“Adversity is opportunity wearing a clever disguise.”
– Tony Jeton Selimi
Tony, thank you for speaking with us. Could you introduce yourself, your background, and what you aim to achieve through your work?
I’m Tony Jeton Selimi—a London-based transformational life strategist, business growth architect, and multi-award-winning author specializing in human behavior and maximizing people’s potential, power, and purpose. I assist individuals and organizations across all sectors to solve meaningful problems, unlock their potential, and build lives and legacies of purpose.
My journey didn’t begin with privilege—it started with grit. I was born in Gostivar, a small town in the former Yugoslavia, now the Republic of North Macedonia, to a family of restaurateurs and farmers who believed deeply in the power of education. Despite their sacrifices, my early life was marked by adversity: abuse, bullying, and at 19, being forcibly removed from my university classroom and conscripted into a civil war I did not believe in.
By twenty, I found myself homeless on the streets of London. It was a moment that could have broken me—but instead, it became the crucible that forged my resilience.
From those humble beginnings, I rose through the ranks of science and engineering, eventually leading multi-billion-pound technology transformation programs as a senior CIO across both public and private sectors. Yet, a deeper calling stirred within me—to understand the human mind, spirit, and the limitless nature of our potential.
I devoted my life to studying human behavior, psychology, spirituality, healing, consciousness, entrepreneurship, and wealth mastery. I fused my corporate experience with a mission to elevate others.
Each day, I work with individuals from all professional backgrounds, including entrepreneurs, executives, and visionary leaders, to rise above fear, self-doubt, procrastination, and impostor syndrome—transforming inner resistance into unstoppable momentum. Through my integrative science and holistic approach, I help them master life by navigating challenges across eight essential dimensions: spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, relational, professional, business, wealth, and leadership.
My mission is bold and unapologetic: to inspire and educate one billion people to master their lives, align with their core values, answer their heart’s calling, and shape futures that serve both personal evolution and the advancement of humanity.
Can you walk us through the key steps in your personal journey from early challenges to establishing your professional career?
My life has been shaped not by ease, but by endurance. As mentioned before, at nineteen, I was conscripted into the Yugoslav army during a brutal civil war—a conflict that etched itself into my soul and forever altered the lens through which I view humanity. By twenty, my life was saved, my mother borrowed money and put me on a one-way flight to London, where for months I lived penniless and sleeping in shelters, carrying nothing but a fierce determination not to let my circumstances define me.
I worked three jobs to pay for my studies at University College London, eventually graduating with honors in electrical engineering and organizational behavior. For over a decade, I thrived in the corporate world, leading multi-million-pound technology transformation programs across both public and private sectors. Yet in 2008, as the global financial crisis unfolded, I experienced a profound awakening: success without meaning is a hollow pursuit.
In 2019, facing redundancy, burnout, and the looming loss of everything I’d built over two decades, I stood at a crossroads. That moment became my catalyst. I chose to pivot—from engineering systems to engineering lives.
I began integrating my lifelong studies in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, spirituality, personal development, and healing into a new mission: to help others consciously re-engineer their reality. I enrolled in an entrepreneurship MBA to become a key person of influence, published my first book, and introduced the TJS Evolutionary Method: ALARM®—a transformational framework designed to help people decode the inner signals of their body, mind, and heart, and respond to the outer alarms life presents.
This method is built on 25 guiding principles that, when practiced daily, empower individuals to heal, thrive professionally, build wealth, attract loving relationships, lead with authenticity, and manifest a life of purpose, prosperity, and impact.
Your work emphasizes translating setbacks into opportunities. How have you applied this principle in your own life?
Yes, setbacks are plentiful, and I have come to see each one not as a dead end but as a doorway. To me, adversity is opportunity wearing a clever disguise. For every apparent misfortune, there is a hidden fortune; the tragedy is that most people only see the shadow, never the light. When we fixate on what we lose, we go blind to what we gain. This blindness fractures the psyche—it keeps us tethered to regret instead of liberated by possibility.
My own life has been a masterclass in this principle. Homelessness stripped me of comfort, yet gifted me humility and the courage to begin again. Working multiple jobs while graduating with honors taught me discipline, strategic planning, and the necessity of taking full responsibility for my destiny. Corporate burnout was a brutal teacher, but it revealed the sacred importance of boundaries and alignment with one’s core values. Losing my father, and later my mother, broke me open to presence, gratitude, and reverence for legacy—reminders that life is fleeting, but the love and wisdom we leave behind can echo for generations.
From each crucible, I discovered the same truth: obstacles are not punishments; they are invitations. Every challenge is an alchemy of destruction and creation, an opportunity to evolve, to sharpen, to rise. I’ve lived that truth, and now I dedicate my life to teaching it. Whether personal, relational, professional, or business, adversity is the forge in which resilience is hammered into strength, and strength into greatness.
