We tend to think that this is some special "chemistry", "from God". And what if it's not? Can it be learned?  

We spoke with three Ukrainian co-founders of a European Ed-Tech company. They shared their discoveries about the root causes of the success of charismatic personalities. These people have created a unique product that will help everyone to install "secret" knowledge in their personality and nurture their charisma.

Please, welcome: 

• Olga Panok (@sarabright_), specialist in public awareness and communications management, political scientist, candidate of political sciences, author of the idea and CEO of the project, which is discussed in this material.
• Andriy Ziban – angel investor and marketing director.
• Gnat Panok – head of the development team.

  Product: A unique application EQ.app.Emotional Intelligence (https://eq-ap.com, @eq.application) 

         Justification

 Olga, what prompted you to look for the secret code of magnetism of successful and realized people?

 Olga: Having the good fortune to work as a PR specialist for thirty years with the rich and powerful of this world - top politicians, businessmen, heads of multinational corporations and domestic financial and industrial groups - I could not help but ask myself the question, what is the secret of their dizzying success. Why do millions obey them, how do they earn billions and reach incredible heights, and at the same time always land on "four paws", no matter what trials come their way? I always wanted to hack the code of their charisma (laughs).

And did you succeed? 

Olga: Yes. I came to the conclusion that the main feature of the strong in this world is the ability to manage one's emotional state and to manage the emotions of others. Because a person's calmness and self-control in any situation is an emotional core that is magnetically attractive to the environment. Most people live in a background state of anxiety, fear, and this majority tends to follow those who radiate power. It is given by self-confidence, firmness, emotional stability and stability. This is the secret of charisma.

I "empirically rediscovered" it on my own, and then wanted to pass it on to others. It was eventually implemented as an app

EQ.app.Emotional Intelligence. (https://eq-ap.com)  

Did your partners immediately support you?

Ольга: Andriy is just one of those people who have the power we talked about. So he supported my idea almost immediately. Then we shared it with Gnat. This product is the result of the work of our triumvirate of co-founders.

        Mission and plans

Andriy, what helped you to make a decision?

Andriyі: Olga and I devoted a significant part of our time to self-development - we traveled all over the world to various seminars and trainings - and we always believed that self-improvement is key. By changing the inner, you also change the outer. Having accumulated a lot of knowledge, convinced from our own experience that the control of thoughts and emotions is an extremely important element of social success and inner happiness, we decided that it is necessary to share it and do something socially useful.

Are we talking about large-scale changes at the level of the planet? 

 Olga:  Yes, we believe that we can change the emotional climate of the planet for the better, thanks to the fact that knowledge and skills on the development of emotional intelligence will be more accessible to people through our product. In addition, we are working on installing our methodology in the work of school psychologists and teachers, as well as in the system of higher education in Europe in general and in Ukraine in particular. We have a lot of work in this direction.

At the beginning of the war, you gave Ukrainians free access to the application. Already have some feedback?

Gnat: We had and still have very valuable feedback. We are very grateful to those who supported our project - more than one hundred thousand users have downloaded the application and are actively using it. People write that with it you can even cope with PTSD, which many of our compatriots suffer from due to the horrors of war. I can mention that he has helped and continues to help me and my many friends since my student days in the USA. Each of them becomes our admirer and follower in different corners of the planet.

Olga: Free access for Ukrainians is our investment in the emotional well-being of our compatriots and the country. Thanks to the involvement of our content team, we translated the English-language version of the application into Ukrainian in less than a week, developed a new course called "Quick emotional self-help" and integrated new features into all the algorithms of the application and launched an advertising campaign so that as many Ukrainians as possible learned about its existence and received a free opportunity to support themself emotionally. We are a European company focused on the Western market, but we could not leave our compatriots without professional psycho-emotional help during the war. We emphasize that our application is paid for foreign users.

«At the beginning of the war, it became clear that it was difficult for people to cope with their emotions. Fear, despair, uncertainty, anxiety - emotions dominated society then, and, unfortunately, remain an active manifestation of social consciousness to this day. We know and believe that our tool, as a product of mass use that simultaneously helps thousands of confused and despairing fellow citizens to find a trusting connection with themselves and the world».

