Business Fit Magazine January Issue 2

Jan/Feb 2020

Make

exercise a

lifestyle choice in

2020!

Marketing Strategies

to build your business

How caring more can

increase your sales

www.businessfitmagazine.com

Verรณnica Sosa Find out more about the woman behind the magazine

Dear readers, Happy New Year We are so excited to be celebrating four years of Business Fit Magazine this January 2020. We are very proud of all our achievements with the magazine and are looking forward to this new decade to accomplish even more of our goals.

2020 is an amazing number which will take many of us on a road full of different challenges leading us to wonderful transformations, but we will need to put the work in, to make the changes in ourselves and our way of doing things.

At the end of 2019, we had a great opportunity to assist the UN and have made a commitment to fully support this organisation and its 17 goals to help transform our world. Everyone on our planet counts and for 2020 we want to motivate you to move forward and help us create a better world.

The UN’s 17 Goals The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice.

The 17 Goals are all interconnected, and in order to leave no one behind, it is important that we achieve them all by 2030.

Goal 1 No poverty.

Goal 2 Zero hunger Goal 3 Good health and well being Goal 4 Quality education Goal 5 Gender equality Goal 6 Clean water and sanitation Goal 7 Affordable and clean energy Goal 8 Decent work and economic growth Goal 9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure Goal 10 Reduce inequalities Goal 11 Sustainable cities and communities Goal 12 Responsible consumption and production Goal 13 Climate action Goal 14 Life below water Goal 15 Life on land Goal 16 Peace justice and strong institutions Goal 17 Partnerships We will work every single day to try to achieve these goals, to be better people and have better businesses to help develop a better world for us all.

Together is better

VerĂłnica Sosa Publisher www.businessfitmagazine.com

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FIT FEATURES

Pashion Fasion - p36 There is No Second Chance to Make a First Impression Anna Meier

Lucía Allende p22 Veronica Sósa p46

Exercise – Make it a Lifestyle Choice p12

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The Five Types of Marketing For Your Marketing Strategy Jacqueline CamachoRuiz p18 How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life David Behrens p6 Source of Creativity Ismael Cala p34 Understanding the Adult, Understanding the Child Barbara Malinowski p52

The Future of Our Wealth and Financial System Vikki Thomas p28 Stop Selling and Start Caring Arnon Barnes p40

Publisher & Founder Verónica Sosa Business Fit International Advisory Board Viola Edward Vikki Thomas

REACH OUT For information on advertising or placing an article in Business Fit Contact us: Email: hello@businessfitmagazine.com editor@businessfitmagazine.com Phone: +32 468 218 887

Contributors Anna Meier Arnon Barnes Barbara Malinowski Christopher Gladwell Greta Aguilar Ismael Cala Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz Vikki Thomas General Editorial Coordinator Claire Morley Art and Design Director Leo Collier-Bett Graphic Designer Adverts Javier Sanchez

Imagine There Was No Such Thing as Spirituality Christopher Gladwell p30

How to Align Your Passion for Fashion and Conscious Consumption Greta Aguilar p56

Copyright © 2020 by Verónica Sosa.

All rights reserved.

This Magazine or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

M-20318-2017

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Mindset & Emotion

How Mindfulness

Can Change Your Life Meditation Expert, David Behrens, tell Business Fit readers how his learnings as a monk at a young age, helped him to understand how mindfulness can help you navigate your own inner world to be present in life and shine.

David Behrens’ interest in the Eastern traditions began when he was about 14 years old and his older sister came home with a book on yoga: When I peeked into her room saw she was doing a shoulder stand, I thought, “Whoa, that looks interesting!”

In my first year of college, there was a teacher who was a pretty accomplished hatha yogi, who had studied with Sivananda, and taught at Brooklyn College and I loved it. And that kind of opened up a door and I thought maybe one day I would go to India. Once I found my way there, I was very focused on practicing and, pretty quickly, there was an opportunity to become a monk.

So I became a monk in my early twenties, it was a lot of study, a lot of practice, and that was my life, studying meditation, studying yoga, studying the different philosophies, having a lot of wonderful inner experiences where I really felt the power of meditation.

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I did a lot of study and I think the beauty was that the learning was always based on three factors.

One is that whatever you learn is already written, say in an ancient scripture, it’s not that there’s one teacher and he’s offering something that’s never been offered before. If you study the lives of the great masters, they will always go back to the original scripture where it was written and show that it’s always been there. So I would study the scripture and then the second important thing is you had to practice it. You had to try it on, like a pair of clothes.

And the third thing is that you had to have an experience. You had to feel that it was supporting your life, it was making you happier.

It was creating more discipline and more wellbeing. And it worked. It couldn’t be that it was just this wonderful philosophy. You should really feel that this is helping you. It’s making you feel more complete inside or it’s making you feel more filled with great energy. And at the same time, you should be able to feel more purpose in your life.

Spiritual practices nourish you. They take care of you. They cleanse you, and they build your energy. And they sustain your energy, from physical energy to actual spiritual energy, where you feel dynamically full inside. And usually that makes you want to dedicate yourself to helping others.

Once I returned to the west, I worked with people with mental health and addiction recovery. As a monk you’re always reflecting to ensure that whatever you’re doing, you’re completely present with it and your heart is with it and it is serving you in your overall growth. And that was something I’ve always wanted. I wanted it to keep giving me more knowledge and growth and maturity.

Through my work with the NHS Recovery Colleges for mental health, the London Charter Harley Street Rehab Centre, and the Nelson Trust, which is one of the main trusts for addiction, I found that the formula that became the most interesting was the combination of two factors, especially with mental health and addiction. These are the factor of awareness and the factor of being able to guide your mind.

When you’re working with someone who is mentally ill, their ability to be aware of their own mind is really limited. Awareness means you sense that you’re present, you’re here, and you’re able to watch how the mind changes.

When you’re not healthy, the mind changes and

Mindfulness is about being present in life

it consumes you, it overwhelms you, and you lose a sense of yourself. And I found that the mindfulness especially allowed a person to get that ability back.

The second biggest factor is being able to guide one’s mind. During mental illness, the mind gets in a loop or it gets in a hallucination or it completely becomes unconscious and you can’t come out of it or guide yourself back to daily activities. And I found the simple practice of mindfulness is so helpful: being present, guiding your mind, bringing it to the breath, and finally getting a little stillness, because being with such an unstable mind is exhausting.

Meditation is a more classical practice, a time set aside when I’m with myself. I’m focusing inward and I’m going deeper and discovering myself, whether it’s through mantra or through being with the breath or witnessing the mind. I found the same thing happened with addiction.

If you become addicted to a substance or a particular behaviour, you lose the ability to be aware and you lose the ability to guide your mind. And that’s one of the keys in addiction, building back guidance, which translates into choice. I studied the science on that. If a person becomes addicted to a substance, the prefrontal cortex of the brain becomes weak and that’s executive decision making. And it’s amazing that you practice mindfulness and you gain back the power of choice. So when cravings come or an intense need for the drug, or you need to do

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Mindset & Emotion

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Spiritual practices nourish you and take care of you

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Mindset & Emotion the behaviour that you’re addicted to, you can somehow be with it with a little distance, and then you can guide your mind to a safer place.

And it actually is built back by daily practice.

Mindfulness is about being present in life. It’s about learning how to navigate in your own inner world and outer world. The Inner world is your mental and emotional world. Navigate means that you’re able to move there. So if you’re like a boat, you can steer the boat. And if intense waves come, or different challenges come with emotions or thoughts, you can move with them.

You can decide which one to go with and which one not to go with. You can guide yourself. So the mindfulness is being more present. It’s not so much turning the mind inward to discover the deeper self. Mindfulness is so much about dayto-day life.

Meditation is when you will sit for your classical time each day, or twice a day, and mindfulness might be when you’re at work. I’m mindfully doing my tasks, I’m taking a walk, I’m just present in what I feel, what I see, just in my senses and my body. Or, at times, I’m aware of my breath to get centred. So I would say mindfulness is more the day-to-day life application of being available. And being the master of your life.

basics, you can build upon them. It has to fit in your life the way you are. And who you are.

There’s so much out there for everybody. You don’t have to be clinically ill or addicted. It could just be that you want to become more alive.

More present in life. You want to gain more skill to live life in the best way.

What I’ve found more than anything is that to be healthy in life is a multi-levelled experience.

It’s mind, it’s body, it’s emotional world. It’s spirit, it’s relationships, it’s all those aspects, and we have to take care of all those things. Eventually, we turn towards different ways to build those abilities, to be truly healthy, happy in a holistic way. Mindfulness and meditation are really for everyone because they also will support you if you’re religious, if you’re not interested at all in spirituality, if you just want to build your ability to be present in life. It’s a skill not just to get healthy when you’re ill. It’s a skill to shine more, and be more available in life.