Could you explain how your framework for growth integrates personal values with strategic decision-making?
The Values Clarification & Alignment Process® is at the very heart of my work. Too many people spend their lives climbing ladders only to discover—often painfully—that the ladder rests against the wrong wall. My framework is designed to prevent that misalignment by helping individuals and organizations uncover what they truly value and then ensuring those values are infused into every choice, every strategy, every interaction.
Over the decades, I have observed a striking pattern: most people and businesses say they value something, yet their behaviors tell another story. Someone may say they value family, yet they work 14-hour days, spend their evenings at the bar without their partner, and come home long after their children are asleep. Others say they value financial security, yet their bank accounts are overdrawn, they live in debt, and their spending habits contradict the wealth they claim to pursue. The corporate world mirrors this misalignment. Companies proudly list values in glossy brochures, but when you look closer—at the workplace culture, employee behavior, and the volume of customer complaints—it becomes clear those values are little more than slogans on paper.
This gap between espoused values and embodied values is precisely why I created the Values Clarification & Alignment Process®. It is not theory—it is a system forged from three decades of science, psychology, philosophy, and lived experience. From Socrates’ call to “know thyself,” to Aristotle’s teaching on eudaimonia (flourishing through virtue), to the Stoics’ insistence that freedom comes from living by principles, the importance of values has been recognized throughout history. Modern psychology echoes this—Jung’s work on individuation, Frankl’s insights into meaning, my mentor Dr. John Demartini, and neuroscience itself all affirm that alignment between what we value and what we do creates coherence, resilience, and authentic power.
When your decisions, actions, and culture truly reflect your values, you stop living a divided life. You gain clarity, authenticity, and resilience. You create harmony between vision and execution, between what you promise and what you deliver. And in that alignment, individuals and organizations don’t just succeed—they become significant. They stop talking about values and start living them, leaving legacies that endure.
In your experience coaching or mentoring others, what patterns have you observed that consistently support growth and leadership development?
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of coaching a wide spectrum of people—billionaires, politicians, top CEOs, doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and even A-list celebrities and artists. Despite their diverse industries, cultures, and circumstances, I have observed universal patterns. Human behavior, at its core, transcends titles and professions.
Those who truly rise above the noise, create lasting impact, and leave a legacy of significance share five defining qualities:
- Radical honesty with themselves – They refuse to live behind masks. They confront their flaws, limitations, and blind spots with the same courage they bring to their ambitions. Without this self-honesty, growth is cosmetic at best.
- Emotional mastery – They do not avoid discomfort. Instead, they embrace challenges, setbacks, and uncertainty as catalysts for learning and evolution. Where others see crises, they see classrooms.
- A spirit of contribution – Success for them is not accumulation alone but amplification. They consciously use their platforms, wealth, or influence to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.
- Relentless pursuit of their vision – Failures and rejections do not deter them. They view obstacles as stepping stones, and persistence becomes their greatest differentiator. They understand that greatness is not built in the absence of failure but in the refusal to be defined by it.
- Strategic investment in growth – Perhaps most crucially, they consistently invest at least 10% of their income in mentorship, coaching, and continuous learning. They recognize that blind spots kill more dreams than visible challenges. By surrounding themselves with experts who expand their thinking, sharpen their psychology, and help them stay relevant, they turn knowledge into their secret weapon—a compounding investment that yields returns for a lifetime.
When leaders embody these qualities, something extraordinary happens: their growth ceases to be personal—it becomes systemic. They elevate not only themselves but also their teams, organizations, industries, and communities. Their presence is catalytic. They don’t just succeed; they lift others as they climb.
Could you enumerate the significant awards or recognitions you have received and share what each of them means to you?
I have been humbled and, at times, overwhelmed to receive more than a hundred awards and recognitions across the world—spanning literature, entrepreneurship, public speaking, and film. These honors include the Quilly® Award for my books, the Key Person of Influence Partnership Award, the SME Entrepreneur of Excellence Award, the SME Most Visionary Entrepreneur Award, the EXPY® Award, and multiple Literary Titan Gold and Golden Book Awards.
My books—A Path to Wisdom, #Loneliness: The Virus of the Modern Age, The Unfakeable Code®, A Path to Excellence, and Climb Greater Heights—have been blessed with recognition across continents, with some of the most meaningful literary prizes, including the Chanticleer Book Reviews & Media Hearten Book Award, the NYC Big Book Award, the Florida Authors and Publishers Association’s Annual President’s Book Award, the International Book Awards, the Book Excellence Award, Reader’s Favorite, the Paris Book Festival Award, the Dan Poynter Global eBook Award, The Book Fest Award, the Reader’s Choice Award, the Hollywood Book Festival Award, the San Francisco Book Festival Award, and the Main Crest Media Award.
