I believe success is all about empowering people. The more people you empower, the more money and power one acquires in addition to having an ever increasing impact on his/her constituency. Empowering people is in fact and in my opinion better than education and management hierarchy combined.

The Key question then becomes: How do you truly empower people?

I believe there are several ways to do it. Empowering is really like fueling them with the guns they need to shoot. Here are some ways:

1) Help them realize their true potential – There is no greater feeling of empowerment than learning you have an ability which you excel at that can make a positive contribution to the world.

2) Build Trust. Trust them and help them trust others. If you trust their actions and decisions, they will feel empowered.

3) Support their failures no matter what… ensuring of course they don’t repeat them again. After all, one can never make the same mistake twice, because the second time one makes it, it’s not a mistake, it’s a choice..

4) Be the best mentor/coach there is. Give them freedom. Let them make decisions. Help them validate those decisions. Teach them the ropes, then let them take risks and learn from their mistakes and successes without micromanaging them.

Continue Reading: Empower People

We all have mentors in business, although we’re not always aware of the role they’re playing. My first and best mentor was my late father back in my homeland Lebanon. A man bigger than life in the trading and investment business who taught me all there is to know in the space.

It’s ironic, I suppose, that growing up I never wanted to go into business. I had no desire to follow in my father’s footsteps. But life is funny, and I eventually wound up in business anyway. Only then did I begin to realize how much my father had taught me.

At the time, however, I didn’t appreciate the education I was getting. I was only 12 years old.

It’s ironic, I suppose, that growing up I never wanted to go into business. I had no desire to follow in my father’s footsteps. But life is funny, and I eventually wound up in business anyway. Only then did I begin to realize how much my father had taught me.

He was the one, for example, who first explained to me the importance of maintaining high gross margins. He called them something else — big markups — but the thought process was the same. “Always make a good sale with a big markup,” he’d say. “Make sure your customer is someone you can collect from.” “Don’t take advantage of people.” “Be fair.” Those are fabulous business lessons embedded in my mind, and they came straight from my father.

Continue Reading: Right Mentor

What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin is an entirely electronic, non-physical, non-governmental medium for exchange within admittedly limited audiences.  These audiences are generally limited to internet merchants and traders who have the technological ability to use Bitcoin over the Internet medium. (Without the Internet, without computers, there is no Bitcoin.) Bitcoin is gaining increasing acceptance as a medium for exchange and certainly has piqued increasing curiosity if not actual interest from segments of the investing community and the financial news media.

Bitcoin’s nomenclature is more than wordsmithing. It raises a degree of uncertainty as to whether Bitcoin will eventually be recognized as an asset, whether its theft, expropriation or misuse will be treated equally with crimes of takings of other physical or tangible assets.  Congress and state legislatures have yet to act and various federal and state committees are only now dipping their toes into the water of considering these instruments.  Possibly, existing laws governing derivative instruments may ultimately apply, perhaps on the premise that bitcoin must be purchased by the conversion of an existing, recognized government-issued currency.

The blockchain concept is an attempt to memorialize the asset, and Nakamoto reasonably foresaw the drawback (if only semantic and not necessarily practical or significant) of lacking a physical documentation of creation, ownership or possession. (I make an analogy to the same drawback of current electronic voting, using machines which do not produce any physical record of one’s vote.)  Moreover, the tendency of bad actors like hackers, malware creators and terrorists (or government sponsors) to exploit and abuse technology is both growing in prevalence and efficacy.  Such bad actors generally run parallel to or ahead of their technological colleagues in the employ of law enforcement, the military or the private sector.  As such, they pose a persistent and serious risk to any system dependent on technology or external power sources.  Can one really believe that Bitcoin will not one-day fall prey to such attacks?  Such risks seem to make Bitcoin the polar opposite of gold and silver, which historically have been the accepted (if occasionally mocked) repositories for immutable value.

Continue Reading: Bitcoin drawing line Investor Gamblers

Following up on my blog “Why we need the rich….” at 
A message to Americans and our leaders in Washington DC on wealth creation

Is free market capitalism actually practiced in the United States today still alive or is it now just a product of our imagination?

Let’s analyse the facts and see for ourselves.

Americans have traditionally believed that the “invisible hand of the market” means that capitalism will benefit us all without requiring any oversight. However, the man (i.e. Adam Smith) who came up with the idea of the invisible hand did not believe in a magically benevolent market which operates for the benefit of all without any checks and balances:

Smith railed against monopolies and the political influence that accompanies economic power …

Smith worried about the encroachment of government on economic activity, but his concerns were directed at least as much toward parish councils, church wardens, big corporations, guilds and religious institutions as to the national government; these institutions were part and parcel of 18th-century government…

Smith was sometimes tolerant of government intervention, ‘especially when the object is to reduce poverty. Smith passionately argued, ”When the regulation, therefore, is in support of the workman, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.” He saw a tacit conspiracy on the part of employers ”always and everywhere” to keep wages as low as possible…

Continue Reading…Free Market Capitalism

It is a fact that venture capitalism today is not what it used to be. The bountiful returns of the dotcom years are long gone and venture capital (VC) firms are now struggling to exit their investments via initial public offerings (IPOs) or mergers and acquisitions (M& A). Also, a new regulatory landscape is threatening to hinder rather than help the industry, and the companies VCs invest in require watertight strategies for major growth.

