Using Guerilla Warfare To Win

The first step in making guerrilla management work is to establish the right conditions in your company. The second step is to use those conditions to strategic advantage.

So what are those right conditions to make your company operate at peak capacity?

1. Stay Lean and Mean. Just as heavy equipment can impede an army in its battle with guerrillas, fixed assets can be a drag on companies in fast-changing industries. Fixed assets not only lock companies into technology that is soon out of date, but they can also be a drain on your most important resource, management energy.

Acquiring fixed assets is always a temptation, though, because on paper at least, it seems to cost less than contracting work out. Indeed, perhaps the biggest hidden cost is the management energy that goes into setting up such operations. Management is our scarcest resource, and I want it directed only toward those things that are most essential to cash flow generating. Period.

For More:  Using Guerilla Warfare To Win

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Building Your Midas Touch

“Entrepreneurs are all unique. One way to build a business and turn it into a brand is to know who you are.” – Midas Touch

Spoken from a true wealth creator…. So how do you really build your “unique” brand today given all the noise out there?

I thought I’d share those few tips with you in light of my own personal experience over the last 30 years.

1. Be yourself :

Your personal brand is just that–you. If you try to manufacture something that’s not genuine, it will be obvious to others and immediately make you less compelling. Instead, focus on your unique talent or passion whether people like it or not.

Virgin founder Richard Branson is a great example of this. He has said that his brand revolved around “finding new ways to help people have a good time.” Branson didn’t go to college, his ideas are unconventional, and his business goals are over the top.

He has though consistently stayed true to his brand, ideas, personality, and unique genius. His focus on keeping his business brand aligned with his personal brand has helped him become a huge success.

For More: Building Your Midas Touch

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Why Regime Change in Syria is the Only Option

I am afraid our military intervention in Syria is too little too late….but better late than never.

We did not intervene when the rebels were strongest, the Assad regime most fragile, and limited U.S. support to the then dominant moderate rebel factions might well have pushed Assad out of power without dividing Syria along sectarian and ethnic lines.

We clearly allowed Iran to move in and al Qaeda to penetrate. Assad is now far stronger and the rebels are fractured and have stronger Sunni Islamist extremist elements than ever.

We have also chosen the wrong red line. The key challenge in Syria is scarcely to end the use of chemical weapons. The real challenge is some 120,000 dead, another 200,000-plus wounded, and as many as 20% of its 22.5 million people have been displaced inside the country or are living outside it as refugees.

For More:  Why Regime Change in Syria is the Only Option

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The Evidence vs Politics

Blaming North Korea for the Sony breach may be like blaming Benghazi on a video. The Sony breach may be much larger than is being admitted and It may affect your household.

Everyone is agog at the recent breach at Sony Pictures in Hollywood.  Movies that have yet to be distributed were downloaded and put on peer to peer sharing sites called torrents. Emails were leaked that showed far left Democrats insulting Obama and making some pretty nasty racist jokes about him. Angelina Jolie was called a no talent bitch and other actors, like Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith’s children, were also insulted.

The FBI quickly blamed North Korea with absolutely no evidence and later doubled down after saying they had investigated the case. President Obama condemned Pyongyang.

For More:  The Evidence vs Politics

What The Street Protests Really Mean For Business

The public reaction to both the brazen killings of two New York City policemen sitting on duty in their patrol car by a gunman asserting revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner blamed on police, and the original Brown and Garner deaths, is revealing a sharp class divide in Western information society.

The dividing line is not what you might suspect.

The street protests, sometimes as violent as any seen in the United States since the urban looting during the three-day Great Blackout of 1977, may be using the cited reason of alleged police brutality as a pretext. Careful observation indicates the protests are physical group exercises (sans yoga mats), expressions of rage, very much in search of a cause. The undercurrent behind the scenes, the back-chatter, reveals something else.

The new class consciousness has a fault line. But we theorize it is not socioeconomic. It is not class. There is something else at work here. 

For More: What The Street Protests Really Mean For Business

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Branding your Non- Profit

It is clear to anyone in the nonprofit sector today that fundraising is maybe the most important activity out there if you want your organization not just to survive but also to thrive.

Most charitable nonprofits rely today upon the generosity of donors for some or all of their funding and many fundraising focused businesses and consultants help nonprofits identify and cultivate individual donor prospects.

All good.. but what about branding? Do nonprofits at large pay enough attention to it?

I believe not.

For us though at the Financial Policy Council, branding is more than just a logo; it is the image and impression that sits in our donors mind when our organization’s name is mentioned.

