, but you won’t know which half yet. All of this is normal.A big part of starting a company is convincing people to believe in you before they probably should. When Steve Jobs founded Apple, he

had no money and no customers; what he did next is the hallmark of a great entrepreneur. First he convinced a local computer store to order his non-existent Apple computers, with payment on delivery. He then convinced a parts supplier to sell him the components he needed to build them – using the order he just obtained as proof he would be able to pay them back. Jobs and a small team worked in their garage to build the first computers, delivered them on time and made a tidy profit. Apple was born from nothing.Most new entrepreneurs play a few gambits early on like this. If it sounds scary, that’s be-cause it is. I once had to pay staff salaries on my heavily burdened credit cards when an ear-ly order fell through. You fake it until you make it.While doing all this you need to juggle between making the perfect company (idealist) and paying your bills (realist) – an absence of either will eventually kill you. I believe it’s one reason why realist / idealist partnerships are so com-mon in business.Do not scale prematurely. Don’t try to be a big company early on – just aim to be one. Be slow to spend and to hire at first. Don’t waste time writing mission statements and policy docu-ments. You’re small, nimble and on a mission. Make and sell things. There’ll be time for a HR department later.Don’t be surprised if you change your company entirely. It’s a rare business that survives first contact with its customers. Try to avoid doing this more than once though, it doesn’t pay well.Survive long enough, reinvest your meagre successes and compound them. Eventually, you can move on to:

Extracting yourself

This is the step most small businesses never accomplish.Up until now, your magical business machine almost certainly contains one irreplaceable part: you. If your background is accounts, you’re probably the head accountant. If you’re a programmer, you’re probably the best coder.

Whatever you do, chances are you’ll feel essen-tial and somewhat overworked.Here’s the hard part: you need to make your-self redundant. If you dropped dead tomorrow, your business should carry on working just fine. All of your time needs to be spent working on your business, not for your business. The alter-native is you’re basically self-employed with assistants.Some businesses can’t escape this trap. If you’re a brilliant copywriter – say – you’ll strug-gle. It’s because what makes you a great com-pany is you, and unless you can bottle up you into a business model, you can’t grow.McDonalds built a business that works even if they hire almost entirely minimum wage work-ers. Their process makes it work: every burger is efficient and nearly indistinct, and nothing is left to chance. Their brand is so strong people line up worldwide to eat there. Your business may be radically different, but it should be sim-ilarly robust.If you accomplish this, you now own something that is self-sustaining. You should be able to pull a good salary even if you never go into work. Your time is now free to tweak your busi-ness endlessly into something better. Now to conquer the world, all you need to do is:

Scale

The final step is a bit like playing Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. Each question you get right doubles your money, or you’re going home.Do not make the naive mistake of assuming a big company is like a small one but bigger. That’s like telling your kids to listen to you, real-ly, drinking doesn’t make you cool. You’ll learn the hard way.As a company grows the rules and its culture change completely. You may even find your-self disliking the company you created (many founders feel conflicted like this, eventually). If you’ve made it this far, you have many options: hire help, sell, or double-down and see where the ride takes you.

Remember no business can grow indefinitely. Most industries are more efficient at different sizes – it’s easy to be a two-man plumbing company, but near impossible to build a 1,000 man plumbing corporation. Know your limits well in advance. Software is an example of an industry that scales exceedingly well, which is why it creates so many young billionaires.

And finally

It’s never been easier to start a company. You can create a killer product in your student dorm without even registering any paperwork – that was enough for Facebook.I think entrepreneurship is a form of enlight-ened gambling. Skill and tenacity are big fac-tors, but luck plays a big part. However, as long as you can keep picking yourself up when you get knocked down, try different things and keep learning, the odds are in your favour. You just have to dare to chance them.

oliver emberton

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Copoon is the leading channel for mobile deals and location based buying. The idea is to bring together business with new customers. For entrepreneurs Coopon is a way to at-tract new visitors, by coming up with a really tempting offer or taste.

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CoachingREWARD AND RECOGNITIONWant to make more bucks all while feeling good about yourself?

In many of the companies I have worked for, they believe that you shouldn’t praise peo-ple for just doing their job, because that is

what they are paid to do.

I just cannot subscribe to this type of think-ing, which is much more common than it should be.

It’s my firm belief that people’s salary is what we pay them to get them come to work and then it’s our job as leaders to inspire them and motivate them to do a great job.It all starts with recognition and the beauty of recognition is that it costs us nothing, nothing at all, and yet the payback can be significant.

Recognition lets people know that we value their contribution, that we see what they do and that their work is important to us.

Recognition can start with something small; as Ken Blanchard says in his book Gung Ho, if nothing else we can start by recognizing people’s birthday in order to start a culture of recognition.