But regardless of where their investments are based today, no VC firm has been immune to the global downturn. The number of IPOs by venture-backed companies in the U.S. plummeted from 260 in 2000 to 13 in 2009, and VC-backed M&A

I guess one of the major issues today is how — or whether — the much-anticipated recovery of the IPO market would be different from what took place after the dot-com crash.

Continue Reading: venture capitalism

I am in the money business; always have been and always will be. No surprise I am approached by hundreds of young ambitious entrepreneurs every year asking:

How do you create real wealth in an age of intense competition and wealth destruction?

Let me keep you give you my 2 cents…. and allow me to be as blunt as I can. Political correctness is not and has never been my forte.

1. Don’t be delusional. You need to see reality as it is first, not as you would want it. Most people do the latter and plan and live by wishful thinking. It is a fact that the vast majority of people want to LOOK rich, not BE rich. The two are opposites: the first requires spending money, and the second requires saving it. Don’t pretend to do both. Most importantly, know your probabilities and statistics. Lotteries are statistically the same as burning your money, as far as your profit is concerned. You’re probably more likely to slip and crack your head open, die in a car accident, drown, or be murdered TODAY than EVER make big money as a novelist or artist.

2. Know what the standards are. When polled, 80% of Americans believe they’re above average in many different fields. It’s because a lot of them have no clue what average is. That extends to the standards of the fields you’re trying to compete in. A man thought he was “good at math” because he could balance his checkbook, though he could be an engineer, and failed remedial geometry, long before reaching the three semesters of calculus and several other math courses most engineers take. A man who thinks he’s tough may not make it through military basic training, let alone Special Ops.

3. Find a wealthy and accomplished mentor early in your life, offer to work for peanuts and learn everything you can. If you want to make and keep the money, you need to know how successful people have done it and are likely to do it in the future. Beware though of confirmation bias: If you only like hearing what confirms your beliefs, you’re digging yourself a hole. Always be on the lookout for evidence that you’re wrong, then analyze the heck out of it. The intent in here is not just to study millionaires and billionaires, and understand how they made their money but go beyond the veneer and see what really makes them the way they are.

4. Go to a high ranked program at a highly reputed school (ideally top 5), to gain skills/knowledge/connections that are directly applicable to an industry that pays extremely well and has a shortage of highly skilled workers (e.g., finance or tech). Some will argue that they get the same education at a lesser school, but you won’t get the same reputation, connections, and network. A master’s or other graduate degree is often worth the additional investment and sometimes necessary. Besides the experience, it signals you as being able to go through the rigorous and competitive admission process and prevail. The education must be cheap relative to the earning potential it provides or paid by someone else. It’s a bad investment if it costs more than it makes. As a side note: Not everyone wastes their college years partying and “discovering themselves.” While you’re out getting drunk, someone else is studying their rear end off, both in school and how to increase their wealth, and doing their absolute best to beat the crap out of you to those lucrative jobs. Education never ends. I’m always reading and learning. Learn how to do that too.

5. Forget about slaving at a pathetic corporate job. If you’re employed, you will be laid off when you don’t expect it or can least afford it. No job is safe. And if you have one of those jobs, if you expect to work 40-hour weeks or less, you will probably be out-competed, and at the very least you’re leaving a lot of profit uncollected. The very rich own businesses. Being paid a salary means that someone else is paying you money to make even more money for them. Time to wake up. Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them.

6. Be a problem solver at something you really love. Integrating passion into a profession is often underrated/overlooked when it comes to making money because people only focus on the big bucks. But when you love what you do, you’ll advance your skills and want to keep learning. Be the absolute best at what you love doing. You will be paid in direct proportion to the value you deliver according to the marketplace. You have to leverage on the right platform at the right time using your highly profitable skill. Above all, it must be the right “YOU”. You wake up and you say “I have a problem.” Can you say a million people have the same problem?” Go find a solution for a million people.

7. Pick and start your own business. Everyone is always on the lookout for “the next big thing.” The next big thing is finding rare earth minerals on Mars. That’s HARD WORK. Don’t do it. Pick a business that every merchant in the world needs. You don’t have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else. And when you are nimble and smaller than the behemoths that are frozen inside bureaucracy, often you can offer better sales and better service. Customers will switch to you. If you can offer higher-touch service as well, they will come running to you. Remember John D. Rockefeller’s (the world’s first billionaire) priceless wisdom: “The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.”

8. Surround yourself with the right friends. Your income is the average of the income of the 5 people that you are usually surrounded with. So get in the company of the millionaire or better billionaire. They know better ways to make millions than most the losers out there.