For More:  Branding your Non- Profit

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Living a Full Life

I don’t care what you’re doing in your life but you’re walking around with a safety net underneath it. Most everyone is. The safety net keeps you from pushing your limits, your comfort, your ability to see consequences.

Don’t be stupid and live like you’re going to die tomorrow. Go to work. Love your family. Be good and do good to others. But don’t spend a lot of time on backup plans or “recovery mechanisms”.

I am finding out that there is nothing more perverse than to speak the truth.

Far too many people do not understand how profound the real honest truth really is, so they make up stories, lies, and other fictions to cover their perceived lack of interesting thoughts and events.

I read once that dumb people talk about people, average people talk about events, smart people talk about concepts and ideas. Geniuses talk about “meaning”.

For More: Living a Full Life

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Wealth Creation 101

There is not one day that passes without I hear of someone who lost his job, his money or has involuntary ended his career because of some idiot employer who decided one day to drop the ball.

Well let me tell you something…. No matter what your current circumstances are, you have the Power to create a new reality for yourself, and for your family.

The best revenge is creating “Wealth”…. All the rest is nonsense… So start being in control of your life instead of a lackey to some moron who thinks he knows better.

It doesn’t matter how “broke”, “beat down”, “frustrated”, “poor”, or disadvantaged you may feel in your current situation.

You, and only you, can shape your future- and MUST.


For More:  Wealth Creation 101

Mr. President: Consider this

Mr. President, I am admittedly no diplomat; but I was born and raised in Lebanon, I became a U.S. citizen in building my own firm on Wall Street, and I have access to intelligence sources as part of my work monitoring the global oil markets that are shaped by OPEC and the Middle East.

So herewith, some candid advice from a Wall Street financier who truly cares about America’s role in the world and have been at Middle East geopolitics for a couple of decades now.

For a starter, I believe any successful strategy should consist of tackling all 10 fronts below at the same time… Anything short of that will not be effective. Indecisiveness and “leading from behind” brought us here. Our sworn enemies like Iran and its puppet Assad are not going to help us.

For More:  Mr. President

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Time To Wake Up America

There’s a legitimate debate right now about what America should do about ISIS, Syria and the Middle East at large.

No one in Washington though wants to talk about the real reason we’re there in the first place: Oil.

We’re dependent on foreign oil and OPEC has it, so keeping peace in the Middle East has been our top foreign policy priority for over 30 years. Over the last decade alone we spent more than $4 trillion and lost thousands of American men and women on military missions to protect Middle East oil.

For More:  Time To Wake Up America

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What I really Want To See in my Lifetime

As Steve Jobs once said ” Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary”

Well let me start saying that I am a pragmatic person always dealing with the realm of the practical. So I am not going to wish away things like eradicating poverty or world peace during my lifetime cause this is unlikely to happen. What I’m rather shooting for is something that doesn’t sound unreasonable and which has a real potential of getting fixed.

For More:  What I really Want To See in my Lifetime

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Closing Oil Derivatives Related Transactions

1. Seller issues a Full Corporate Offer (FCO) on his letterhead for review and due diligence by buyer along with a satisfactory refinery supply letter including his perivalko agreements or a letter that he has perivalko in place.

2. After satisfactory due diligence by buyer, Seller issues a contract for signing .

3. Buyer signs and returns contract to Seller following contract’s conditions .

4. Seller issues a DLC for one month shipment as contract requires that will revolve for the duration of the contract and upon satisfactory delivery of seller.

For More:  Closing Oil Derivatives Related Transactions

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ISIS In Iraq

I presume we in the US would have a terrorist group as our ally against Iran.  Oil fields in the region would be gravely threatened, leading to uncontrollable spikes in oil prices.  That, in turn, could really put pressure to move to solar, domestic natural gas, wind and coal for our energy needs.  Hello electric cars!

Or maybe that would finally heal the rift between the US and Iran, much to the chagrin of Israel and Saudi Arabia...which could lead to a second wave of oil shocks.  Turkey on the other hand may get alarmed enough to carve out enclaves in Syria for refugees and try to counter ISIS.  That could cause other headaches for NATO...

For More: ISIS in Iraq

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What can I Do to Best Help you Monetize Your Skills and Network?

First off, thank you for being part of my social media “inner circle”…. You are in here because we have much in common and I always appreciate your insight.

As we’re entering the latter part of the year, I thought I’d share and explore with you ways I can best help you “monetize” your skills and network and see where we go from there..

