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.

Read More:  Why Greek Shipping? World's Foremost Shipping Superpower

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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.

Read More: When To Walk Away From Phonies, Crooks and Losers

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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.

Read More: The Audacity of Failure

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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.

Read More:  Closing Oil Derivatives Related Transactions By Blackhawk Partners

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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".

Read More:  Monetizing your knowledge - A Review of the State of the Art

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.

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

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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.

 

Read More: Can you be both successful and popular?

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