Beyond the page, I’ve also been recognized as the UK’s Business Coach of the Year and named among the Most Influential Public Speakers to Follow in 2024—acknowledgments that celebrate not just the written word, but the spoken word, and the transformative conversations I’ve been privileged to have with leaders, entrepreneurs, and change-makers worldwide.
My work in film has been equally rewarding. Living My Illusion – The Truth Hurts, a documentary born from the courage to confront what lies behind the masks we wear, has won more than thirty international film awards, including honors from WorldFest Houston, the LA Film Awards, and Impact DOCS. To see the story of one man’s midlife reckoning spark global dialogue on authenticity has been one of the most humbling experiences of my career.
But here is the truth: none of these awards matter without the lives they represent. For me, each recognition is more than a line on a résumé or a trophy on a shelf—it is a symbol. A reminder that the nights spent writing, the hours coaching, the moments on stage, and the courage to step into the unknown have reached someone, somewhere, in a meaningful way.
They reflect lives touched, legacies built, and conversations that ripple across cultures, industries, and generations. They remind me that the work is resonating not just in one sector or one nation but globally—across boardrooms, classrooms, living rooms, and even the silver screen.
The real prize has never been the award itself. The real prize is the ripple effect: individuals who discover their power, leaders who grow in wisdom and impact, and communities that rise because someone dared to climb greater heights.
How do you encourage others to combine ambition with purpose, especially in ways that serve communities or larger causes?
Ambition is the fire that fuels achievement; purpose is the compass that gives that fire direction. One without the other is incomplete. Ambition without purpose can lead to burnout, greed, and shallow victories. Purpose without ambition risks becoming passive idealism. My role is to help leaders unite the two—so that their drive is not just powerful, but meaningful, sustainable, and impactful.
In my coaching, I often ask clients a deceptively simple but profound question: “If your profession or business disappeared tomorrow, what would the world truly lose?” That question stops them in their tracks. It shifts the conversation from profit and position to legacy and service. It challenges them to consider not just the numbers they generate, but the lives they touch, the problems they solve, and the communities they uplift.
To anchor this, I bring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the principles of legacy-building, and philanthropy into my work with both individuals and organizations. Because when ambition is tethered to a purpose greater than the self, something remarkable happens: businesses don’t just grow; they evolve into movements. Leaders don’t just succeed; they become stewards of transformation.
This is what I call ambition in service of humanity. It’s not about scaling success at humanity’s expense, but about creating wealth, influence, and innovation that solve real problems, expand opportunities, and leave a lasting imprint on the world. True leadership is not measured by how high you climb, but by how many others rise with you.
What role does creativity or innovative thinking play in the strategies you teach or practice personally?
For me, innovation is the lifeblood of growth. Without it, even the most well-engineered systems stagnate. As an engineer by training, I deeply respect structure, process, and order. But as a transformational coach, I know that structure without imagination is sterile. Creativity breathes life into systems. It is what turns a framework into a force, a plan into a movement.
The methodologies I’ve developed—such as the TJS Evolutionary Method: ALARM®, The Behavioural Change Principles, The Unfakeable Code® Method, The Octagon of Excellence®, and The 12-Step Growth Accelerator Method®—are all designed at the intersection of rigor and imagination. They are blueprints where science meets art, strategy meets intuition, and logic meets possibility.
Personally, my creativity is nourished from a wide spectrum: science and technology, spirituality and philosophy, art and literature. Each domain feeds the other. For me, creativity isn’t a department you walk into at 9 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m.—it is a mindset, a way of seeing the world.
This is what I teach leaders and all who seek my guidance: to cultivate curiosity as a discipline, to look at challenges not as barriers but as creative invitations, and to make innovation a daily practice rather than an occasional project. When they do, they don’t just adapt to change—they become the architects of it. And in today’s volatile, AI-driven world, that ability to innovate continuously is not optional; it’s the difference between being disrupted and becoming the disruptor.
How do you ensure your methods or practices remain relevant across different industries or cultural contexts?
Although industries, markets, and cultures all have their nuances, at the end of the day, people are people. Human beings everywhere wrestle with the same fundamental questions: Who am I? What do I value? How do I contribute? How do I create a life of meaning? That is why my methods remain relevant across such diverse landscapes. They are built not on fads, but on universal principles—awareness, alignment, authenticity, and contribution. These are timeless anchors of growth and leadership.
What shifts is not the principle, but the application. The framework is universal, but its language must speak to the listener’s world.
- With a cardiologist, I may frame resilience as the ability to stay composed in the operating theatre, making life-and-death decisions under pressure.