Basically,

1. I am one of the Founding Partners, President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc. a private “family office” that is in the business of originating, structuring and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations and buildups, and growth capital financings, and trading key physical commodities


For More:  Monetizing your skills and network

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Business Lessons Learned in 2014 - It’s OK to Fail

Looking back I can humbly say that 2014 was one of the highlights of my life in terms of learning about myself and how to make big things happen.

What did I exactly learn?

I learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

For More:  Business Lessons Learned in 2014

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The Big Boys

Thanks to the Internet, entrepreneurs today across the board can disrupt slow moving industries like never before.

This process is also creating billionaires the world over faster than any time in history and I believe this is just the beginning.

It is clear the winners in the business world today are very quickly becoming those that know how to adapt and innovate, not those with the deepest pockets as anyone with the right commitment and burning desire to succeed can turn a good idea into a functioning business overnight, and find customers all around the world.

So when somebody approaches me with a new business idea, I ask them three questions to evaluate the idea:

For More:  The Big Boys

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How to Run a Business - 13 Tips for Young Entrepreneurs

I talk to and meet close to 500 entrepreneurs a year – from the true maverick game changers to the guys as arrogant and dumb as can be -

I believe what differentiates a killer serial entrepreneur from the rest of the crowd is frankly how they operate – no matter what product they are offering.

With around 30 year experience on Wall Street backing over 125 companies worth in aggregate over 10 billion dollars during the time period, I thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts in this regard.

1. Get smart: Killer entrepreneurs get a customer before they even start their business… Rookies raise money based on an idea. Now if you still decide to raise money and find it difficult, then your idea is probably incapable of raising money. If it’s easy, then take as much as possible.

If it’s TOO easy, then sell your company (unless you are a potential Facebook, Twitter, etc).

For More: 13 Tips for Young Entrepreneurs

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Top Motivational | Inspirational | Famous Life Quotes

Follow Ziad K Abdelnour's board Motivational Quotes on Pinterest.

Can Bitcoin - Enabled Smart Contracts Renew The Role Of Trust In A World Ruined By Too Many Lawyers, Too Many Laws and Too Many Loopholes?

Will Bitcoin Destroy Lawyers? Can Bitcoin - Enabled Smart Contracts Renew The Role Of Trust In A World Ruined By Too Many Lawyers, Too Many Laws and Too Many Loopholes?

Bitcoin – along with a growing number of similar cryptosecurity systems such as Ethereum3 -- is a series of algorithmic protocols which use mathematical proof to verify and secure data. Its ability to provide for the strongest, most verifiable proof of ownership with which to facilitate fast transfers of information and assets lends itself to other applications where the need to involve and trust in a third party (and the risk of third party negligence, malfeasance or failed performance) can be reduced or eliminated.

This gives Bitcoin a much wider potential than the almost exclusive conception of it – among the sliver of people who have even heard of it – as an electronic currency or the latest hope of anarchists and utopians who dream of a world run by benign computer code, anything other than bad men.

The Internal Revenue Service is one of the few government agencies to even acknowledge Bitcoin but does so only to conceive of it as an alternative, unofficial currency alternative, labeling it in recently issued guidance in March 2014 as “virtual currency” as to which it is to be taxed as property.

For More: Will Bitcoin Destroy Lawyers?

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Create Real Wealth | Intense Competition | 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.

Read More: Intense Competition and Wealth Destruction

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US Founding Fathers be Proud of the Vastness & Strength of the United States

I believe the Founding Fathers would surely be proud of the vastness and strength of the United States, but they would be strongly disappointed with how we've come to interpret the Constitution. 

Furthermore, they would be even more disappointed with the fact we have created a central bank that artificially foments growth and debases our currency through fraudulent monetary policy. 

The Framers warned about our country and capitalist structure suffering from a central bank that purposefully imbalances the market in order to create phony credit and fake booms in the business cycle. 

The size and scope of the federal government, the incredible power of the Federal Reserve, and our empire overseas all would be considered perversions of the U.S. Constitution.

Read More: What would our Founding Fathers think if they were alive today?

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10 Reasons Why You are Not Rich

American novelist and homespun philosopher Mark Twain noted one day that a person can lie with the numbers but the numbers don’t lie.

The rich have most of the money. That’s why they are called “the rich.”

So why is this super class of people rich? Most importantly, how do they really think and act differently from the great majority of people with identical levels of education and smarts?

