We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aliki Ko a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Aliki, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
Warriors4elements started from the realisation that we have a magnificent lab that is prototyping and testing non-stop and seems to be doing alright for the last few billions of years (!): NATURE
This realisation made me start looking deeper into the dynamics of natural ecosystems, how they become sustainable and what makes them flourish and realised that the fundamental recipe for success is the balance between all 4 elements: earth, water, air and fire. The ecosystems that manage to thrive seem to have found a way to effortlessly exchange energy between all the 4 elements.
So I started wondering: “Can we do something similar in business?”
So I started testing the model. First in an existing group of entrepreneurs. It seemed to be working like magic!
Then I created a new group with equal balance of the 4 elements and within 6 months all entrepreneurs were able to overcome their biggest challenges effortlessly. I was already convinced there was something in this system that seemed to work, until…
A journey to Egypt made obvious how profound and ancient this model is!
The system of the 4+1 elements have been used to construct the pyramids of Giza and is considered one of the most effective natural “technologies”. We have stumbled upon one of the most effective tools of all ages!!
Then the challenge was: “How do we apply it in the business of today?”
We started with the individuals: startup founders going into their own self-development journey through the 4 elements framework. In 3 to 6 months the 75% of them was able to step up their game…
Next step was to understand how they are growing and be able to adjust according to their needs, so we created a 16 questions assessment that evaluated the progress in all 4 capitals: financial, social, intellectual and spiritual, each one of them connected to one of the 4 elements: earth, water, air and fire. After being taken monthly we start having the first insights of areas to improve and the participants seemed to be having deep realisations about their needs both in life and business.
As we grow the framework to go beyond the individual to bigger “organisms” like startups, we are not starting to evaluate whole operations according to the 4 elements framework to see where there is imbalance. Once identified a deeper look is given to the best tools to bring balance back to the system and make it enter in flow. Exactly as nature would do!
Throughout the journey we have learned a few things!
A./ If you don’t measure you can’t know! We seem to underestimate our future and overestimate our past, unless we have the data to make clear observations.
B./ We need to start measuring not only what we can but also what is important for us! For that we are establishing the 4 KPIs to be financial, social, intellectual and spiritual capital.
C./ The organizations of the future are collectives! We are moving away from the rigid systems of control and moving towards self-organised, autonomous organisations. The tricky part is that we don’t have yet best practices for such systems so testing is the best way to go for now.
D./ Most conscious entrepreneurs are allergic to “normal” business processes. We have observed that most conscious companies end up creating completely new ways of doing business and need support to find their own unique identity. This is our role!
One year after our first launch we are humbled to have helped our #WarriorPreneurs move from ideation to launch phase, activate them in their purpose, help them become financially sustainable and even believe and create their biggest dreams.
We are excited to be entering our second year of operations with a soft re-launch for startup founders who do business from spiritual guidance we like to call them #MagiciansOnDuty.
#MagiciansOnDuty and are usually in seed & series A stage of their startup, have started realising that their own alignment and well-being are directly related to their impact as leader of their organizations and are searching for innovative ways to do business and create impact.
We truly believe that the future of business is collective and inspired by nature!
So we come together to align with the 4 fundamental elements of nature so that we can inspire each other to continue walking the path by being fully ourselves, share resources in all 4 capitals to grow our profitable businesses and stay in balance while co-creating a better world together.
This is what #warriors4elements stands for.
Aliki, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Aliki Ko is a dreamer inside a doer’s skin. She believes in the infinite potential of human kind and is dedicated to transforming business into a force for good. Founder of Mindful Experience GmbH she creates practices & tools for human upgrade through cutting edge science of consciousness on Water for comm-UNITY, grids of regenerative destinations like Conscious Gems, innovating pathways for deep human trust and sustainable models of exchange of the 4 capitals. Aliki doesn’t get bored of exploring the limits of human connection through immersive experiences, collective intelligence methods and deep connection between business and (our) wild nature as Warriors 4 elements.
Warriors4elements is a tribe of entrepreneurs who are doing business from spiritual guidance.
We bring together #WarriorPreneurs to align with the 4 fundamental elements of nature so that we can inspire each other to continue walking the path by being fully ourselves, share resources in all 4 capitals to grow our profitable businesses and stay in balance while co-creating a better world together.
We are one of the few communities that merge spirituality and business as well as self-development and business development, seeing the full picture of human experience.
Our warrior-LAB is the space where all the magic happens!
Through weekly group calls we create new ways of doing business, activate our collective dreams, learn to communicate differently and tap into our purpose and ways to make it reality.
The LAB opens doors for few selected entrepreneur every season. The next opening date is September 21st.
We believe that business can be a life enriching experience for the creators and clients and we are dedicated to make as many startup founders as possible experience this and apply it in their business!
Any advice for managing a team?
I have been observing that we usually hire people taking into consideration their skills & knowledge, past experience and profile and we forget to ask the most important question: What does your soul want to learn in this life? What do they want o master? Who do they want to be?
All of that for a good reason, what we are supposed to become in our lifetime we are not yet in the current moment. It is where we are moving towards, we are no experts until later in life. Though if we don’t add this parameter to the equation people stop being engaged and start searching for other occupations.
The retention rate in big corporations seems to be dropping dramatically because we’ve forgotten that our higher value is growth: you personal growth. If we are respected, make a good living, like the people who surround us and are able to grow that’s all we need to be happy and engaged.
I personally can’t wait until all of these concepts start being integrated and how they will transform the way business feels!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
In warriors4elements we are trying a ground-breaking model for business: self-funded!
We wish to establish a system that is supported from the people involved in it and avoid external funding that might alter the direction to the community.
Hence we have established a scaling monthly fee system that supports the 3 fundamental parts of the company: team, tech& tax, space holders and start generating our financial fund aiming to grant the first investments during 2023.
The model we are using is unconventional for traditional business as is slower and highly dependable on the participation, though we truly believe that the future of self-organised autonomous organisations demands a new way of making each one of us a true part of the initiative, with all types of initiatives, financial included!
I would like to note here that we aim to take equal care of all other 3 capitals and they way our members can be rewarded not only in financial but also social, intellectual and spiritual capital.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.warriors4elements.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warriors4elements/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aliki.maria.kostopoulou
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliki-kostopoulou/
- Youtube: https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCvJrsrjyhVcayPfpkTU2row?c=UCvJrsrjyhVcayPfpkTU2row
Image Credits
Photos by Iris Hollow during G-local Activation warriors4elements