It’s the culture of recognition, which is a key step on the road to creating a Winning Cul-ture.

Many people have told me that we shouldn’t praise mediocrity; we should only praise out-standing work.

But look at how we encourage our children to walk; their first faltering step is met with huge rounds of encouragement.

No, they didn’t just run a marathon, they took a small step and then fell, yet we cheer them, we call our partners, our friends, our parents to look at this small wonder and encourage them to do it again.

Why do we do that?

It’s because we know its their first faltering step and that with our encouragement, our support and our help they will be encour-aged to try again, to try to take another step, maybe two or three until eventually they can walk, and even run.So why don’t we take this approach with our teams.

Why not encourage a first faltering step, we don’t need to go overboard, we can praise the effort and tell them that maybe next time it will get better.

Let them know that we appreciate their ef-fort, let them know in an encouraging way that we expect it will better next time and we will be watching and will be there to encour-age them.

Whilst I am sure that there will be many skep-tics regarding this approach, it is something that I have successfully done on several occa-sions at several companies.

At one company we started to measure the level of service that we delivered to our cus-tomers against the levels that we had com-mitted to deliver.

At first, the level of service measured was low, the reports inaccurate, but at least the team was prepared to try to at least measure the reports.

Initially 0% of the services were meeting the required/agreed level.

So the first round of recognition to the team was for taking the time and effort to create the reports, to understand the process of measure-ment and to produce the reports on time.

Nearly all of the reports contained errors as the process was new and the team was learning.

For the next month the level of services meet-ing the required level was still 0%. At least all of the reports produced were accurate, even if they still failed to meet the required level.So we provided positive feedback to the team on the accuracy of the reports. This was im-portant to us, because it implied people were taking the approach seriously and wanted to improve the situation.

Over the next few months, the service quality improved with around 30% of services meeting the agreed service level.

For those individuals whose services met the required level, we provided positive feedback and recognition for this achievement, in reviews with their peers and their manager.

Over the next few months the percentage of services, which met the required level, rose to over 50%. As the bar was being raised it re-quired more improvement to gain the recogni-tion at this point. Individuals were only provid-ed positive feedback for meeting the required level 3 months in a row.

When the first team to have all their services meet the required level for three months in a row we gave them a small bonus, this rein-forced how important this was to us.That bonus also acted as encouragement to the other teams who now looked to improve their performance until all their services were at the required level.

We continued on this path, with positive feed-back and encouragement and even set the annual team targets, for which they were they received a bonus, at 80% of the services meet-ing the agreed level for the entire year.Now everyone had seen that improvement was possible, knew what was required to improve the service and could see the reward for get-ting their services to the agreed level.That year every single team achieved the tar-get.One team even achieved 100% for the entire year and in recognition of that we provided a small additional bonus, nothing excessive just a small team event to show our appreciation.The following year we set the target at 90% and again all teams met that target and overall we achieved a record level of 95%.This significant improvement all started with us recognizing the team for delivering reports that

showed our performance level was rock bot-tom.

But we had initiated a culture of recognition; we provided positive feedback for the small steps, constantly raising the bar for reward and recognition, until we had achieved a perfor-mance level of 95%.

I think that ‘reward and recognition’, and espe-cially, recognition are tremendously powerful tools that we can use to drive excellent perfor-mance and use to create winning culture, and that is why I believe they are the fuel in the fire of continuous improvement.

gordon tredgold

It doesn’t hurt to celebrate with your team and employees. Share a toast with them every now and then.

BusinessACCELERATE YOUR BUSINESSThere is no magic trick, only smart and consistent strategy

As we close out the final weeks of the year, there’s a lot to think about; the amazing relationships you’ve built,

people you’ve met, opportunities you’ve had, bad decisions you’ve made and so much more. As you reflect on the last 12 months and goal plan for the next 12 months, take a moment to acknowledge who you’ve be-come and how far you’ve made it.Looking back on the last year of my life I realize there were many things I thought I knew that I didn’t know at all. This year can be summarized in one sentence “you’re ei-ther all in or not in at all.” I’ve been blessed with amazing clients, a great coach, an in-credible network, an unbreakable support system, a partner who pushes me and be-lieves in my potential, and most importantly a never ending belief in myself.I just want to take a moment and share with you one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in hopes that you’ll use this to learn from my mistakes and shorten your learning curve.