Mindfulness has always come, throughout history, when society needed it. It’s nothing new.

All you have to do is get out the history books.

Study the lives of the great masters of meditation and find out when they taught. And it will always be when the society needed it.

I think intuitively everybody realises when they need help. When it’s not going right or life is beginning to unravel. And it’s happening for many people. There’s a lot of challenges. Mindfulness is for everybody. Every human being needs to gain a very healthy relationship to their own mind, their emotional world, and they can build that relationship with stronger focus.

Every human being needs to gain a very healthy relationship to their own mind

It is very accessible now, there are so many books, there are so many YouTubes. It does help to have some guidance at first, but the most important thing is that you do the practice and you taste it. A teacher is helpful or a good book to study from, but like everything in life, in the end you have to make it your own. Once you learn the

David Behrens specialises in the clinical applications of mindfulness and meditation in the treatment of mental illness and addiction. He spent 27 years living as a monk in India before moving to England to become a homeopath in 2007.

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Body

Exercise

- Make it a Lifestyle Choice This year, make the inclusion of exercise into your life, one of your main priorities. We have all heard of the benefits regular exercise provides, so stop procrastinating and find the one which works for you, make it a lifestyle choice and keep with it.

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As we start a new year and a new decade, many people’s minds will turn to their New Year’s resolutions. Invariably one of them will be to lose weight after the festive season or to exercise more. Of course we all start off with good intentions, but most of us will fall by the wayside before the month of January is through.

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Body However, the importance of looking after our body should not be under-estimated or ignored.

It doesn’t have to be something intense, like suddenly going to the gym for a vigorous workout three times a week, or signing up for an expensive health club membership, which soon gets abandoned. Sometimes, like many things in life, it can be something quite simple. But often what is not considered is that a lifestyle change is required and this is where our new Year’s resolution often goes wrong.

Our bodies deserve more than a quick-fix solution. They work hard for us, constantly: pumping our blood into our organs, breathing in air to give us life, working our limbs to move us from one place to another, they never stop.

And so they deserve a little bit of thought and care, regularly. Not to mention the benefits on our mind, by exercising.

Here are some good reasons for taking exercise seriously: • • • • • • • • • •

It makes you feel happier, it eases anxiety and fights depression Helps you control your weight.

Reduces your risk of heart diseases.

Helps your body manage blood sugar and insulin levels.

It triggers the growth of new brain cells and reduces dementia risk Strengthens your bones and muscles.

Reduces your risk of some cancers, including colon, breast , uterine, and lung cancer.

Improves your sleep.

Increases your chances of living longer.

Improves your sexual health.

There is so much beauty around us and we are often in too much of a rush to appreciate it.

Maybe you aren’t an outdoors type of person, so try a daily yoga or Pilates app, there are hundreds available to download. You can choose when you want to take the course, to fit in with your day.

Or maybe you travel a lot and find it hard to have an exercise routine. A 20-minute yoga workout in your hotel room before taking your shower will help give your body some well-earned relaxation.

There are many types of workouts to fit your situation. Maybe you suffer from lower back pain and working on that area can provide the pain relief you need. Or perhaps you want to increase your flexibility, balance or core strength. You can find the course to meet your needs, whether it is through an app or a local class.

For some a personal trainer is a desirable option.

A set time a couple of times a week, with someone to motivate you to reach your exercise goals and keep you on track. For those with more time, golf is a great option, walking the five or six miles and enjoying the company of friends. Or perhaps an end goal will work for you, make a decision to run in a 10km or half marathon and work out a training schedule.

As with everything in life, we are all different, so we will not all be motivated by the same exercise style. However, we may need to change our mental attitude towards exercise and rather than seeing it as a chore, something we must endure, we need to find the brand of exercise which becomes a pleasure to us and which we can incorporate into our lives and our schedules.

Even small life changes can help, simple things like taking stairs instead of the elevator, or walking to a colleague’s desk instead of sending them an email. Don’t always park in the spot nearest your destination.

For more active work outs, find something you love to do. For some it may be a team sport, join a netball, a five-a-side football or rugby team. Or maybe you love to dance? Salsa and Ceroc are popular, find a local class, take your partner and then impress your friends when you next go dancing.

If you love nature, take hikes in the mountains, parks, or forests and watch the seasons change through the year, as the spring flowers start to grow or the autumnal leaves change colour.

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Our bodies deserve more than a quick-fix solution

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Body

Motivation is often a real deal breaker when it comes to making the effort to exercise, which is why a change in attitude towards it is so vital.

Motivation isn’t something that just happens to you, it is something you have to create. While exercise may be about movement, until your make up your mind to include exercise in your life, you won’t move anywhere, at least not for very long.

So mentally accept the fact that you have to exercise. Once you have made peace with that fact, it should be a little easier to just get on with and if you find the type of exercise which suits you, it is no longer a chore, but something to look forward to.

In the past few decades our lifestyles have changed dramatically. We have more time-saving and in many cases exercise saving machines – we no longer walk to school or work, our work is less physical thanks to automation and computers. So it is necessary to acknowledge our responsibility towards ensuring we get enough physical exercise and the need to have a balance in how we live our lives.

We need exercise to mean something to us. It could be to lose weight, to run a marathon, it could be to help manage pain, to reduce stress, stay flexible or keep your energy levels up or it could be the only time you get to yourself. You have the freedom to choose the activity which appeals to you. If you can find your own value and meaning and the form of exercise which you enjoy, you will find your motivation. Then exercising more won’t be another one of those New Year’s resolutions which has been forgotten by the time February arrives, it will be a lifestyle choice to a healthier, happier you.

Mentally accept the fact that you have to exercise

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Business

Types of

Marketing for Your Marketing Strategy

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Award-winning serial entrepreneur, international speaker, philanthropist and author, Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz, explains to our readers five different types of marketing to help us make informed decisions about the best ones to allocate our time, money and resources.

After 11 years as head of JJR Marketing, a Chicagoland marketing firm serving start-ups to Fortune 500s, I still delight in helping companies find the “right recipe” for their marketing. Like a chef experienced with different ingredients, I’ve found that not all marketing is the same, or designed for the same results. For some businesses, preparation of their marketing is the challenge while for others, it’s how to serve it up, or even, how to invite others to share in the bounty.

All marketing is not created equal, nor is it meant to be. So in our relentless commitment to elevating companies and their marketing savvy, I’ve developed a brand new way of understanding the many different types of marketing that can help businesses gain a greater awareness of their efforts and more confident understanding of how to best allocate their time, money and resources.

We’ve coined this new perspective the “Five Types of Marketing” and by understanding what each of them do, you can work them into your marketing strategy and set realistic goals for success. In a way, the “Five Types” are like ingredients that you expertly add to your marketing plan to create the perfect, delicious result.

All marketing is not created equal

1: Foundational Marketing Foundational marketing refers to the key elements needed to create the baseline of a marketing campaign. Almost every client needs at least some forms of foundational marketing to implement their plan. Newer businesses and start-ups must prioritise their foundational pieces before other efforts can succeed. While these marketing activities will probably not make the phone ring immediately, they are important stepping-stones to every other marketing initiative you take.

• • • • • •

A marketing calendar which outlines the entire campaign, complete with launch dates and deadlines A website/landing page so that a URL may be referenced in successive marketing efforts Logos or other graphic representation of client entities Social media pages where successive marketing efforts may be shared Printed brochures or materials that serve as connections for face to face meetings Collateral such as business cards, letterhead, etc.

2: Executional Marketing Executional marketing is designed to provide regular communication with the captive and prospective audiences, so they ultimately begin to anticipate it. Any effort which keeps the client connected to their audience can be considered executional marketing. This is a very effective type of marketing because it continues to build an ongoing relationship with past and/or present customers. Out of the blue, you may hear from a past client who just received something from you. Examples of executional marketing items include: • • • • • •

Ongoing social media posts Targeted Eblasts about company news or timely offers Monthly or quarterly newsletters PPC, Adroll or Google Adword campaigns SEO landing pages Downloadable content

3: Time-Bound Marketing Time-bound marketing is, as it sounds, something that must be initiated and consumed within a particular window of time to be effective.

Companies usually seek marketing help of

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Business

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this kind when they have a particular event to publicise and everything must be done by a certain time. This kind of marketing builds on the foundational efforts and creates a pragmatic approach to the pre-, during and post-event (live or online) campaigns. Results, when done correctly, are immediate and result in sign-up, calls, registrations, etc. Some examples include: •

• • • • •

Media Relations, such as a press release to daily/weekly local print media and a media alert to broadcast outlets near the day of the event Listing of the event in calendars Securing sponsors Announcements in social media, newsletters and all client communication channels Live social media events Giveaways and drawings at the event

4: Innovative Marketing Innovation provides a disruptive marketing approach. It drives an unexpected, new perspective to existing marketing. Results may vary from immediate reaction to smouldering interest over a longer period of time. Clients have approached us for something innovative, and here are some ways we have delivered.

