Founder and driving force behind the dynamic Global Success Summits (GSS), Greg Secker, was recently in South Africa finalizing the programme for what promises to be another high-energy entertaining and information rich two-day summit. The second edition of the wildly popular South African Success Summit (SASS), a subsidiary country-based summit of the international GSS group, is set to again inspire nearly 5000 delegates at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg on 1st and 2nd March 2014.

When asked how the concept for the GSS platform came about, Secker has no hesitation in sharing his motivation, “For the last 12 years I’ve spent my time speaking around the world on other people’s stages; amazing people like Donald Trump, Dr John Demartini and all the different guru’s that are presented at success themed events. While I felt that some of the promoters had done a good job of pulling together some of the best speakers in the world, the way the events were choreographed was often clumsy.” Secker explains, “I felt most of the events just happened to be a line-up of speakers, who presented opportunities to people, but that the promoters didn’t think carefully enough about how to integrate all of the different speakers in the areas of health, wealth, entrepreneurship, leadership and contribution so that the message was balanced.”

By running his own platform, Secker is able to incorporate more of the balanced message he believes is more relevant in today’s world. GSS does this by offering by a wider variety of speakers than those that are predicated purely on making money or getting into property and investment deals or trading. Through this format the GSS message is better choreographed to be more entertaining as well as “info-taining” i.e. information rich content that makes a difference to people while remaining entertaining and exciting to watch.

A natural entrepreneur and risk-taker, Secker achieved great personal success and financial wealth at a remarkably young age (retired at 27 years). However, he’s quite dispassionate about money and does not see it as what defines or motivates him. Secker’s real interest lies in finding ways to make a contribution, the ability to make a difference and most importantly, finding creative solutions to enhance people’s business or home lives. So in relation to branching out and starting his own platform Secker says, “I felt with my own company (GSS), I could present a line-up of speakers that offer a balanced approach to success across all facets, all different areas of life and definitions of the word. Success is not just about making money, it’s about living a fulfilling life, living a healthy life, living a life where you are a spiritually connected human, and one where you make a difference.”

In response to the obvious question “why South Africa?” as one of GSS’s key destinations, Secker replies “Considering it’s the first time these multi-speaker events with such international line-ups of speakers have really taken place, the response in South Africa is quite incredible. These types of events have been going in the States, Canada and Australia for a number of years so it’s early days for South Africa”. An especially interesting observation from Secker is, “It’s been interesting that the response is very strong but more so that the South African audiences have a deeper appreciation of the more spiritual side of life than in other parts of the world. Most of the major multi-speaker events, say in North America, are vastly predicated on making money, trading, marketing techniques, investment strategies, business gurus and there’s little space or interest in including information that discusses humanitarianism, spiritualism or perhaps the more esoteric sides of life”.

This year SASS’s focus is on delivering the more balanced message Secker speaks about. For example, he’s extremely excited about introducing speakers not seen in South Africa before such as Steve Wozniak (multi-billionaire and co-founder of Apple). “And we are also adding some other guest speakers, which I’m keeping a secret for now as they are extremely high profile and they’ll be announced closer to the time, which will be an interesting surprise and give an extremely interesting flavour to the event”, promises Secker.

The summit’s goal is to create a carefully choreographed production between all areas of interest so when people leave the event they feel not only have they made a transformation but feel a connection to the event for years to come; where this becomes a major resource for them to access some of the greatest global thought leaders, some of the greatest techniques and success strategies that the world has to offer. “Its really important to us that we create trust and an experience for people that they will really want to tell their colleagues, family and friends about. If we do that we’ve really achieved our objectives”, says Secker. “I’m a strong believer in that we should be a first rate version of ourselves rather than a second rate version of someone else and so that’s what we’ll see happening with the evolution of GSS”, states Secker.