I thought about starting this series of memoirs after 30+ years in finance and share with my friends and foes alike what I have learned over the years empowering a whole new generation of millennials and others what really lies ahead and how to best position yourself in the years ahead.
Where do I start?
Since I emigrated to the US back in 1982, I wanted to make a difference. Why? It is because this is all what matters in life. You either make a real difference or wither like dust in the wind.
My major motivation was Freedom. Freedom from a regime in my homeland Lebanon that became subjugated to an Iranian backed terrorist group – Hizballah.
At the end of the day I guess, the most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.
Why did I engage in finance?
Two major reasons:
- Finance for me was the clearest path to freedom. Money in my personal opinion is first and foremost about freedom. It is not about acquiring things nor flaunting it in front of family and friends. It is all about freedom. Freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Freedom to tell your boss or whoever is running your life to take a hike. The only boss I want to have in my life is money. All the rest is for the birds. This is the key reason I immigrated to the United States back in 1982. To find freedom and make it big time. This is the reason I created Blackhawk Partners back in 2008.
- Finance is an art form. One of the challenges is how to correctly finance a company or any project out there. In certain periods of time, more covenants need to be put into deals. You have to be sure the project under consideration has the right covenant — to allow it the freedom to grow, but also to ensure the integrity of the credit. Sometimes a project should issue convertible bonds instead of straight bonds. Sometimes it should issue preferred stock. Each financing is different, and the process can’t be imitative. Building the world is all about finance.
Success is no accident or serendipity. I had all the odds against me, and I crushed each and everyone along the way. Not because I was a Democrat or a Republican. Not because of my attitudes about social issues. Not because of what my background is or isn’t. Not because people think I’m a nice guy. I succeeded because I’m a capitalist, I’m an entrepreneur, and I’m a warrior. That is the mindset I want to teach others so they can create their own wealth and American success story.
Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you. What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself.
Empowerment at its best.
By:� Ziad K Abdelnour
Ziad Abdelnour is also the author of the best selling book� Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics (Wiley, 2011) and of the upcoming book � Startup Saboteurs: How Incompetence, Ego, and Small Thinking Prevent True Wealth Creation coming out in May 2020.
Mr. Abdelnour continues to be featured in hundreds of media channels and publications every year and is widely seen as one of the top business leaders by millions around the world.
He was also featured as one of the� 500 Most Influential CEOs in the World.