• • • • •

• • •

Awards programs Facebook contests with voting Scholarship competitions Kickstarter Campaigns Creative Concept Encapsulation, or taking a concept and presenting it in a completely unexpected way, i.e. an infographic of something never depicted before, or a concept in a different shape. (For example, JJR has a deck of cards to educate about marketing where each card illustrates and describes a different type of marketing tool).

Badges or stickers to advance a concept or movement Anthology publications with contributions from different group members Custom publications

5 Cause Marketing

Cause marketing provides a key partnership with a non-profit organisation that yields opportunity to both the company and the non-profit. Many

companies come to us looking for these alliances and we love to make them and help with positive publicity for their generosity.

For example, when we were representing a local water park, we connected them with a non-profit organisation which gives hope to children who have lost their parents to homicide. The water park generously donated a day’s admission to the group and we were successfully able to make their generosity known in the media. It was a winwin for both organisations.

Cause marketing creates something to talk about and goodwill among your audience. It may not get the phone ringing immediately, but will build upon your relationship with your customers, prospects and the community at large.

Once you have your “recipe” for the type of marketing you need, and you’ve chosen the “ingredients,” or marketing activities you need to include, how do you bring it all together?

You must develop a marketing calendar. Using the format or software program of your choice, a marketing calendar will help you integrate all of your efforts and assign them concrete, yet manageable deadlines. Your marketing calendar moves the project forward and keeps everyone involved accountable.

The “Five Types of Marketing” are powerful by themselves and unstoppable when combined vigorously with an integrated marketing plan.

By understanding them, you will be in an ideal position to create the “optimal recipe” for your company’s marketing success.

The “Five Types of Marketing” are powerful

Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, international speaker, philanthropist and author of ten books. She founded The Fig Factor Foundation and created Today’s Inspired Latina book series and international movement. Jacqueline is a regular guest on local and national TV, radio and print publications. She has featured in Forbes, INC Magazine, Despierta America, CBS World News and others. www.jackiecamacho.com

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Interview

LucĂ­a

Allende Expanding your mind to Internationalise your brand

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Professional globetrotter, author and Founder of Entrepreneura.com, Lucía Allende, shares her experiences through international presentations on topics such as “It’s not feminism it’s humanism” and “From emigrant to international business”. She talks to Business Fit Magazine about her life and business.

in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Seven years later I started with my second career in the world of real estate and property. In 2015 in Barcelona, I earned a Master’s degree in International Business and Foreign Trade and then to complement my studies, I graduated in Positive Psychology in the summer of 2018 and am now thinking of a doctorate degree in literature or political science

Who are you?

You are a successful woman, how hard was it to get here?

I am a human rights defender, cosmopolitan feminist and author. I am also an international speaker with themes like “efficient female leadership” and “going from emigrant to international”. That would be the short version to describe me, I can be found on social media as @ missallende, the women in red.

As a professional globetrotter I am extremely curious and passionate about art and design, I have to confess being totally addicted to coffee and to using continuous Spanglish. I believe in globalisation as, in the internationalisation of our cultures, brands and businesses.

I was born in the city of eternal spring, Arica, Chile, and I am the daughter of Mercedes Allende, a strong woman, life warrior, exemplary and brave leader by inheritance. Mercedes, in addition to being a self-taught woman in business, became a fashion designer and was continually inspired by characters such as Jacqueline Kennedy, Osey Cassis and Chanel. My passion for beauty and fashion has all come from my mother. My father has also had a huge influence on my life, with his ability to motive me, to encourage me to follow my instincts and to learn from my mistakes in life and in the business world.

At a very young age, my family emigrated to Europe where I grew up, studied and developed my career in the international business world. I studied Economics and Business Administration

I prefer to see success as the result of managing your goals

I prefer to see success as the result of managing your goals. If you manage to do that in a good way, success will be the result of your capacity to handle these challenges in life and the achievements will come sooner or later... in the last fifteen years of my career I have learned and done so many things, I have had to repeat over and over again to learn how to handle situations, the project or whatever I was working on, and to be honest I still do.

I like to think that my well behaved “perfectionist” mindset has helped me to develop into a better woman, into a better friend, into a better familymember and of course, into a better teamleader. Sometimes people want to grow fast, do fast business and make fast money, but to do this you need to have a sense of your word and honesty by which I mean, to do business you need to be a women of your word and do what you commit to doing. This is the only way to build long-term relationships, you can’t expect people to keep believing in you if you don’t do or see through what you agreed. A hit and run doesn’t work for me!

I really believe this is the reason why I keep so many connections and social contacts that I can count on to work with around the continents.

You can’t expect to be taken as a serious businesswomen if you can’t manage to keep your word. If we accomplish this basic value in life, success is only the result of our input!

Warrior by inheritance, overcoming challenges through experiences is my motto!

How do you remember your childhood and early background?

I could say I had a mixed childhood. I moved several times with my parents until we came to Europe. I had to learn at a really young age to be flexible and to get used to new environments.

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Interview My family was well-known for our political background and thanks to this I developed a taste for cultural and social matters, and I do have strong opinions about some of these subjects.

I strive to remember where my roots are, my grandfather always explained and showed me how important family is and how we should leave them something behind.

In the Netherlands where I was so lucky to grow up, I learned what it means to be transcultural, meaning flowing and growing trough the phases, first a political emigrant, not being a local (expatriate), becoming a local person, flowing to have a multicultural identity, ending up as an international women by the age of 35.

How do you take care of yourself on a holistic level?

Well, I would say I’m 40 percent spiritual and this keeps me in balance, I practice meditation every day as I have so much energy, it has been a really big challenge for me to focus on my meditation only. I do have a mentor or a coach from time to time. I do like to have some personal sessions when I feel that I need some guidance.

I love nature, so every time I have the opportunity to connect to the earth, I just embrace it, every morning when I drink my cup of mate at the terrace and I see the sea I’m grateful for it… I do believe that being grateful is part of giving back to the universe what it gives you every day.

In another 40 percent I’m practical in life, not creating too much drama, to me this is the key of a healthy happy life. The final 20 percent would be passion. I do what I do always with passion, I think this is essential in life and it is for free and contagious

What is your typical workday like?

After my mate and my morning routine, my publishing assistant arrives at my place, we start work usually for about five hours. I like to have a healthy and happy relationship with the people I work with, this is because I need them to be as involved as they can in the projects we work on.

Next to my books and my collaboration with different brands which I work with to expand internationally, I have a radio program every week, where we talk about the role of women through the centuries. I’m also a very active member of the international Rotary Club where

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I support different non-profit projects each year and I’m an ambassador of Beauty Brand Clinics in Spain, alongside these commitments, I travel every six to seven weeks around Europe, this leaves me little time to be in one place for a long time, but I have to say that… I do loveeeee what I do. I can’t imagine being in one place for too long.

What type of shoe you are and why?

In the Netherlands, I remember having an interview with a reporter about my shoe shopaholic syndrome hahahahah.... which I still have. I love high heels, I feel more elegant and really feminine when I wear them. When I moved to Spain I had a huge problem getting used to wearing flats or sport shoes, every day , all day, as here it is almost impossible to wear high heels because of the city-streets.

Now that I’m little bit older haha... I don’t have a problem wearing any kind of shoes, I feel comfortable with almost any shoe but…… my passion for high heels will never disappear!

What kind of author are you and what are your books about?

Nice question..I write about current female leadership, about how to develop an international mindset and to use this to expand our business and brands.

I express myself through writing, sharing interesting content, not only life-experiences from people that I totally admire, but also my own life-lessons, hoping to give the reader another point of view shared by this international coffee addicted humanist.

So if you ask me... what kind of writer are you?

I would say… I’m a curious non-fiction female writer. This wouldn’t be a responsible and diplomatic answer, so sometimes we like to go a little bit further, I went to the internet and found a writers-test, the result was surprising to me.. “I’m an eternal writer” meaning, I quote: “Of all the writers, you have the strongest, most comprehensive grasp of the writing craft.

Consequently, others don’t appreciate how hard you work at it. You make it look easy! “ Other eternal writers; Agatha Christie and Laurie R. King www.greatstorybook.com/writers-personality-test-lp/

Tell us about the “International Women Association for Investments”

SINFIN is the abbreviated or shorter title of this association, meaning ‘It will never end”. I created this idea many years ago but I never really developed it, until a few months ago when I went back to the Netherlands and decided to work together with two of my female friends, who are also professional investors in the real estate market, creating and buying our first projects in collaboration, in business we call this kind of investment - Capital Joint Ventures.