Having spent a lifetime working with the “super rich” I thought I’d share with you some thoughts which I believe you’ll find in a few instances surprising.

For More: Why You Are Not Rich

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10 Tips to be Billion Dollar Entrepreneur | Successful Entrepreneurs Tips

I meet with hundreds of entrepreneurs a year…from the smart operators to the ones as dumb and conceited as a rock to the real “game changers” out to change the world.

Given my extensive experience dealing – as a financier and entrepreneur myself – with the gamut of entrepreneurs out there, I thought I’d share with you those 10 priceless tips as to what it really takes to be the Billion Dollar Entrepreneur you aspire to be.

1. Be Yourself – Because you can’t really manipulate yourself into success with personality tweaks or even major overhauls. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The most powerful thing you can do is be real.

As in not phony. As in grappling, sweating, laughing, and caring. As in authentic. Think of authenticity as your foundation, your center, and don’t let anyone try to wring it out of you, subtly or otherwise. Billion dollar entrepreneurs are rarely politically correct. They are mavericks with a mind of their own.

For More:  Do you have what it takes to be the Billion Dollar Entrepreneur you aspire to be?

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3 Habits of Smartest People | Things What Intelligent People Do

One of the best quotes I’ve ever heard: “Stupid people do stupid things, smart people outsmart each other”.

I guess the message here is that a lot of ‘smart’ people spend most of their time trying to impress their own peer group (that being other smart people), rather than actually doing something of value.

I’m constantly hearing the smartest people saying about an idea or technology “That’s already been done”; missing the point that /how/ it’s done or /who/ it’s targeted at that would turn it into a billion-dollar business or product.

If these smart people focused on the 98% of non-gifted/non-genius individuals out there, they’d find it a lot easier to impress, deliver value and ultimately be financially successful than by trying to impress people who already know everything.

For More:  Stupid people do stupid things, smart people outsmart each other

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What is your purpose in life?

I used to ask myself this question every day. I think I have finally figured it out after many years of soul searching…. Here are my thoughts. Would equally appreciate yours.

As we all know today, it is a cardinal sin to reason without sufficient data – In today’s world, if you are young, you have had hardly any time to explore anything very much apart from school work.

The little time you have before puberty hits with its own distractions, gets ground down in the relentless cycle of school and continuous adult supervision/micromanagement.

It’s never too late to choose your essence, or yourself, although if you are older, you will have to be much more patient in order to progress.

For More: What is your purpose in life?

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Thinking Big Become a Game Changer to the Truest Sense of the Word

In an age of diminished expectations where the majority of people are today happy to have a job, a roof above their head or a few dollars in their bank account for rainy days or retirement, don’t you wonder what does it really take to “Think Big”, rise above the pack and become a “game changer to the truest sense of the word?

As they say “There is no off position on the genius switch”….. Commensurately, I believe there is none on position either.

The ability to “think big” most likely comes with passion for something….but it also comes from having the insight, intuition and drive to influence something through superior insight.


For More Read: Thinking Big Become a Game Changer to the Truest Sense of the Word


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What can I do to best help you monetize your skills and network?

Folks,
First off, thank you for being part of my social media “inner circle”…. You are in here because we have much in common and I always appreciate your insight.

As we’re entering the latter part of the year, I thought I’d share and explore with you ways I can best help you “monetize” your skills and network and see where we go from there.

Basically,

I am one of the Founding Partners, President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc. a private “family office” that is in the business of originating, structuring and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations and buildups, and growth capital financings, and trading key physical commodities

Fore More: What can I do to best help you monetize your skills and network?

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What I want for Christmas is the Truth

I consider myself a seeker of truth. It isn’t easy finding it in today’s’ world. In an alternate version of the famous scene from A Few Good Men, I picture myself telling Fed Chairman Janet Yellen that I want the truth and her truthful response would be:

“Son, we live in a world that has Wall Street banks, and those banks have to be guarded by puppet politicians in Washington D.C. with lobbyist written laws and Madison Avenue PR maggots with media propaganda.

Who’s gonna do it? You?

I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the average middle class American family, and you curse the ruling oligarchs. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the death of the American middle class,
More: All what I want for Christmas is the Truth

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Starting Business in Qatar | Qatar Investment Opportunities

Things are looking up in Qatar; not only the skyscrapers rising from its desert sands. Index provider MSCI recently announced it would reclassify Qatar from frontier market to emerging market status.

The most significant potential benefit of this reclassification could be the dose of added confidence it will give investors.

I think Qatar’s future looks very bright for a number of reasons.