Read More: How do you Create Real Wealth in an age of Intense Competition and Wealth Destruction?

As JPMorgan Chase & Co has now exited the physical commodities trading business, one wonders what the future of the business at large – along with one of the two major banks that have dominated Wall Street’s involvement in the natural resources supply chain for 30 years – will be, particularly when it comes to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley; the ultimate “Wall Street Refiners”.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may hold one advantage over JPMorgan, as their long history of operating in physical commodities as less regulated banks may provide them with “grandfathered” ownership of assets like warehouses, pipelines and storage tanks that other commercial banks aren’t allowed…I am afraid though this advantage is clearly narrowing by the day.

It is a fact that since 2012 Morgan Stanley has looked at selling its commodity arm and Goldman has made moves to scale back its physical operations.

Market deterioration has also complicated matters. Since hitting its all-time high in July 2008, the benchmark Goldman Sachs Commodities Index has dropped 57 percent, creating losses in some physical areas and driving many of the banks’ key institutional investors out of the asset class.

Given those seismic changes in the marketplace coming to hit us all, I foresee many more commercial bank divestitures in the years ahead as the U.S Senate will probe more than ever whether banks should be allowed to own pipelines, warehouses, and other commercial assets. The Fed, after all, wants those banks to confirm their business activities to the Bank Holding Company Act.

I also foresee even major investment banks getting out of their peripheral business and refocusing only on their core physical oil trading arm. In fact, I believe the commodities business of the future will most likely devolve to its financing and risk management core and the banks will be less active in the physical markets. Wall Street will just become “paper traders”.

The $64,000 question that remains though is whether banks will be able to choose their own future, or will the Federal Reserve’s decision to review the entire role of Wall Street in physical commodities markets see regulators make the choice for them?

At the end of the day, I suppose that the increased capital strains on banks, and especially the political heat being directed at the industry may not be worth fighting for given the slimmer profits derived from playing the physical trading market at most banks today…. Adding to that the fact that the Fed is also considering imposing a surcharge on bank commodities holdings linked to the amount of capital they require or risk they take, though no formal decisions have been made.

Read More: Welcome to the New World of Physical Commodities Trading & Wealth Creation

I am a Lebanese-American, a conservative and a capitalist. I was born in Lebanon, and had one dream and one dream alone – to come to America, and make my fortune as a capitalist. I did just that.

I studied at The Wharton School, went to work at the most entrepreneurial firm on Wall Street, Drexel Burnham Lambert, became a global entrepreneur-financier, and made my mark dealing with some of the largest capital pools in the world, orchestrating large scale buyouts and recapitalizations.

Today, the Middle East is a very different place than the one I left 25 years ago. “This isn’t your father’s Middle East,” a good friend with whom I do business in the region loves to tell me.

And yet he is disappointed that most Americans seem stuck in the 1970s when it comes to how we think and describe the place – as if all Arabs are the same, none worthy of our trust or respect.

Read More: This Isn’t Your Father’s Middle East Stupid Wake Up

I believe Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. This is at least the philosophy we follow at the Financial Policy Council, I also believe a philanthropist should think like an entrepreneur and think of social challenges as an opportunity to create large enterprises.It’s really easy to create a $1 billion company–you just have to solve a $10 billion problem. Most of these large $10 to $100 billion problems happen to be social problems.

That’s why I think that some of the largest opportunity exist for an entrepreneur in solving humanity’s grand challenges.

True philanthropy requires a disruptive mindset, innovative thinking and a philosophy driven by entrepreneurial insights and creative opportunities.

To disrupt the status quo, drive philanthropy at tremendous scale, and develop long-term economic vitality through giving, we must apply the same models for success in our philanthropic endeavors as we do in business.

As a lifelong entrepreneur and financier, I see philanthropic organizations the same as any other business venture.

Much like today’s start-ups that accept VC money but never turn a profit, a philanthropic venture that does not create a self-monetizing, sustainable financial model will ultimately fail.

In short, philanthropy requires disruption.

This disruptive mindset hinges on a practice I call Entrepreneurial Philanthropy, which is designed to support innovation that creates sustainable, thriving economies in communities with tremendous need. Further, it requires the utilization of several principles rooted in today’s successful enterprises

Read More:What is venture Philanthropy? (http://www.slideshare.net/ZiadAbdelnour1/what-is-venture-philanthropy)

Thank you.

Much has been made of the worrisome rhetoric in the State of the City speech given on February 10th by New York City’s new mayor Bill deBlasio. Some in our audience, particularly anyone with a connection to New York City, have already expressed fears about what to expect next from the de Blasio administration.

Other commentators have been quick to deride de Blasio as a Marxist; indeed, de Blasio’s hapless Republican opponent used that label on him as early as September 2013.  However, concerns should extend far beyond the City and the Financial Policy Council believes the de Blasio speech is a harbinger for the world.

Thank you,