As I love security, I always go for the maximum profit return of my investments, that is why I prefer to invest in small projects which I can develop and regulate myself.

This association is for the woman who wants to learn how to invest in real state, always in collaboration with other women to support each other, help and learn so that all of us generate

enough passive income and obtain as much of our own real estate as we can, this brings financial security, female associates and lots of knowhow and expertise in capital investments.

For now, we are have projects in the Netherlands and Belgium. Spain and Germany are soon to follow. You can find more information at www.mujeresinversoras.com

What do your brand expansion programs teach?

In every company, there is a time when you need to expand, so we can grow. A way to do this, is to enter new markets and internationalise your brand. When you do not have a team with international experience or you are simply not sure how to start this journey, the B-International project develops a unique and personalised program for your business, where, with our network of international consultants and managers we guide your company in different ways, with strong and structured positioning for

25

Interview

26

the international markets. With this program, you can not only globalise your business, but also repeat it as many times as you need to enter a new country or market in the future, there are no limits!!

We do the same in the Capsule Program the only difference is that this program, has been developed to expand and grow locally, think of franchising and other types of business structures.

You have undertaken a lot of study, how has it helped you in your life?

As someone told me once, “knowledge is power”.

Of course, you can start your own company without having any title and probably if you work hard enough you can succeed, but when you prepare yourself, you will get there faster and easier. I started studying my master’s degrees when I was 39 years old, to be honest, it was pretty easy for me and I didn’t have any trouble getting through the years, this is because I had had the experience of running different companies for many years, but I remember meeting people who were just arriving from university and a lot of them stopped midway through the year, finding it impossible for them to finish this post degree.

In conclusion, having the opportunity to continually educate myself has brought me many benefits like personal security, knowledge, new processes, international connections and a totally crazy academic status. Beside all this, from my latest master in international trade and international relations, I have developed the basis for my first book #superfeminas.. we don’t command. We lead!

Right now, only in Spanish but soon also available in English.

Our community is growing and we find every day, so many interesting women, with such impressive life histories, to us all of them are the #superfeminas .

As someone told me once, “knowledge is power”

Available from Amazon.com !

27

Business

The Future of our Wealth and

Financial System

Regular contributor to Business Fit Magazine and global speaker, Vikki Thomas, takes a look at Cryptocurrency and asks if you should be a part of this new financial system.

What does this look like?

The global economy is going through much change at the moment. So is the financial system.

Recently Cryptocurrency and Blockchain have been dominating the headlines. Stating that Cryptocurrency was one of the defining technologies of the 2010s, but it also said that

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the next decade could finally see the realisation of its full potential.

Are you financially ready for 2020?

How was your 2019 in relation to wealth creation/ preservation?

My belief is that business, money, finance and cryptocurrency scare many people due to their perceived complexity of it and a lack of understanding.

It is also an area which is very opinionated.

When I travel all over the world as a global speaker, I hear many views, much frustration and anger with regards to money and financial institutions. Everything we do is governed by our financial system.

In reality, much of what we do is governed by some hierarchy or control, but money affects our daily lives and is necessary for our survival in this world at this current time.

However, I do feel that coming into 2020 many entrepreneurs are becoming enlightened. They want to control their own money and are looking for alternative ways to co-exist in this world and succeed in life and business with secured financial benefits.

Perhaps being part of a new financial system could be part of this desire?

What Is a Financial System?

There are many but The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states that: “A financial system consists of institutional units and markets that interact, typically in a complex manner, for the purpose of mobilizing funds for investment, and providing facilities, including payment systems, for the financing of commercial activity”. [https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=6189]

Think about it for a moment: Who are the institutional units?

Why is it typically in a “Complex Manner?”

Who is set to gain with this system?

I am not here to answer those questions for you just now, they are for you to ponder over.

However, what I do want us to discuss is how we can create alternative financial security for us and our family with assets.

We all know that economic stability, let alone the ability to manage and ensure the fair distribution of wealth, is in the hands of bosses, banks and governments.... and politicians. Is that fair?

Washington Post reported in October 2019: The top owners of wealth now pay less tax than the bottom 50% of earners for the first time. Is that fair?

Is the way to protect yourself to OWN the Assets yourself? Perhaps not mortgaged like I used to do and not within the current financial systems.

Perhaps, a decentralised system.

Is financial sovereignty the future of our wealth?

Is Cryptocurrency the future of our Wealth?

Are Assets, like GOLD, the future of our wealth?

Remember: It was only in January 2009, that the world was in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Banks were collapsing, businesses were foreclosing and people were losing their homes. These recent financial crashes have shown us just how quickly our finances can be turned upside down...even if we ‘think’ we are prepared for it.

In 2019 the Federal Reserve were pumping BILLIONS of dollars into the financial markets day by day.

Is this sustainable?

Who pays for this?

Who benefits?

NOW is the time to educate yourself, to protect your financial future AND those of the next generation.

(Disclaimer: Vikki is NOT a financial advisor. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

All opinions in this article is information of a general nature and does not address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity.)

Vikki Thomas is a crusader supporting people all over the world, in person

and online to be FREE. To be free in all areas of their life so they can live the dreams they desire. She knows from experience of a 20+ year business career and being an intuitive guide and healer that when you “Align your Life” everything else falls into place www.goldengoddesses.gold Email: hello@yourgoldensuccess.com stating the subject BFM 2020

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Spirituality

Imagine There Was No Such Thing as Spirituality!

30

Founder, director and lead teacher of the Engaged Yoga Institute and Yogasara CIC, Christopher Gladwell, explores the true meaning of spirituality and the true meaning of spiritual practice.

Imagine we humans made spirituality up as a way of making some kind of sense out of our experience as beings who feel separate from each other, and everything else in a vast and scary universe? Imagine we created spiritual philosophies as ways of making sense of our short lives and the injustices of the world. As a way of finding some kind of purpose in the chaos, imbalance and violence of the great restaurant of life where everything eventually gets eaten by something else?

Imagine we invented whole religions and methods of spiritual practice to give us the feeling, even temporarily of being connected, a harmonious part of this vastness? How would it be to imagine all of that? You see I ask my students to go into this place of vision before we begin practices of Meditation, Conscious Breathwork or Yoga. I teach from the perspective and through the lens of evolutionary biology and psychology. I ask not what do the various belief systems tell us about being human, interesting though those beliefs are, I ask what do we know about being human? I’m interested not in belief stories but direct experience. What do you feel, sense, know through your direct experience?

Naturally people get stuck in their belief stories, we get invested in them at an ego level so they can be very hard to drop. People say to me “I’m a spiritual being having a human experience”. Is that a belief or a lived experience? Or is it simply a nice story we might tell ourselves to make sense of our experience and feel a bit safer?

We have to be clear. If we are not clear we accumulate psycho-emotional debris as a shell, a boundary to our self-sense which limits our awakening to what actually is. If we are not clear we build a spiritual ego, a self-story that cleverly immunises us from the complexity of very real pain and suffering that our fellow humans and ourselves experience. We engage in a kind of spiritual materialism which accumulates neat beliefs; clever mind phrases like the one above; practices that are like anaesthetics; teachers who look good on our internal spiritual CV; kinds of clothing which define us as different from the ‘herd’; special diets which ensure us immunity from the ravages of old age and death. That kind of thing.

We might craft stories so that when something complicated, difficult, painful or disturbing happens to someone else, they attracted it, they created it. We might get into ‘victim’ blaming, not that there are victims really, there are just people who are going through very complex challenges. But either way, we find a way out with our ‘spiritual stories’ of being fully present and empathic to what is really happening in someone’s living experience, all through some attribution of personal agency as blame.

The thing about blame is it is always wrong. It is a misunderstanding of just how joined up and connected everything really is. Blame is always wrong. What I’m getting to, is that all spiritual beliefs and stories can be an anaesthetic, can be ways of bypassing, dodging the curve balls of life, avoiding the painful feelings of being fully human.

Spirituality can in fact be just like an addiction to an endogenous substance, a way of getting out of it all!

So now we begin. Breathe. Breathe consciously.

Pay attention to every single breath as it enters and leaves. Notice the wind. The wind that has blown across oceans, mountains and deserts,

What matters is that we directly experience and know this beyond words and concepts

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Spirituality

around the corners of city ghettos and the airconditioned living rooms of the wealthy. Notice the wind that has been breathed through trees, dinosaurs and bears, through myriads of creatures before you. Notice the breath moving deep into your lungs, through your heart and deep into every cell of your body. Notice that most of you is made up of the gases - hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Notice how everything is joined up. Notice how this appearance of boundary your nervous system has created is really quite artificial, a necessary construct of evolution and artificial. Now there are no spiritual stories, there is just experience of wind, of breath being us. This is the beginning.