For ease of doing business, Qatar is one of the best in the region.

1.  The World Bank’s 2014-2015 Global Competitiveness index ranks it 16th among 189 countries in this regard. Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), along with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, a grouping which I believe could surprise on the upside in terms of growth rates in the years ahead.

Read More: Qatar: A Powerhouse in the Making

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Pick the Right People / Employees to Your Company

here is nothing more important for a business than picking the right team.

If you get the right mix of partners assisting you building your company, you have a far greater chance of building a real “powerhouse”.

So how do you find those people?

The first thing to look for is somebody with a personality that fits with your company culture. Most skills can be learned, but it is difficult to train people on their personality. If you can find people who are smart, ambitious, fun, friendly, caring and love helping others, you are on to a winner. In my experience, the best way to find those players is to work with them on live transactions first.

Everyone looks good on paper; you need to see though what’s in your potential partners’ belly behind the “mask” and most importantly how they operate in the trenches before putting them on the front line waging war with you. Remember Lincoln? “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power”.

Read More: Blackhawk Partners Team - Super Smart Mavericks

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James Woolsey - Threading Our Way Through Today's National Security Chaos

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Defeat ISIS - Strategies to Defeat ISIS | News on ISIS

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Geopolitical Impact of Lower Oil Prices – A Personal Assessment

It is a fact that the US has increased its production of oil quite dramatically over the last two to three years. It has actually increased it by the size of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members or about two and a half to three million barrels per day.

So we are sitting today on around nine million barrels per day, which is third only to Saudi Arabia and Russia.

I believe that growth is still going to be happening, even if the oil price stays in the $80 to $90 dollar range it is right now.

There is indeed still a lot of production that is still going to be quite profitable in the United States and there is still going to be drilling.

We have actually seen the rig rates in the United States kind of stay the same and that is really going to keep continuing to drive, maybe even adding another million barrels per day by the end of next year, which I believe will continue to add pressure on oil prices.

Read More: Geopolitical Impact of Lower Oil Prices – A Personal Assessment

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President Obama has not offered a cohesive strategy for fighting ISIS

It is clear to anyone with a half brain by now that President Obama has not offered a cohesive strategy for fighting ISIS. Since 2010, his determination to disengage from Iraq and Syria was evident in his refusal to assist the Free Syrian Army and keep U.S. forces in Iraq beyond 2011.

He has partially reversed his stance following the August 2014 beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Further, the U.S.-led air strikes have not shaken ISIS’s stranglehold on Syria and Iraq as it closes on Kobani and Baghdad. Obama’s lack of resolve was evident from the start when he ruled out sending U.S. ground troops to tackle ISIS.

Read More:  President Obama has not offered a cohesive strategy for fighting ISIS

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What can we expect from 2015? - Ziad Abdelnour

I guess it is just much easier to forecast good news than bad ones; for good news occurs rarely by chance and is most often the result of long efforts. It is generally known well in advance when a fortunate development will occur.

While bad news (sometimes predictable, such as layoffs, some conflicts or famines) generally occurs by surprise, without notice: It is in fact easier to destroy than to build; to do harm than good; to kill than to give life. And yet, we are far more fascinated by dangers than promises; by threats than hopes. Because bad news is information; while good news is stated in general well in advance.

 This is though not the case for a tsunami, a terrorist attack, or a disease.

Read More: What can we expect from 2015? - Ziad Abdelnour

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Knowing the Right People - Ziad Abdelnour

They say “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

I cannot but (finally and after having ruminated the question for years) wholeheartedly agree.

Some of my greatest ideas and projects went nowhere because I didn’t know the right people yet. And some complicated deals went ever so smoothly simply because I knew the “person in charge”.

In my 30 years in business, this famous quote that my father kept repeating to me ever since I was a teenager, is probably the single most potent business lesson that I have learnt.

Read More: Knowing the Right People - Ziad Abdelnour

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What I Really Want to see In My LifeTime

As Steve Jobs once said ” Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary”

Well let me start saying that I am a pragmatic person always dealing with the realm of the practical. So I am not going to wish away things like eradicating poverty or world peace during my lifetime cause this is unlikely to happen.

What I’m rather shooting for is something that doesn’t sound unreasonable and which has a real potential of getting fixed. Yes, everyone wants to end poverty, war or corruption.

Read More:  What I Really Want to see In My Life Time

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Leverage the Insight of our Team of Investment and Trading Professionals to Generate Extraordinary Returns

Blackhawk Partners, Inc., is also a firm that serves as both an advisor to and an investor in its clients.