Be Open. Be Honest. Be Upfront

This is by far the most important lesson I learned this year because it has not only changed my mindset but it’s also dramati-cally changed my results. Sitting across the table from a real estate mogul at Starbucks in Chicago, the middle of summer, with only one thing on my mind, how to make more money. I was already proud of what I had accomplished but if I was to be truly honest with myself, the reality was that what was in the bank wasn’t equivalent to the hours I had dedicated to building my business. Now nearly 3 years in and I was at a break-

ing point, dissatisfied, unhappy, and drained. Yes I had clients, yes I helped people, yes I had even made millionaires but that wasn’t enough, that wasn’t fulfilling for me, I wanted more.

I came to the point in my business where I knew that what I was doing wasn’t serving anyone and it certainly wasn’t serving me. We all get in business to make money, serve people, make a difference, impact our com-munities, and change the world but that will never happen when you give more than you have. I started with a post on FB that read something like this, “I am coming to Chica-go on these dates, I’ve cleared the week and would love to meet up, if this is something that you’re interested in let me know, no sales nothing more than conversation and coffee.” Then I tagged a lot of connections I had in Chicago, now people were connected to me but didn’t really know me, they didn’t know what I did, they didn’t know the value I had, and they didn’t know the real Melissa, the Melissa that wasn’t computerized. I met a lot of really amazing people, and had more responses than I had time to meet, but it was the Starbucks experience that changed my life, and business forever.

Running late because Chicago is so large I met with Matt at 8 pm on a Thursday as I was getting ready to go back home, we chat-ted, BSed, and told stories, got to know each other, offered to help one another and parted ways hours later. We then stayed connect-ed regularly though FB. A couple of weeks later I was in Chicago again and I needed his advice on a million dollar real estate deal a potential client of mine was considering, he was the first person I called. Matt was a

basketball player so he’s about 6’ 7 ft and built, he’s worked with Chet Holmes, written books with Jack Canfield, paid thousands to be in Masterminds, lost more than a million with the real estate collapse of 08’, and has access to the best of the best of the best coaches, speak-ers, and trainers material in the world, while he has also built relationships with many of them. Now, while many would be intimidated I wasn’t, I’ve been in Forbes, on CNN, WSJ, been called one of top 10 Leadership experts in the world under 30, been ranked #4 for top power play-ers under 40, been on the front cover of Evolu-tion Magazine and had many more accomplish-ments I was proud of.

But my ego was standing in the way of real success. Success I would truly be satisfied with. I needed to extract info from Matt that could help me get to the next level of success in life and business, however, my approach was weak and Matt catches on fast. He could tell that the questions I was asking weren’t about clients but rather about me looking for answers to my own problems. So he said, “How bad do you want this? You and I both know I can give you free information all day but that isn’t going to change the fact that you are unfulfilled be-cause you have no skin in the game, and be-cause you have no skin in the game you aren’t going to change the habits and disciplines or implement the systems and strategies you need to increase your game.” He continued using analogies, and stories to drive home the point that I was in A LOT of pain. And then asked for a commitment, a commitment I didn’t think I could make. He asked for basically half of what I then had in cash which was $50 in ad-dition to 20% of my revenue. I then and still do own 100% of my company so 20% didn’t seem like a lot. Not feeling like I had another option because I knew it was crunch time I literally went to my car, came back threw a $50 on the table and said let’s do this. Not amused or impressed that I threw money but knowing my potential Matt has invested time, effort, energy, resources, and most importantly invested in building our relationship which has since led to

thousands in revenue, clients that pay premium prices, less work and more profit. If I knew then what I know now I would have put skin in the game a hell of a lot sooner, I would’ve hired a coach so much earlier, I would’ve stopped telling bullshit stories to myself about how awesome I am and how I have everything I need to do it on my own, I would’ve given up what little money I had so I could have more money because there is no greater feeling in the world than doing what you love and getting paid what you’re worth. Many coaches, professionals, and executives think they have their life figured out, their busi-ness under control, their investments creating great returns but reality is, when it truly comes down to it the best investment you can make is the investment in yourself.

Having a coach has been the most rewarding, fulfilling, revenue and confidence boosting investment I have ever made and regardless of the cost, the time, effort, energy, and money I spend, I am all in, not just all in financially, but all in mentally, physically, emotionally, and psy-chologically. I am much happier, healthier, and wealthier than I’ve ever been and while I would love to say it’s possible to do it on your own, it’s not. Give up the power play and remove the ego and all you have left standing between you and success is the story you keep telling yourself and letting yourself believe. I want to leave you with this thought when it comes to playing the game “You are either all in OR not in at all.”

melissa krivachek

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Social mediaBUSINESS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIAHow to Apply The 5 Key Success Factors Of Social Media

Every business bases on their unique key success factors and five incredible busi-nesswomen, small business owners, from

around the world shared their “secret success recipes” to help out other aspiring entrepre-neurs make a difference in their ventures.