Next, we move consciously. Engaging in mindful, breath rich movement enables us to feel and find awareness within and as flesh. Aware flesh or fleshy awareness, the illusion of two things, mind and matter is fractured. There is only the one play of fleshy awareness-aware flesh. When we look up into a starry night sky and see the milky way. First, we are blessed enough not to be in a light polluted metropolis, second, we have the opportunity to look deep into the heart of our own galaxy. Not that it is ours, and into the black hole at the centre of it far beyond our vision.

Then we look outwards at our local group of 54 galaxies. Then we allow our minds to just begin to touch into the vastness of the one hundred billion galaxies that we estimate this universe to have. Now we consider the arrogance of the term universe. What are the of boundaries this?

How many such structures are there? Is it a multiverse? What came before this ‘universe’?

What might have anteceded this? We have no idea. We can come up with theories and stories, but we have no idea. Unknowing is the path.

The way that can be named is never the Way. Inconceivably vast open space in all directions.

Then we go inwards in meditation. Finding deep subtle awareness at a cellular level, at a molecular level, at an atomic level. We dive deep into the particulate quality of the atoms which make up our existence and find they are simply vortexing energy. We go into that energy and find it scintillating, sparkling into and out of existence.

We find that we are this. We find awareness in the dimension of space, we find spacious awareness as aware space. We find the space-time that we are to be awareness, we find awareness to be bubbling through and as space-time. We find no separation anywhere, wherever we look there is the one manifesting, dancing, scintillating as the many. The many being none other than the One. The words duality and nonduality no longer make sense - there just is. Always and already. There is no longer any need for spiritual belief, spiritual stories or not being fully here, fully now. There is never and never was any separation except in our minds. There is only interrelationship, interbeing being We. What we get to feel is the absolute continuity and interdependence of all phenomena as well as the blissful intimacy of the formless pregnancy of possibility, the energetic scintillation of the sparkle of this empty-fullness and its appearance as form, what we call (from the perspective of the five sense fields) reality. Some people like to call this experience of unicity - spiritual. Some people call the methods that dissolve the biological imperative of the illusion of separation - spiritual practice. This is fine. It doesn’t matter what we call it or what we believe, does it? What matters is that we directly experience and know this beyond words and concepts. What we do know is this, the universal arising for people is a greater understanding of why and how things are as they are and deeper more empathic, compassionate visions of being.

People often find great power, bliss, joy and a deep core-identity as the super-consciousness these are facets of. People also often find greater creativity, a passion for conscious evolution and Pro-social behaviours, care for this planet, greater purpose and a greater responsibility for the interbeing moving as the experience of them, as aware-flesh, aware-feeling, aware-thinking and aware-relating. If you choose to call that spiritual practice, then I say bring it on!

Christopher Gladwell is Founder, director and lead teacher of the

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Engaged Yoga Institute and Yogasara CIC. He is also a Biologist, Wellbeing Coach, personal transformation and personal excellence expert, certified in breathwork, psychotherapy, clinical hypnosis, NLP, structural bodywork and mindfulness. He aims to help people free themselves from the prisons of the mind that we so often inhabit. www.christophergladwell.com

The thing about blame is it is always wrong

33

Mindset & Emotion

The

Source creativity

of 34

Business Fit Magazine regular contributor and life and business strategist, Ismael Cala, emphasises the importance of freeing up our inner child to give us greater creativity and acceptance of change in our lives.

From the first moment we breath, we live under a process of domestication that shapes us during childhood. If we are not aware of what is happening, we can remain asleep for the rest of our lives.

During this phase of acquisition of beliefs and attitudes, we lose, not only the candidness and freshness that characterise children, but also our dynamism. These unexpected occurrences, which are the unmistakable flash of innate creativity, are withering away. We stop dreaming that one day we will grow up, to finally become the adult we never thought we would be.

Being more aware of our creative potential can be of great value, not only for solving personal conflicts, but for any challenge which comes in our way. In addition, it will give us greater willingness to access the changes and show us what we are made of.

Recently, Duncan Wardle, former vice president of Innovation and Creativity at The Walt Disney Company, said in an interview: “Robots will surely improve our skills and our senses, but they can’t feel our emotions, nor match the creativity that those emotions generate.”

How right he is! It is evident that, to get through today’s world, it is not enough to learn robotics and other technological specialties, it is also essential to awaken our conscience and untie the knots that bind our inner child. Let him/her leave and we’ll see how imagination triumphs!

And I ask: where do we leave the boy or girl who used to dream big? Why do we insist on leaving them locked in the trunk of memories, when they never left our side?

The little kid that lives in us, like any child, is qualified with great aptitudes. An irrefutable proof that domestication has had its effect is that we probably reproach ourselves: “I am not creative”. But, in reality, all human beings were born to be creative, but domestication has blocked creativity.

Have you seen how clever children can be? They have an infinite capacity to create their own fantasy world, so they end up doing the most terrible and funny pranks.

We’ve all been like that, but, as adults, many have embraced the absurd idea that they do not have enough ingenuity and have preferred to stay safe in their comfort zone, rather than experiment and create new things.

The little kid that lives in us, like any child, is qualified with great aptitudes

We should dare and not overlook it. A study at the University of Bath, which was undertaken with 798 participants, showed that, although all of us can be creative, people who are more open to implement it are more accepting of change, and more likely to challenge themselves.

Ismael Cala is a life and business strategist, best-selling author, and international speaker specialising in personal development and mindful exponential leadership. The New York Times identified him as “the Latino Larry King”. He is a member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), USA. Founder and president of CALA Enterprises Corporation - focusing on leadership, mindfulness, happiness, productivity, and excellence. www.IsmaelCala.com

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Pashion Fashion

36

There is No Second

First Impression Chance to Make a

International makeup artist and hairstylist, Anna Meier, helps our Business Fit Magazine readers to make the right first impression in business with her 12 Steps to a Professional Business Makeup

Don’t underestimate the effect of make-up, hairstyling and your outfit in everyday business life. Who feels well with their make-up and clothes, radiates it. Professional styling is also perceived by others as successful, more professional, and more competent. Without further information about a person, only the outer appearance remains. From being well-groomed and with good styling, the conclusion is that you must be a successful and capable person.

First impressions count. You and your employees are the calling card of your company. Your appearance and your business look can have a positive or negative influence on company image. Styling thus contributes significantly to the success of your company.

The effect on yourself also plays a strong role.

Good styling changes your appearance. Your body language and your charisma are different if you feel good and well-groomed. This also has an effect on your customers and business partners.

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Pashion Fashion

No matter how competent and good you are in your job, the first impression is elementary.

There is No Second Chance to Make a First Impression. Therefore, it is not helpful if pressure and stress can be seen on your face. In addition, your makeup should not appear smudged or unkempt.

12 Steps to a Professional Business Makeup

In only three seconds you get a first impression of a person. Makeup, hairstyle, and hands speak for themselves even before you open your mouth. A good business makeup and styling should look fresh and well-groomed.

Step 2: Prep Your Skin - Do not skip this step.

Makeup has the tendency to settle into creases, so if your face isn’t properly moisturised first, you can forget having seamless foundation. After cleansing, massage a thin layer of moisturiser all over your face, then wait 5-15 minutes for everything to sink in before applying your foundation.

Studies have shown that women appear more confident with makeup than without it. The feeling of looking good increases self-confidence and assertiveness. The “lipstick effect” is a known psychological phenomenon whereby wearing makeup can give individuals a confidence boost by making them feel more physically attractive, increasing feelings of self-esteem, attitude, and personality.

Step 1: Find Your Perfect Colour - You don’t want your face darker than your neck — test shades around your jawline.

Step 3: Prime Your Skin - Using primer under your makeup will make your look last longer.

Every business is different. Therefore, styling should not only suit you but also your company and you should consider exactly which position you would like to express in business.

Step 4: Apply and Blend Your Foundation Start in the centre of the face, on the apples of the cheeks, and slowly blend out. Use a damp sponge or your fingertips to apply foundation in a stippling motion, which means gently tapping it into your skin. Avoid any wiping or rubbing motions because that will only push the foundation around and cause streaks.

A business makeup should be unobtrusive but self-confident to emphasise your own type.

Step 5: Conceal -Tap on a concealer with your ring finger over dark undereye circles, red spots

38

or blemishes. Then lightly bounce the tip of your sponge over the concealer to blend it out without smudging it off.

