Last week I had the absolute delight of sitting in to listen and ask questions to a panel of speakers featuring some of the most wealthy people on the planet. The FPC, or the Financial Policy Council, hosted an event on zoom to an audience of entrepreneurs giving out financial advice on money, cryptocurrency and the future of the global economy. My place in the event was set up by the Punching Bag Post, where I was given the opportunity to learn from some of the best individuals across the financial world.
Led by Ziad Abdelnour, CEO of Blackhawk Partners Inc. and a founding member of OMV Capital as well as the founder and President of the FPC, the two hour discussion began with introductions from the various speakers included and set the foundation for the learning session.
The rest of the panel included the likes of Stanford Silverman, Treasurer of the FPC and founder of Minerva Capital, Barry Monies, the founder and CEO of Computronix and co creator of REINNO financial technology, Bret Siarkowski, a visionary of multiple tech and investment companies including being the founder of CaseNet Inc. and cofounder of Ableroad & Biofficient, Dr. Hari Eppanapally, chairman of the Lead India Foundation and cofounder of VRMinds, Paul Vancea, President of Monetize Digital and Vladimir Lounegov, founder and CEO of Mbanq. The event was organized and moderated by Christina Bjornstrom.
With all these minds together, the event continued after introductions and went straight to the point of what the goal was. Here, these people across the financial and technological spectrum gathered to share their insights on how entrepreneurs, businesses, and teams can motivate themselves to create wealth in a world ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic. All of these people built their livelihoods through the 2008 financial crisis. Rather than collapsing under the weight, created ways to continue to build wealth in an uncertain world.
Not backed by any group, party or nation and working entirely independent, the FPC says its main goal is to make an obscene amount of money for anyone involved with what they do. No matter who is in power or what the state of the world economy is, the FPC intends to create successful entrepreneurs and keeps a legacy of maintaining that all of the people involved become millionaires or billionaires. How you feel isn’t what is important here, but ultimately what you do with your individual time in life. Their goal is to make the poor rich and the rich richer and if a government stands in the way they intend to make changes through financing the proper processes to do so.
For advice, all gave outstanding pointers on how to achieve success in the modern world and gave examples from their own experience on how they did so themselves.
Stanford Silverman said to focus on the modern tools available, such as web advertising and social media. He said it is important not to try to do everything by yourself and that building the right team is essential for building great wealth. Every successful business needs a storyteller or a visionary and every visionary storyteller needs a business champion who can handle the numbers and financial transactions. If you want to be a big shot, first you gotta be a little shot who never stops and keeps moving forward. Focus on the vision, start small and work to grow. Do not be afraid of failure, for failure is the greatest education you can have towards financial freedom. Organic growth is always the best and remember to just be happy with what you choose to do.
Barry Monies said to go after the biggest connections you can possibly create. If there’s someone or something in the world that you know could help you achieve your business goals, reach out and connect with them. No bar is too high and always look for new opportunities to learn new things in the world. His opinion is that cryptocurrencies shouldn’t be like a church of thought, but rather a market to be analyzed. He said he cannot give direct financial advice, but also shared several of the cryptocurrencies he was personally interested in including DA, DOT, KSM, SOL, XRP, ONE & LINK. Of course, Bitcoin is included in that as well.
He went on to say that 80% of successful entrepreneurs can do three things: one, being able to explain your business purpose in less than 30 seconds, two, knowing the numbers inside and out, and three, knowing the why for you and your team. He said that no one has to be me, but rather it is best to be yourself and discover what works best for you.
Bret Siarkowski said not to listen to yourself, but to listen to the market and to try to keep as much control over your business as possible. He agrees that organic growth is always the best and to be careful of venture capital as it always aims to control your business model. The more you can fund yourself or get others to help fund an idea with sweat equity and shared control, the better. Acquire and create businesses to control the idea and to make it fit into your vision for the future. Control here becomes personal business freedom. He also agrees with being a team player and that no one should do it all alone. Search for the right team members and be quick to let go of anyone who does not see the vision. Hire slow and fire fast as people are your greatest strength and biggest weakness.