Meanwhile, nearly every business utilizes social media platforms in different capacities, mostly for marketing purposes.

Here is how you can incorporate the social media in discovering and implementing the five elements in your business or career.

#1: TEST, TEST, TEST

“Do basic business planning, but be flexible about it. Know your market, test it,” advises Jenny Wilmshurst of Tweet Twins. Wilmshurst is one of the world’s first social media consul-tants and one of New Zealand’s first LinkedIn specialists and influencers.

Wilmshurst also adds that if you spend too long planning, you will miss the opportuni-ty. You need to be agile and responsive. In the Internet marketing sector, you may have a great idea and you want to get it perfect graphically, etc., but how do you know if there is a market? Put sales pages out there; get them in front of as many people as possi-ble to see if there is even a need.

How to incorporate Social Media: Statistics show that 1 in 4 people worldwide use Social Media. This means, that your target market is on it. Using various settings and filters, define

specific targeted personas, customize your messages and promotions and send them their way. Monitor the response and react accordingly.

#2: LEARN ON THE FLY

Learning on the fly is part of the deal and Tess Strand of Oregon, founder of Virtual Assistant Forums, the virtual assistant indus-try leader and pioneer will attest to that in a heartbeat. “You dive into a business or a project or even just the idea of making some-thing new out of thin air, and there is no way you are going to have all the tools and skills

you need to make it happen - you’re going to have to learn on the fly; you’re going to have to get in and get messy and try new things and not always play it so safe because, unless you step out of that comfort zone, unless you reach for something that stretches you, where is the growth?”

How to incorporate Social Media: Never before has the information been so easily accessi-ble – just be careful to check out the source to confirm its credibility. And never has it been easier to connect with experts, to collaborate with them and learn from them. So, the next time you need a tutorial on how to operate that project management software, reach out to your circles – chances are, somebody knows

someone who has the answers.

#3: KNOW WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Laurie Guest, CSP, of Solutions Are Brewing is a world-renowned Certified Speaking Profession-al from Illinois. Guest says, “I am a huge believ-er in the Law Of Attraction, dry erase board with quota and excel spreadsheets. I keep color-coordinated squares so that I can see at a glance how close I am to the quota. If I don’t meet the goals at the end of the year, I am not too hard of myself, however. Be true to yourself, not hard on yourself – why did I fall short, what do I need to change?”

Guest adds: “I needed to figure out when enough is enough. True, more bookings mean more money, and more bookings mean I am more successful. So, am I bigger and better? I don’t have to compare myself as long as [I] have the lifestyle [I] want.”

How to incorporate Social Media: This is a tough one… with so many successful experts, available free information and content, and numerous of oh-so-awesome cannot-run-your-business-without programs and products, it’s very easy to fall into so-called “entrepreneur frenzy”. Be conscious about who you follow, what content you download or purchase to make sure it complies with your goals, your objectives and so that it will actually add value to your activities. Know when you have ac-quired enough information and when it’s time to eliminate some. On the contrary, apply some criticism to your activities, be selective of the projects you take on in order to develop and grow in the desired direction. Be who you are and who you want to be – not somebody else. Know when enough is enough.

#4: KNOW YOUR NUMBERS

“Without tangible goals and Return On Invest-ment, we tend to keep doing it for fun. But if you want to learn something, you need to evaluate if it’s a good investment of money and time,” explains Michelle P. Grewal of Massachu-setts, founder of The Dazzle VA and a serial entrepreneur who started her first biz at age of 12.After that, Grewal continues: “You still need to implement it. Start small and be cautious about investments. Every investment has risks and returns and you need to be educated about it.”

How to incorporate Social Media: With the social media marketing, you can cut down your client acquisition costs substantially and still reach a wider audience, laser-focused on your target market/end audience. All you need is a clear strategy, quality content, consistent im-plementation and monitoring that will allow for fast responsiveness to all the changes, trends, engagement, etc.

#5: BE GENUINE – ONLINE AND OFF

Minnesota’s Tena Pettis founded Tenacious Edge and is employing three full-time employ-ees. She always pairs in-person meetings with the online ones. “I am really active in pursuing clients strategically.” Pettis says, “I respond to questions they ask on social media, share their content, e-introduce them to people who would benefit from their expertise… and it’s not just about follow-up… I genuinely show I want to help them. And this results in a lot of refer-rals.” How to incorporate Social Media: This one is a no-brainer. When you utilize the social media platforms to promote your business, or to even build a brand for yourself, be genuine, let your personality shine through. Above all, however, remain professional and only share content that is relevant and compatible with your objectives.

As you can see, social media is more than just an extension of your marketing efforts, it plays a vital role in reaching your business/career goals, so utilize it to its fullest potential.

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