Step 6: Set It - You don’t need to set your whole face with powder to make your foundation last.

With a big fluffy brush and a loose setting powder, gently swirl the powder over just the areas that tend to get extra shiny and oily, like your T-zone.

Step 7: Blush - You can create a healthy, natural - looking glow by applying blush Step 8: Brows - Lightly fill in your brows and it will serve as a framework for the rest of your face. The key here is to enhance the shape of the brow. Anything too dark or dramatic will detract from your natural beauty.

Step 9: Eyeshadow - Apply a natural beige and matt eyeshadow to the entire eyelid. Then apply a small amount of the darker shade to your outer crease and the natural crease of the eyelid, and blend (using a fluffy brush).

TIP: Use your crease to guide your shape.

Consider it a barrier for where your eyeshadow should sit if you’re going for an everyday look In addition, emphasise the lower lash line.

Lighten the inner corner of the eye and the highest point under the eyebrow arch with a light eyeshadow or highlighter.

Pro Secrets Apply and Blend: For applying makeup natural daylight is best. It’s evenly diffused and clear, so you can easily see when something isn’t blended properly. When applying the foundation, always turn towards the light source.

Foundation: Never use dark foundation as a face tanner - it quickly looks unnatural and makes you look older. The foundation should always match your skin tone.

Concealer: The trick here is to apply a concealer one shade lighter than your foundation colour to mimic the appearance or a bright, well rested under eye.

Bronzer: Evenly applied bronzer can add warmth, contour and a glow to the face. Apply it along the cheek bones, into the hairline and beneath the chin for a quick sculpt.

Brows: The shade of the eyebrows should be based on your hair colour or just a shade darker.

Eyeshadow: Eyeshadow lasts longer, if you first apply loose powder to the eyelid up to the eyebrow.

Lashes: If your mascara does not hold and smears, use a waterproof product and apply little mascara to the lower lashes.

If you wish, apply a thin layer of eyeliner directly to the lash line.

Step 10: Lashes - Apply mascara to eyelashes. If you start at the lash root and carefully wiggle the wand up through the eyelashes, you’ll get a lot better coverage and thus thicken and lengthen those lashes.

Step 11: Lips - Lipstick will last longer if you fill in your lips with the liner first Use a lip liner either in the same colour as the lipstick or colourless.

Step 12: Long-Lasting Makeup - Setting spray, also known as fixing spray, can be applied to hold your makeup in place and protect it from smearing and smudging.

First impressions count. You and your employees are the calling card of your company

Anna Meier is an international makeup artist and hairstylist. Her clients

include numerous celebrities, politicians and companies such as British Airways, Mercedes Benz, L’Oréal and many more. She is regularly invited as an expert to television shows and gives workshops for makeup artists, corporates and individuals. www.anna-meier.com

39

Business

40

Stop Selling

and Start Caring International speaker, author, investor and business mentor, Arnon Barnes explores why we have a negative attitude towards the word selling and how by changing the energy around the word, we can have greater sales success.

Having personally coached and trained tens of thousands of business owners and business leaders from all four corners of the globe, one thing has become apparent to me. Most business owners have a hard time selling their products, their services and more importantly themselves.

Thus the headline of this article. Let me start by saying this, if you are going to succeed in business and succeed BIG, then learning to close the deal is critical to achieving high levels of success.

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Business

Change the energy around the whole concept of selling

42

Why do so many people have a hard time selling?

From my experience most people have a negative association with the word selling.

services and help as many people by doing so?

Well it’s simple, so let me answer that by asking you a question.

Let’s look at that word – SELLING and why so many people struggle to take this important action. Well if I were to ask you to close your eyes and do a visualisation exercise, what is the first image that comes to mind when I say the word ‘selling’?

Do you want a better lifestyle?

For yourself, your family and your loved ones?

Most people think of a car salesman, slick and slimy like a snake and trying to sell a no-good ‘hunk of junk’ to you in order to just make a buck or two. People pushing products onto us, ignoring what we want and, in some cases, quite literally putting their foot in the door until we buy just to get rid of them. Even if we don’t buy, we end up feeling bad simply because of the entire interaction.

But surely, we buy stuff every day and not all of it makes us feel bad. Some purchases will make us feel amazing, even. How can you become a seller who people want to buy from?

I suggest we completely change the energy around the whole concept of selling. Because when you change or remove the negative charge that clouds the word selling, only then can you realise your full potential and make a great impact when offering your products or services.

How do we overcome this negative association with the concept of selling?

Firstly let us change the word. And there are many words we can use instead of the word selling.

Let’s consider words which carry a softer energy, words like; serving, helping, educating, informing, sharing, or one of my personal favourites: caring.

Now that you have a few options to choose from, every time you are talking about your product or service keep in mind that a great way to get your message across is to simply stop selling and start caring, really caring.

I’m going to assume that you answered that question with a full-hearted yes! Then please understand this; everyone wants a better lifestyle but not everybody is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that better lifestyle. In other words, everyone wants a big fire but not everybody is willing to put in the wood!

It is important to understand that: Sales (or your preferred word) = Income = Lifestyle Now when you have a great product or service and you believe in it 100 percent then it is your responsibility, it is your obligation to offer it relentlessly and shamelessly. Especially when it helps people. Be relentless.

If you do believe whole heartedly in the solution you are offering to solve people’s problems, then I highly recommend you offer a strong guarantee or a free experience to your potential clients.

I always say, “even if someone doesn’t buy from me, they will never forget me!”

Build trust, build respect and always remember, that price only becomes relevant in the absence of value. So, add tremendous value to the marketplace and you will be rewarded handsomely.

For more information on how to scale up, grow your business strategically and smartly, I invite you to connect with me online or visit my Business Owners Masterclass - where I share more business tips and shortcuts that are designed to help business owners take their business, money and lifestyle to the next level!

From a business perspective, why is it so important to successfully offer your products or

Arnon started his first business at age 11 and built and sold his first multi-

million Euro company by the age of 28! In the past 5 years Arnon has personally trained and coached more than 90 000 people from over 65 different countries. He is an explosive international speaker, author, investor and one of Europe’s leading and most exciting business mentors. www. arnonbarnes.com - info@arnonbarnes.com

43

Interview

From Dreamer to

Visionary

46

For our first magazine of the new decade, we interview Verónica Sosa, the founder of Business Fit Magazine and SHE (Seminario Hispanas Emprendedoras), giving our readers a deeper insight to this inspirational speaker, entrepreneur and author.

Who are you?

I am the founder and publisher of SHE (Seminario Hispanas Emprendedoras) and Business Fit Magazine and to begin this New Year, this new decade, allow me to take the opportunity to tell you, our readers, a little more about myself.

I am gradually learning to know and accept myself, with all my lights and shadows, the good and the not so good aspects, as they are all part of the sentimental and idealistic person who I am. I Iove seeing the kindness and the good features in people.

I am aware of my gift of social intelligence and apply this skill to my business life as well. The transformation all started upon finding a mentor and my newfound awareness allowed me to look at myself as a whole person. I became more conscious of my strengths and weaknesses and the first task accomplished was to stop fighting with my weaknesses. This freed up plenty of the powerful energy required to work on transforming myself into a more balanced, complete version of me.

I was a dreamer, now I am a visionary and I know that women are capable of leading in every area of life they wish to lead in.

I love so many things about my life, especially being a mother to my daughter Laura who is 11 years old now.

I love the challenge of being a conscious wife, working on my relationship every day and a couple of other things about me - I love Mexican food and I adore dancing!

What is the biggest mistake you have made in business and what you did you learn from it?

I believe the only real mistakes we make are the ones that we don’t learn from. I have made plenty of mistakes and in learning from them, I have more chance to avoid repeating them. I am an intuitive person. Sometimes it looks as if I am

impulsive, but I have my inner structure and I am so lucky to have amazing mentors around me who I can access and learn from. Mistakes in my life do not remain mistakes for long. I can fall and I can see my growth, how I am becoming wiser in my every day life, personally and in business.

One of my mottos is “enjoy continuous learning in life”.

There is one particularly unfortunate situation I went through while focussing more on my weakness than on my strength. I hired a person to work with me, thinking she was better than me in certain areas. I started this relationship focussed on my weaknesses and not as the whole professional woman I am. Unfortunately rather than contributing balance, she caused chaos by trying to disempower me, focusing on my weaknesses to create more power for herself.

Fortunately, I caught it in time and managed to minimize the damage and change the situation.

I wonder how often in our lives we let others disempower us and take advantage. Once again, I had a mentor who helped me to see this in time and get out of the situation as soon as possible.

Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you find yourself in a situation like this.

Earlier on, you mentioned balance as an important personal quality. How do you achieve it?