The Firm’s main role is to act as lead sponsor in “cash flow generating” management-led buyouts, strategic equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations and buildups, along with growth capital financing throughout the asset class categories.

The Firm is industry agnostic and does invest globally as long as it is dealing with the right “operators”.

Read More: Leverage the Insight of our Team of Investment and Trading Professionals to Generate Extraordinary Returns

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Ziad K. Abdelnour – President & Chief Executive Officer

Ziad K. Abdelnour is a Wall Street Financier, Author, Philanthropist, Activist, Lobbyist, Oil & Gas Trader & President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc., a New York based private equity “family office” that focuses on originating, structuring, advising and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations, buildups, and growth capital financing in companies and projects based both in the US and emerging markets.

Since 1985, Mr. Ziad Abdelnour has been involved in over 125 transactions worth in aggregate over ten billion dollars in the investment banking, high yield bond and distressed debt markets and has been widely recognized for playing an integral role in those three key market sectors.

Read More: Ziad K. Abdelnour – President & Chief Executive Officer

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Ziad Abdelnour Physical Commodities Trading/Private Equity

Physical Commodities Trading/Private Equity

Ziad K. Abdelnour is a Wall Street Financier, Author, Philanthropist, Activist, Lobbyist, Oil & Gas Trader & President & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, Inc., a New York based private equity “family office” that focuses on originating, structuring, advising and acting as equity investor in management-led buyouts, strategic minority equity investments, equity private placements, consolidations, buildups, and growth capital financing in companies and projects based both in the US and emerging markets.

Blackhawk is also a reliable trader and supplier of a wide range of commodities to industrial and financial consumers globally.

Read More:  Ziad Abdelnour Physical Commodities Trading/Private Equity

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Welcome to the Art of Wealth Creation By Ziad K Abdelnour

Blackhawk Partners, Inc., is a private “family office” that has two major lines of business.
Physical Commodities Trading

Blackhawk Partners, Inc., is a reliable trader and supplier of a wide range of commodities to industrial and financial consumers globally.

The Firm’s role is to be a trustworthy and competitive partner to businesses in the segments of the market which it serves and to support those businesses as they expand and develop.

The Firm’s customers around the world rely upon Blackhawk as a source of Metals and Minerals and Crude Oil and Oil Derivative Products.

Read More:  Welcome to the Art of Wealth Creation By Ziad K Abdelnour

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Fighting The Rage Of The Mediocre, Envious Losers

The rage of the mediocre is being fed and celebrated like never before, as envious losers realize their class consciousness as losers and are emboldened to take by the intimidation of hysteria and ostracization what the Neanderthal savages of the Paleozoic Age used to take by brute force.

The attack on the achiever class is in full flight. Perhaps never in the history of the post-industrial West have the talented, the intelligent and the hard-working been so besieged by the narcissistic, emotionally cannibalistic tendencies of the less disciplined, less industrious and less deserving.

 

Read More:  Fighting The Rage Of The Mediocre, Envious Losers

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The Entre Era Podcast Ziad Abdelnour - Business Is War

Ziad Abdelnour, President and CEO of Blackhawk partners, a New York private equity firm which has been involved in transactions totalling over $10billion.

Ziad describes business as war and discusses the importance of gathering intelligence to set you apart from the competition

Fore More: The Entre Era Podcast Ziad Abdelnour - Business Is War

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TEE 6 – Ziad Abdelnour : Business Is War

I talk to Ziad Abdelnour, President and CEO of Blackhawk partners, a New York private equity firm which has been involved in transactions totalling over $10billion.

Ziad describes business as war and discusses the importance of gathering intelligence to set you apart from the competition. He also stresses the importance of dealing with life’s harsh realities in order to become a killer shark entrepreneur.

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Is Greed Good For the Goal of Improving Society? - Ziad Abdelnour

Remember the infamous quote of villain financier Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street...back in 1987?

"I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed--for lack of a better word--is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms--greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge--has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed--you mark my words--will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA".

I guess in this context, Gekko is using "greed" to define the constant desire for more, whether someone else has it or not.  He likens it to an evolutionary drive, that the need for more makes us figure out how to get it faster, more efficiently, and ultimately, easier.  And that this, in turn, results in benefits to everyone.

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Why Greek Shipping? World's Foremost Shipping Superpower

With our Firm’s recent signing of a 200 Million Euros Partnership Agreement to Fund & Facilitate the Purchase of 25 Vessels – http://www.pr.com/press-release/582221. I am frequently asked by partners and observers alike why a Greek company as a platform for our roll-up and why a particular interest in the shipping industry.

