John Sanei first South African admitted to singularity university faculty

John Sanei is one of those people for whom the word multi-hyphenate was created. He is a trend specialist, strategist, global speaker, facilitator, coach, author, optimist and entrepreneur.

He also happens to be the first South African accepted into the faculty membership of Singularity University (SU),  a global community that uses exponential technologies to tackle the world’s biggest challenges and empower individuals and organizations with the mindset, skillset, and network to build breakthrough solutions that leverage emerging technologies.

Founded by arguably the two best futurists in the world – Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, and situated on the same campus as NASA in San Francisco – the university serves a community of entrepreneurs, corporations, development organizations, governments, investors, and academic institutions, with a range of products to help them understand rapidly accelerating technologies and how to apply them to positively impact billions of people with the objective of creating a more abundant future for all.

Says Sanei: “The university has about 60 lecturers from around the world and I am very proud and privileged to be one of them. I will be presenting at SU summits and corporate engagements globally using my framework called Forever Profitable, which is in line with the SU message.”

Sanei will also be presenting at next week’s Liberty Vuka Knowledge Summit where his paper will cover business trends and strategy and ‘Conscious Capitalism.’

“What I am trying to get the audience to do is to move away from understanding profitability as the only success factor in a business. A business moving forward into the future requires to be successful in three different areas: How are you impacting your employees? How are you impacting the environment? How much profit are you making?

“When we are able to measure those three things, we move away from only micro focus to macro focus, and that is really what conscious capitalism is; building businesses that have a light footprint on the earth, create incredible work environments that are 100 per cent consumer focused and still able to make money?”

Sanei hopes that delegates to the conference will walk away with a new perspective on understanding a new way to measure success.

“We all have to start thinking about the Earth, and we all have to start thinking about humanity in the future. And if we are just measuring profitability we really are not being responsible or elegant in any manner,” he says.

Sanei will also include extracts from his best-selling book What’s Your Moonshot? in his presentation because, as he says, ” we need to start thinking bigger and with much more courage.”

What’s Your Moonshot? is based on US President John F Kennedy’s 1961 speech in which he said the US would put a man on the Moon, even though at the time they had no technology to do so. And eight years later they achieved just that.

A couple of years later there was Steve Jobs, who was a ‘moon shotter’ himself, creating a brand-new way to interact with technology and currently South African-born Elon Musk – who is really pushing the boundaries of our reality by trying to get a man on Mars.

“The point of the book is as individuals we are able to do what governments and organisations were able to do in the past. Our ability to connect with billions of people at the click of a button; our ability to raise millions of dollars through the likes of Kickstarter, and for us to connect with other smart people around the world through the internet has given us the opportunity to create Moonshot businesses and Moonshot ideas,” says Sanei.

According to the author, is required is the right mindset and the right understanding as to how to dissect the future.

“When we can get those two things right we can start creating Moonshot businesses and become the new type of billionaire – somebody who impacts a billion people’s lives positively.”

Sanei lives up to his optimist moniker and when asked that give there is so much doom and gloom in South Africa and the World what gives him hope, says: “If we choose to focus on doom and gloom we will only have a reality that is full of doom and gloom. I would suggest that people stop watching the news and start focusing on what makes them most excited, and drive that to the maximum of their capacity.

“The truth is, if you stop watching the news today and pick it up again in a year’s time, pretty much nothing has changed so I choose to absolutely ignore any doom and gloom and focus only on the positives. Because whatever you give your energy to, you grow.”

To hear more from John Sanei and other local and international speakers at the two day Liberty Vuka Knowledge Summit taking place on November 1 and 2 at the Sandton Convention Centre, book at  www.ticketpros.co.za.

General admission R3 950 or VIP admission R6 800 – for both days.

For more information on the Summit and the speakers visit www.vukasummit.com