Remember I told you I am an idealistic person, so of course I want balance in my life. Some days I feel it in my skin and in my smile and on other days, I feel balance is far away. However, I know when I’m feeling balanced and what I understand today is that each one of us has a different balance. I achieve it more easily when I stop thinking that there is only one way to achieve it, when I let go from forcing the issue. I have learned that balance depends on our personality type, our vision and our purpose in life. Balance is unique to each of us.

I do my best to sleep well, eat well and frequently connect with nature. I love to spend time with my family and, as I travel a lot, I always try and find the time to enjoy some extra treats on those trips. I have friends all over the world who bring me a lot of joy when I see and connect with them again. I am blessed with a loving family and just thinking of them helps me breathe more deeply.

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Interview

We can achieve so much more with laughter, joy and meaning

We are still searching to find the most suitable way to be powerfully present in the business world. When women started to evolve as leaders a few decades ago, it was by copying the behaviour of our male counterparts, wearing suits and being aggressively directive and that affected our health.

I realise that life is not always a pathway decorated with colourful flowers. Sometimes it climbs, sometimes it descends and sometimes you can’t see the road at all. But as you can see though, I have a big smile.

Women are naturally emotionally intelligent and we are starting to be accepted and respected for that, replacing competitivity with co-operation and collaboration, understanding the power of diversity. There is a new paradigm now, slowly evolving, accepting that we can be different and still be leaders. We are beginning to recognise who we are, to create groups of like-minded people and work with them. We are becoming more aware. We have begun to be conscious of the importance of treating people in a way they like to be treated.

If you were in a jungle what animal would you choose to be?

Tell us about SHE and what you have planned for 2020?

I would be an elephant in the jungle. A herd of elephants protect one another. They are led by the biggest and oldest and are always there for each other. They are protective. They have wisdom and intelligence. Together they are better. This has always been my mantra.

What is your favourite quote and why?

My favourite quote is one from Isaac Newton. “If I have seen further than others, it is from standing upon the shoulders of giants.�

I love it because it represents what I believe in.

Giants are taller, they are above us because of their experience, they are people you want to learn from, who have got where they are ahead of me and I can use the knowledge they have to help me grow further, they are the mentors.

This is the way I learned to become a mentor and create my organisation for Hispanics Entrepreneurs.

What do you think is the most significant obstacle to female leadership?

I think the negative thoughts that woman have about themselves are the toughest obstacle to their leadership. We are still struggling to believe we are good enough. I believe in our DNA. We have the ability to be leaders by our nature.

I dreamed of creating a platform for women where they can find real supportive connections to learn from and expand in personal and business matters. In 2019, we had our fifth conference.

It was so beautiful, we had a full house, women coming from other countries to meet year after year. We have international women and men who support these women and our expansion. I can still hear the joy and laughter of everyone sharing their stories, meeting again after a year. I feel that my team and I have a created an oasis where people can meet in an amazing conference and every month, we create different circles around the world.

The SHE membership is like a Chamber of Commerce for Latina women, giving them the opportunity to learn and connect with other women. We have three levels of membership: Gold, which is for women entrepreneurs who have an idea and are looking to move it forward.

Platinum is for business women who are established and are now looking to grow and Diamond, which was established in 2019, is for successful entrepreneurs who are now looking to invest in other women and help them with their business.

SHE is currently involved in negotiations for more collaborations throughout 2020, so keep following to see how things unfold and develop throughout the year.

However, we will once again, have a two-day event in Belgium in October. We are continuing

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Interview with our business circles, which take place every other month, in eleven cities around the world.

This will grow in 2020 and we will have more cities involved with some exciting new ventures for this year.

sales. I know it is a challenge nowadays to have a magazine, but I am very committed to this part of my vision. One of our main aims this year is to increase our readership and our advertisers and create business with purpose.

Relationship Capital is very important to you, tell us why.

Also we want to reach out to more entrepreneurs, to help those who need to grow their business and to inspire them to do so and encourage them to greater things.

For me, Relational Capital is about our human ability to relate to others with openness, trust and joy. I love people and I like to relate to people. It doesn’t matter where I am, in the past five years I have proven to myself how wonderful it is to find people who also have this relational capital. We can achieve so much more with laughter, joy and meaning and we can expand more by supporting people who do not already have the same qualities. For me it’s such a joy to have this quality as it becomes much easier for me to relate to people.

Over 80 years ago, scientists at Harvard began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores.

They hoped the lengthy study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives. What they found was that close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keeps people happy throughout their lives and that embracing community helps us live longer and be happier.

They also found that “loneliness kills”.

I believe we need to take care of our energy and ourselves and not get stopped or blocked by negative people. I feel we should surround ourselves with people with positive perspectives on life, who encourage us, respect us and therefore lift us up. It doesn’t matter how short or long that journey is together. Happiness is about managing a balance in life, learning how to be with the right people to be able to fulfil our dreams and our duties towards our family, our communities and the planet. My relational capital has helped me to achieve all this.

How do you plan to grow Business Fit Magazine in 2020?

We will be celebrating our fourth year of Business Fit Magazine this year. We have a precious magazine which we will continue to publish every other month, hardcopy and online. We strive to continue to bring informative, inspirational and creative articles to our readers around the world.

I loved magazines in my youth and I worked for almost 15 years on two magazines where I started as a secretary, later becoming the director of

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We write about mindset, body, spirituality, business with purpose, marketing, financial freedom, travels, environment, and much more.

We have five main pillars of the magazine: Business, Body, Mindset and Emotion; Environment and Spirituality. We also have a Business Fit Features section and cover other subjects like Fashion, Travel, Recipes and Art. We are always interested in hearing from new contributors and receiving articles from those who have written for us before, so if you have an idea you would like to put to us for an article, please get in touch with our editor, the contact details are at the front of the magazine, we would love to hear from you.

How do you combine business and family?

This is always an interesting question for professional women, who, like myself, are also mothers. It is interesting because it appears men are not asked the same question and yet they too have families. So this question always reminds me there is still disparity between the genders. Why is this still the case? Women continue to ask themselves, should I be a mother or a professional woman? Some women are actually not having children, so they don’t have to make a choice. Why can’t you have both? I hope for future generations this will change.

I believe that many around the world still find it difficult to find that balance. Maybe like me, they feel a need to be perfect in everything they do and therefore spend a lot of time trying to achieve this perfectionism. When we do not manage to achieve it in all areas, we may feel guilty or not good enough. This is what I am working on at the moment in my life, to get more balance inside of me because actually, I am more than good enough and I am sure you are too.

For me balance is when I am with my daughter, I am there 100 percent. When I am travelling, I make sure to talk to her every day with a lot of

presence and attention to our conversation. I send her photos, I send her recorded messages so she can hear my voice and of course to my husband too. I am one of those lucky women who has a loving partner who is also an amazing father.

As you know my motto in life is Together is better in family and in business.

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Mindset & Emotion

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Understanding the Adult,

Understanding the Child

Certified Hypnotherapist and Life Coach, Barbara Malinowski, looks at how our upbringing influences our inner child and the importance of addressing any negative aspects of it, in order to achieve happiness and peace in our life Much of our history as human beings has been characterised by several things: one of them is the extraordinary technological evolution, another the intellectual evolution and our behavioural (and emotional) evolution.

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Mindset & Emotion

We have to change our belief systems

The archetypes which exist on the parent-child relationship have created belief systems and psychic contracts which have been internalised by the child. The belief system of relationships with ourselves and with others, is based on situations created and inherited from childhood, figures of authority - mother, father, guardians or the main person who took care of the child – have passed on the behaviour of how to be a person, from their own upbringing. And this inner Child is part of our lives. We speak of the internal Child which exists in every adult, no matter their age, in their memory or subconscious there is a file where their personal history is kept.

Today we know that a child from birth to seven years receives, in the best of cases, attention and love, and I say at best, since there are dysfunctional families where the child’s needs are ignored, or in the case of large families, where the child is provided with the necessary attention but nothing individualised. At this stage what the parents (or authority figures) do and say is internalised by the child, consciously or unconsciously, so in the adult stage it is said we have a damaged inner child, if their needs were limited or ignored. In some cases the adult holds within himself his or her child with anger or rage, or with sorrows of the past, and of course, also contains the pleasant and beautiful moments.

I think we are a “Chain of Errors” or “Inheritance of Errors”, as well as in the positive view, a ‘Chain of Successes”. A child’s upbringing is influenced by the upbringing their parents received and in turn, the upbringing of their grandparents and so on back through the generations.

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No one received schooling on how to be parents, therefore, they did not know how to be a parent or a guiding authority. That which works positively in our inner child is welcome, but that which is negative like anger, sadness or an emotion which damages us, without realising, we continue to feed that negativity, We need to have the humility to realise that something is happening, which doesn’t enable us to enjoy our life to the full and we need to heal it.