Hopefully this will shed some more light as to how we at Blackhawk operate.

1. The rationale? Blackhawk is first and foremost a “physical commodities trading house” and second a “family office private equity shop”. What better business model to adopt than building a vertically integrated operation that controls the whole commodities trading food chain from logistics to trading and investing all under one roof?

This partnership with Golden Sea Ways accomplishes all of that and more and we at Blackhawk cannot be more excited about it.

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Doing Business and Making Policy in a World Aflame

Doing Business and Making Policy in a World Aflame: Current Hot Spots, Future Foreign Threats, and Washington's Uncertain Solutions - Financial Policy Council
Wednesday, 26 November 2014 6:00 - 9:00 pm

Topic:  Doing Business and Making Policy in a World Aflame:  Current Hot Spots, Future Foreign Threats, and Washington's Uncertain Solutions

Date: Wednesday November 26, 2014

Time: 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Location: The Graduate Center / CUNY at 365 Fifth Avenue at The Elebash Recital Hall – On the main floor of the building and on the left as you enter into the main lobby

 

More Details Visit: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/FPCNEW/EventDetails.aspx?id=36/Doing-Business-and-Making-Policy-in-a-World-Aflame:--Current-Hot-Spots,-Future-Foreign-Threats,-and-Washington%27s-Uncertain-Solutions

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The Most Important lessons i’ve learned in My Business Career

 The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned in My Business Career

Over the years, one of the questions I’ve been asked most frequently is “What are the most important lessons I have learned in my business career?” Well here are the 10 basic ones which I still apply in my everyday life. 1. Take care of your health, your relationships, your career, your (ongoing) education, and your integrity. They are hard to recover when lost.

When a manager or company tells you that the project in front of you is more important than any of these, it’s almost certainly not the case, and you are a fool for making these kinds of sacrifices to support someone else’s vision or career. 2. Nothing is difficult, only unfamiliar. Applies to personal or professional; “creative” and “non-creative” fields; work or life.

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The most Important Lessons I’ve Learned in my Business Career

Over the years, one of the questions I’ve been asked most frequently is “What are the most important lessons I have learned in my business career?”

Well here are the 10 basic ones which I still apply in my everyday life.

1. Take care of your health, your relationships, your career, your (ongoing) education, and your integrity. They are hard to recover when lost. When a manager or company tells you that the project in front of you is more important than any of these, it’s almost certainly not the case, and you are a fool for making these kinds of sacrifices to support someone else’s vision or career.

Read More: The most Important Lessons I’ve Learned in my Business Career

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When To Walk Away From Phonies, Crooks and Losers

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, even though wannabe innovators are by nature just a tiny fraction of the population. The keys to success often run, incredibly enough, through just one attribute: Good character. 

There are several personality traits that comprise this character attribute. The traits will often appear in multiple strands in a person's life. The traits making one person successful financially are often the ones making him (or her) successful socially, for example. The reverse, the traits which bring down a person, are similarly true.

  

Basic honesty is a must. A person must be able and willing to tell the truth. Moreover, they must tell it quickly, uncompromisingly and fully.  A simple question must elicit a simple answer. Any defensiveness, any protestations of the question you ask, should raise a red flag and get you ready to pull the chute on the proverbial parachute.

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Blackhawk Partners CEO Ziad K. Abdelnour Joins MidPoint

Blackhawk Partners CEO Ziad K. Abdelnour joins MidPoint to discuss who may be funneling money between the Islamic State (ISIS) and Assad and what President Obama needs to do

See this video: Blackhawk Partners CEO Ziad K. Abdelnour joins Mid Point ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjHpme__JI4 )

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The Audacity of Failure

Those of us who have succeeded in life, or at least have achieved enough to have earned the authority to speak on what does and does not work, often find it useful to reflect on what has caused or allowed us to turn challenges into successes, adversity into triumph, and lemons into lemon meringue.

I have been fascinated with the increasing self-assuredness of the successful. While some successful people have insecurities and many have adversity, the common strand of the success stories is confidence.

Or perhaps most accurately: fearlessness.

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Closing Oil Derivatives Related Transactions By Blackhawk Partners

We at Blackhawk are approached by at least 500 supposed providers and sellers of oil derivative and other crude oil products a year and yet maybe only 2% of such providers have access to real product. Surprised? You shouldn’t be at all.