- With a CEO, resilience becomes the discipline to make hard, often unpopular choices under the scrutiny of shareholders and boards.
- With an artist, resilience is staying true to their vision despite rejection, criticism, or commercial pressure.
- With a lawyer, resilience may mean navigating complex cases without losing integrity, holding steady against the emotional and ethical storms that come with defending or prosecuting.
- With an oil and gas engineer, resilience may be the ability to innovate responsibly in a volatile industry, balancing safety, sustainability, and global demand.
- With a coach, resilience is about walking their own talk—continuing to grow, stretch, and face their own blind spots while guiding others.
- With a politician, resilience is standing firm in one’s convictions while weathering public opinion, media scrutiny, and the shifting winds of policy and power.
- With a billionaire, resilience is maintaining vision and humility in the face of immense wealth, influence, and the temptation to rest on success rather than continue evolving.
- With an A-list celebrity, resilience is preserving authenticity under the spotlight—remaining grounded while navigating fame, public expectations, and the constant erosion of privacy.
The language and examples adapt, but the essence—the call to alignment, authenticity, and living one’s values—remains constant. That is why my methods resonate across industries and cultures: because they do not speak to titles, but to the timeless truths of being human.
That is why my work is both universal and personal. Universal, because it speaks to the shared human condition. Personal, because I tailor the delivery so that it resonates with the individual, the culture, or the industry I’m serving. This adaptability ensures that the frameworks I teach—whether in Silicon Valley boardrooms, European hospitals, Middle Eastern financial institutions, or Hollywood studios—remain not only relevant but transformative.
In short: values are timeless, but the way we embody them must evolve with context. My job is to ensure both are honored.
What advice would you give someone starting their own path in business or leadership while trying to maintain alignment with their values?
The first step for anyone starting their path in business or leadership is to identify their non-negotiables—the values you will not compromise, no matter the opportunity, no matter the pressure. Without that foundation, it’s too easy to get swept into someone else’s definition of success. Values are your compass; without them, ambition can send you sprinting in the wrong direction.
Second, embrace patience. Building something meaningful takes time. There are no shortcuts to significance. Yes, you can hack your way to temporary wins, but shortcuts have a way of catching up with you. True success requires depth, discipline, and alignment.
Third, invest in working with experts in their fields, mentors, coaches, and communities who keep you accountable not just to your goals but to your values. Lone wolves burn out. Great leaders grow in ecosystems of support and challenge.
This is precisely why I wrote books like A Path to Wisdom, The Unfakeable Code®, and, most recently, Climb Greater Heights. Each of these books walks readers through the Values Clarification & Alignment Process®—a structured way to discover what truly matters to you and to weave those values into your daily decisions, strategies, and long-term vision. I urge anyone serious about leadership to not just read, but to do the exercises. Transformation doesn’t happen from passive consumption; it happens when you engage, reflect, and apply.
Because in the end, it is far better to build a slower, values-driven empire than a fast, hollow one. Success built on alignment is the only success that endures. And if you want a blueprint for that kind of life and leadership, you’ll find it in my books and in the processes I’ve dedicated my life to teaching.
If you were to write your bio in your own words, what would you say? What legacy would you like to leave?
I am a seeker who became a guide. A man who journeyed from the rubble of war and the pavements of homelessness to the boardrooms of billion-dollar corporations and the stages of the world. My life is proof that the human spirit, when aligned with vision, values, and discipline, can transcend any limitation.
My work is the fusion of science, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality—five domains often held apart—that I have woven into practical frameworks to awaken human potential and expand consciousness. Whether through my books, coaching, Climb Greater Heights Exclusive Advanced Training Retreat, films, or global speaking, my purpose has always been the same: to help people climb greater heights in their personal, relationship, professional, business, leadership, and spiritual lives, and to build legacies that outlive them.
My legacy is not the more than one hundred international awards I have been honored with, though I cherish them. Nor is it the bestselling books or the film accolades, though I am grateful for those recognitions. My true legacy is the lives touched—the leaders who found clarity, the entrepreneurs who found courage, the families who found healing, and the individuals who discovered that what they once thought impossible was, in fact, within reach.
If I am remembered, let it be as someone who reminded the world of this truth: greatness is not defined by what we accumulate, but by what we contribute with what we accumulate. It is measured not by the heights we climb for ourselves, but by how many we lift with us. My hope is that long after I am gone, the frameworks, teachings, and stories I leave behind will continue to inspire future generations to rise, to serve, and to realize that nothing—truly nothing—is impossible.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Greatness is not defined by what we accumulate, but by what we contribute with what we accumulate.”
– Tony Jeton Selimi
Links
- Tony via LinkedIn
- Tony’s website
- Know more about the BREW Book, Blog, and Poetry Awards here
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