Rage manifests itself outward or inwards. Out, through acts of violence towards someone, or reactive responses, expressed in abuse or psychological abuse. In the case of inward rage, we speak of repression and self-inflected punishment. Unfortunately this can then manifest into physical illness.

It is very important to clarify that it is not about placing blame. We must understand, parents or figures of authority have done the best they could with the tools they possessed, passed on by their own authority figures. It is said that the effects of the reality we internalise, is the reality to which we respond.

It is important, that as parents, we try not to impose on our children, our negative thoughts and beliefs, our needs or our unrealised or repressed dreams. We need to educate children that everyone has the same rights and this should help the child relate to a world more naturally, with understanding for themselves and for others.

It is also important that parents set limits on their children in order to avoid manipulation or disrespect towards the property of others and possibly the beginning of addiction. This is achieved by saying NO at the right time and preferable with an explanation which the child can understand.

We have to change our belief systems, regardless of how old we are. Identify where there is in us, anger, fear or any emotion or traumatic blockage and recognise it as the first part of a healing.

Work on that change of belief, understand that if in childhood, you did not receive approval, that is part of your past, it does not have to part of your future. By accepting that, the negative burden can be released. If you feel you aren’t able to achieve it on your own, seek professional

help, somewhere you feel secure and have the confidence to express your feelings.

There are many ways which can work to release the negativity. It can be through breathing, meditation, visualisation, among others. When we stop controlling what we feel, when we allow a healing of anger, or other negative emotion or emotional blockage, that’s when we can begin to enjoy life more and enjoy the company of other people.

I want to leave you with an exercise for those who suffered disapproval from their figure of authority. The idea is to understand that perhaps they had a difficult childhood, and so learned to live with it and that none of us should persecute another, this is a very important basis for forgiveness… “And now look for a moment of calm, of silence, of stillness, close your eyes, breathe several times, slowly, trying to quiet the mind, and when you feel peace, imagine your authority figure, as if it were a boy or girl, imagine them of about six years, see their face ... if there is joy in his eyes, ...., if there is sadness, ... if he is happy, ... we breathe, and we look again at his/ her face ... ..and we allow our love to manifest towards him or her, ... We breathe again ... and we thank them for allowing us to carry out this exercise”. Now we return to our present.

Until we meet again, remember being happy is your divine right.

A child’s upbringing is influenced by the upbringing their parents received

Barbara Malinowski is a Certified Hypnotherapist, Life Coach, International Motivational Speaker, Rebirther, practiser of Chinese Medicine, Creative Visualisation Facilitator and writer. She has dedicated 20 years to the study of human-divine connection. Residing in Los Angeles, California, she is a frequent guest on television shows, as well as writing for several magazines. coachbarbara21@gmail.com

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Environment

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How to Align Your

Passion for Fashion and Conscious Consumption

Consultant and coach on conscious fashion consumption, Greta Aguilar, provides Business Fit Magazine readers with some tips on how you can combine your love of fashion with an environmental conscience to look good and help our planet.

Over the past four years I have been trying to find a platform where I could deliver my passion for fashion and sustainability. Then in spring last year I received a Whatsapp message “Guapa, I was just thinking that you should join us as a speaker in the VIII sustainable fashion day in Madrid, at the costume Museum.

What do you think?”. This message arrived while I was at the hospital, recovering from a surgery which had encouraged me to pursue more than ever my conviction that Conscious Fashion Consumption has the power to change people’s mindsets, economies and governments. Let me show you how.

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Environment Have you ever felt that you aren’t doing enough to contribute to solve the environmental crisis? Or have you ever wondered, why you constantly feel the need to buy something new for you or your loved ones in order to make life more comfortable, satisfying or easy?

In Europe and especially in Switzerland where I live, we have reached a certain level of awareness about sustainable practices and conscious consumption, but the reality is that we are lost on how to articulate that effectively in our busy and abundant lives. Sometimes it’s easier to buy something new than go to the basement and look for the pair of boots we bought two years ago for snowy days….Just as an example.

Conscious consumption is not only about raising awareness and buying Eco, Bio and/or certified products. Conscious consumption is not about switching our consumption to Ecoconsumption, because that doesn’t help natural resources due to the speed of consumption.

It’s by slowing down consumption on a daily basis which will help the planet, giving species an opportunity to use their regenerative power.

Can you see the difference? So, by tapping into the art of austerity, we all can contribute from the exact place we are, right now.

Quite often media makes us feel that in order to contribute, firstly, we have to become, learn, develop or change something either in our bodies, our mindset or our physical world.

This repetitive message coming from a system saying we are not enough is making people, societies and the planet fall into a non-stop spiral of consumption which it is unnecessary and unsustainable.

Have you ever thought that the environmental crisis could be a humanitarian crisis? Or an abundance crisis? From the historical point of view, we are the most comfortable generation of humans to have ever existed on the planet. Consider how easy it is for us to get hot water or warm spaces by just switching a button or touching a screen. Not one of the most powerful humans in ancient times could enjoy those privileges so easily. But does this correlate with a certain level of happiness or the feeling of fulfilment? I certainly don’t know the numbers but what I can honestly say that for me, it is sad to see friends facing depression, anxiety and panic attacks.

My belief is that awareness and small actions are solid bases to create impact, I have proved that myself and I see that on my clients and the audience. Well, let’s tap into the idea that we all can contribute from exactly the place we are at. through conscious consumption.

Conscious consumption is the cornerstone in the process of restoring balance from insideout to ourselves and the planet.

When you consume less of the things you don’t really need, you contribute enough.

When you surround yourself with possessions you feel attached to, connected and happy with, you contribute enough.

My belief is that awareness and small actions are solid bases to create impact

You see, your perception about consumption is a change maker tool when you know how to use it. Marketing experts have understood how to give consumers extraordinary and very pleasant shopping experiences, but what they haven’t managed to achieve yet is how to manage our purchase decisions, in other words, the moment we decide to pay is not yet manipulated. As a consequence, we still have the option of choosing which kind of stuff we will grant the honour to come to our homes and more specifically to our wardrobes.

Yes, I did say more specifically and yes, I did say wardrobes. You must have heard before

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that the fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world and, since we all appreciate good looks and connecting with others through the non-verbal tool called personal image, fashion is an existing platform to unleash the power of our conscious consumption commitment.

Bellow, I share with you four of my most effective practices to impact your closet, your finances and the world right now.

And remember you are not alone on this, I’m here to serve you and elevate you in this awakening path to conscious consumerism.

Practice 1.

Look at the labels Labels are there to be read, they provide us with important information in order to reduce time and money while shopping. Good, ready for action? This is my number one shopping ritual.

- In a shop, seek for the things you need, pick THE one that catches your attention, look at the label and look for, materials, care instructions and where it was made.

Materials, you should start considering are organic ones like cotton, silk, bamboo, linen, wool or a blend of them, not necessarily Bio but certainly organic since they will be in contact with your skin. Why? Because of performance, toxicity, energy transportation and environmental impact.

Goal: 100% organic materials as a first layer

Practice 2 Look at the labels : At home What kind of materials are already in your wardrobe matters for you and the planet. You don’t have to run to clean-up and throw away all your polyester, nylon, polyamide, rayon, acetate, lycra stuff. You just have to become

aware of how many polymers you own and start wearing them strategically until they are ready to be recycled, donated or up-cycled for you or a company.

Goal: become aware of what used to be your fashion consumption decisions before this awakening call.

Practice 3 Do not cut out the labels No matter how they bother you, please don’t cut out the labels. Labels are made to give valuable information to consumers, but also to the recycling system. Removing a label from a product means no recycling at all and we are conscious enough now to understand what that means at a large scale.

Practice 4 Go beyond the label More and more often, consumers find on the labels things like: designed in France, made in China or designed and made in Europe. This information can confuse consumers since they expect higher prices in the case of a French design and/or European production, whereas the reality is that the environmental and social impact of a garment made in China doesn’t compensate for a beautiful and functional design made in France; or a European designed product manufactured by Chinese people who live in boats off the coast of Italy under questionable labour conditions, doesn’t compensate for a Made in Europe label. it is time to seek out the hidden power of consumption by letting companies know that as fashion consumers, we are awake and we care beyond the prices, seeking for transparency, fair production and social responsibility.

Greta Aguilar is an entrepreneur, mother, global citizen with the

unshakeable belief that every women deserves a personal style that brings her joy and the sense of daily ease. She is a Consultant and coach on conscious fashion consumption. www.gretaguilar.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/GretAguilarSustainableFashionStylist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gretaaguilar/

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