As you may or may not know, the reality today is that oil buyers are a dime a dozen, real fuel is the issue. The secondary market is for the most part composed of “fake offers” around the world doing a circle jerk on the Internet as people who have the real oil already know where to sell it.

In fact, you can just imagine the number of people who have “allocation contracts” that never get a drop of oil because they don’t pay the people they have to pay to get oil. Allocation holders are not title holders no matter how loudly they protest.

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Will Bitcoin Destroy Lawyers?

A revolution in information technology may soon turn the theory of “smart contracts” into an actual mechanism for increasing trust among transacting parties, reducing the risks inherent when third party intermediaries are needed and even redefining lawyers’ role in and stranglehold over the modern economy. 

Universal access to mathematical proof can give new life to the Russian proverb (which Americans may know from President Reagan’s English translation): “Trust but verify.”1

Bitcoin2 – along with a growing number of similar cryptosecurity systems such as Ethereum3 -- is a series of algorithmic protocols which use mathematical proof to verify and secure data. Its ability to provide for the strongest, most verifiable proof of ownership with which to facilitate fast transfers of information and assets lends itself to other applications where the need to involve and trust in a third party (and the risk of third party negligence, malfeasance or failed performance) can be reduced or eliminated.

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Monetizing your knowledge - A Review of the State of the Art

It is amazing the number of people  I meet on a daily basis who have all kinds of knowledge stored in their brains but still have not figured out yet how to convert all this knowledge into money.

Can this be achieved? ... Well, here are my personal thoughts.

1. Knowledge does not convert into money. Knowledge is the multiplier for work. Work converts into money. It is only challenging to say the least to convert knowledge into money if one is not willing to put any work to support their knowledge with. So for all the day dreamers out there, it all starts with "smart work".

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The most Important Lessons I’ve Learned in my Business Career

Over the years, one of the questions I’ve been asked most frequently is “What are the most important lessons I have learned in my business career?”

Well here are the 10 basic ones which I still apply in my everyday life.

1. Take care of your health, your relationships, your career, your (ongoing) education, and your integrity.

They are hard to recover when lost. When a manager or company tells you that the project in front of you is more important than any of these, it’s almost certainly not the case, and you are a fool for making these kinds of sacrifices to support someone else’s vision or career.

Read More: The most Important Lessons I’ve Learned in my Business Career

How do you deal with a large competitor who is out to get you?

We at Blackhawk Partners advise a number of companies in the path to growth.

Some of the most awkward situations we encounter on quite a regular basis is a software or other company about to be bullied by a 800 pound gorilla basically stating: “Sell to us or we will apply all of our resources to replicating your product and crushing you.”

How do one go about fending off such a threat?

In my opinion, the basic question you have to ask is: How credible is the threat?

In general, many early stage companies compete with bigger companies.

At the risk of oversimplifying the competitive dynamic….

• The early stage company’s advantages include: its focus, its product, and/or its team.

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Can you be both successful and popular?

This question rests on the premise that success is not rewarded, although it is acknowledged, and the two shall not be confused.

People often confuse and mistake another person's curiosity for concern. An inquisitive person should be viewed as curious, to be sure, but never should be assumed to be concerned.

On the same basis, the successful, the "achievers," should not perceive the attention they get as a sign of popularity. It certainly is not respect -- which is rarely given, never mind perceived.

What is it, then?

 

Most often, this attention is just a symptom of jealousy and envy.  

The attention, therefore, is a sign of negatives. And your impulses to move towards the attention, to seek it, to reward it, are luring you into a trap designed specifically to hurt you.

 

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Client Testimonials about Blackhawk Partners & Ziad K abdelnour

Blackhawk Partners is the quintessential emerging physical commodities trading/private equity house in the market. Gets the job done no matter what and keeps

Blackhawk Partners is the quintessential emerging physical commodities trading/private equity house in the market. Gets the job done no matter what and keeps you happy. Just make sure you are as straight with them as an arrow. Highly recommended. 

                                                                              - Jeff Abernathy, Financier on 18 Sep 2013

 

Ziad Abdelnour is special. He is a leader. He is smart. He is direct. He is a model. It's hard to describe a man like him, I could use the word "genius" but Ziad is better than a genius. He is simply the best. I respect and admire him. Ziad has my highest recommendations

                                                             -Matteo Lagreca, Fund Manager at Ares Quant on 12 Sep 2013

Read More: Client Testimonials about Blackhawk Partners & Ziad K abdelnour

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