Tell us about your app. What is its uniqueness and how does it help to become emotionally stable? 

Olga: Emotions and their impact on humans have been studied for three millennia, since the time of Buddha and Socrates. This is a huge layer of knowledge that is very difficult for the average person to assimilate and integrate. We managed to succinctly present all the historiosophy and innovations on the topic of an individual’s emotional life in the format of a structured methodology, which includes theoretical knowledge (in visual, audio, game and text formats) and practical techniques, effective tools, using which a person develops their emotional intelligence step by step. Our technique is protected by copyright and has a world patent.

Andriy: When creating the product, we also considered what worked for us personally and those around us. If you want to help someone, help yourself! We are fans of this product. Having found the truth, which we tested on ourselves, having gathered knowledge and experience, we adapted all this to the format of clip thinking. Modern society has learned to perceive information very quickly and in detail, the struggle for attention continues, and therefore our information base has been adapted to a modern stereotype in which people are simple, easy and familiar to navigate.

With the application's help, a person learns to identify his condition, and then receives advice on what to do about it?

Olga: Application, through subtle and fast algorithms, guides the user through all stages of the formation of emotional intelligence, which has five basic components. For example, you need to determine your emotional state. There are currently 365 emotives, so-called emotional and action-motivating states that a person experiences and can identify. To read what each of them means, before recognizing it in yourself, is 

almost an impossible task for an ordinary person. In the application, everything is presented in the format of visual content with beautiful pictures and a clear technology for determining one's emotional state. Currently, 150 emoticons are presented there in our author's presentation, currently working on integrating the rest.

Next, a person needs to learn to switch emotions. Because managing them means replacing the negative feeling with a positive or at least neutral one - a state of rest. We have developed an algorithm that takes only 3-5 minutes to work out. You have to agree, it's just lightning fast, especially considering how long and endless our sad experiences can sometimes be or seem.

And are these skills fixed for a long time? 

Olga: If you install the system of developing emotional intelligence in the structure of your personality, you can once and for all change your emotional attitude to the world and your own emotional self-identification in it. The old neural settings of spontaneous reactive response will change to completely different ones - through the intermediate stage of awareness and control of emotions. Then automatic reactions will change to new ones very quickly and easily.

It's just incredible, such rapid changes. How do you plan to involve more and more people in the world in this process?

Olga: Our application is now trilingual. We want to translate it into the main European languages ​​- Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German. We are currently looking for teams of translators. It takes time and a lot of effort, because it requires deep work with the text and context - visuals and semantics must be adapted to the mental codes of a certain culture.
In addition, as we have already said, there are plans to integrate the development of emotional intelligence into the education system. We also promote our topic in the Ed-Tech community, in the IT system, and among innovation and technology leaders in various fields. We strive to become and are already becoming our own in the scientific environment. We founded the Institute for the Development of Emotional Intelligence, concluded a Memorandum and systematically cooperate with the Faculty of Psychology of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University and form an educational and business ecosystem EQ, which will allow us to become not only a niche product available for wide use, but also set trends in the field of humanitarian civilizational trends.
These achievements give us wings, give us more confidence and allow us to open more doors in the world of influencers.

Investments are needed to implement all these plans 

Gnat: We are actively working in this direction. In particular, the first round of obtaining an EIC grant from the European Commission has been completed. The peculiarity of this program is that it does not offer startups a specific amount, but provides the funding necessary to achieve the main goal - to become a global company and ensure the spread of its innovative influence around the world. At the moment, we are undergoing an acceleration program there - express training in business, communication systems and marketing strategy to become better than we are. In addition, we are at the stage of concluding financial and contractual obligations with the first round investor. 

And as a conclusion. What should the average person do to become more charismatic?

Olga:  If a person strives for it and works hard in the time rhythm proposed in the application, we guarantee the results in three months to a year. This, of course, depends on what goals the specific user sets. You can learn to manage your emotions in three months, and if there is a need to learn to manage the emotional states of others - from a close circle to leading large social groups - and to cultivate your charisma, then it takes a year or more. Our method of regulating one's own and other people's emotional life works and the result is guaranteed. Download the app and see for yourself.