Dr. Hari Eppanapally says to follow your passion and discover what the market needs are. Solid strategy and technology with a great team are how you go out and conquer the game. Be an entrepreneur who learns from everything and listens to everyone. The freedom to create wealth is essential.
Paul Vancea says that there is no shortage of good ideas, but making a good idea work takes creating or fixing a desire or need of the societal world. To him, learning to cut people out and the choices of who you follow and who you choose to work with are the biggest lessons he learned in his business life.
Vladimir Lounegov believes it is all a numbers game and with the state of the modern world that charm itself is the projection that makes an idea become real. Collect money for funding with skin in the game and give back stocks or percentages to your employees so that they feel as much of a part of the vision as you do.
Leader of the group Ziad Abdelnour shared the most insights during the time on his own vision of what it takes to become successful. To him, relentlessness is the most important factor that any true entrepreneur should keep. To him, the only real boss is money and to have power, you have to go out and take it. Financial freedom is paramount and the only way to stand against the forces who would rather you remain poor. And to him, financial wealth is freedom. There are no shortcuts to success, you must take the time to learn the game and put in the work in the real world to make a vision become true or a business idea to become successful.
Nothing will ever come easy, but you must watch the world and move forward making balanced decisions every day. In the world of today, money is king. Money is power. Money is control. And again, with that money, power and control comes independent freedom. He says to remember that you will become the average of the 5 or 6 closest people to you in your life, so choose those people wisely. The biggest part of life is finding out who those 5 or 6 people closest to you are meant to be and making a business life or vision happen with them together. Build a strong circle. Build an understanding of the complexity of human nature and use that to your advantage. Do that & the sky is the limit.
After all of this financial advice, an opportunity for questions came up. I was given the opportunity and told specifically not to censor myself or hold back from asking the hard questions, so that is exactly what I did.
Here’s what I chose to say with my time, asking, “Should we sacrifice certain aspects of global markets to protect and enhance free market capitalism on the world stage? How do you all think business leaders could work together to keep the freedom of thought and the freedom to earn money continue through the future with technology, AI, the rise of communism and global censorship?”
Maybe too hard of a question. The response I got from Ziad was pretty much that it didn’t matter and that money would trump all of those things. Maybe he is right, but I still felt as if the question itself was avoided to a certain extent. I also noticed that as Christina read out my question she skipped over the word communism. Alright with me and understandable as my aim wasn’t to disrupt the narrative of entrepreneurship with the hardships of modern times, but still I felt my question somewhat unanswered. Then I realized, this is the vision I have and I will have to do the work and find the right team of people to help me find the answer to my own question. Perfectly acceptable.
The educational session came to a close and I watched as the viewers stepped out of the meeting one by one. I sat until the end when the host closed the event and watched as the team at the FPC went over final details between the team members of what had just happened. Everyone was happy with the event, including myself, but still together decided that they could do even better. A true entrepreneurial mindset. Myself only thankful to be allowed to listen in and ask a question to some of the most wealthy people on the planet. Even gave a response to my too deep for typical comfort question with respect. As said, I was only thankful for the time and learning experience.
After the session and back scrolling online, I saw the organization @prageru post a picture of a quotation from the writer Ayn Rand on what capitalism means. It read, “Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production – not by force, but by trade – the only system that stood for man’s right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.”
In the future everyone will have to make a decision between free market capitalism and communism. With all of that in mind, I can only hope that the richest on the world stage agree that the freedom of free market capitalism is something worth standing beside.
Aside from that, to all entrepreneurs, just keep moving forward step by step every single day. You’ll get where you want to go in time.
If you are interested in learning more from the FPC, they will be holding another event set to be available to the public in August of this year.
Thank you for letting me join you all and learn from you. It was an absolute pleasure.