At Leidensplein in Amsterdam

From left to right.

• Adelle  from Atlanta: who was our first employee and joined us in Jan 2005 (see this post from our early blog)
• Djoeke from Netherlands : interned with us for 3 months in 2005. Employee #7
• Hani : our media team lead
• Me.
• Meike from Germany : who worked for us in 2008. Now back in Germany completing her Master’s degree.

It was an awesome night!

Wondering what’s the latest blog post on FinerMinds? Or what Marney ate for lunch? Or Wu Han’s latest parenting story? Vishen’s latest travel adventure? Or when Mike’s baby is due? (answer : in 3 weeks!).

Now it’s all in one place (not that you’d really care).

Visit Twitter.MindValley.com >>

Sean did 5 amazing speaking sessions for us in Bali but he saved his best for last.

Back in our office this Tuesday after 3 days in Bali, Sean did an amazing hour long presentation on “How to Manifest the Impossible”

I’m a speaker too, and I’ve seen many of the greatest speakers in the world on stage. But seeing this 3 foot tall man in a wheelchair dazzle and sway the audience is something else. Sean dove into our hearts and left with ideas and views that will stay with us for a long time.

Sean with his fans and friends at MindValley

Kristina and I with Sean. It was a pleasure to host him and his parents for the week.

Among the guest in our audience were Khailee and Joel of YouthSays, two of the smartest young entrepreneurs I know.

Our other special guest included model/actress Stephanie Chai and Miss Malaysia 2007, Deborah Henry. Here they are posing with our Wonder Woman statue. Both were thrilled to hear Sean.

This was our 5th Team Retreat to a paradise island.

2005 : Tioman Island with 7 people
2006 : Tioman Island with 10 people
2007 : Langkawi Island with 17 people
2008 : Krabi, Thailand with 23 people
2009 : Bali with 41 people and 3 kids.

The team at our villa in Bali

Our best team picture yet.

Stephanie is a local actress and model whose face is recognizable on billboards across the city. Next week she’s actually in a movie with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. But makes her special is her brilliant sense of humor, smarts and radiant personality.

She shared the story of how she built her career from scratch, became a financially independent at the age of 23, and got into property investing.

Stephanie described MindValley as being back in her international high school. Where else can you find 15 different countries represented in one single room.

More on Stephanie Chai here >>

My friend Mikko Espime who runs a Finland-based web analytics  company called “Getting Personal” also shared the award with us. Mikko runs the Malaysian office for Getting Personal and he’s a friend and colleague.

Some highlights from the article.

The call for democracy is heard almost in every part of the world from time immemorial, but it has so far been confined to the realm of human rights and the world of politics. But we are now talking about democracy in the workplace.

Besides information and technology empowering people in ways they’ve never been empowered before, an up and coming workforce comprising Generation and X and Y also want to have a different kind of work place.

As many as 40 companies made it to WorldBlu’s Most Democratic Workplace List this year (http://www.worldblu.com/worldblu-list/worldblu-list), the biggest number since its inception in 2007. Worldblu hopes to have at least 20,000 democratic organisations by 2020.

MindValley joins the ranks of most democratic workplaces with Getting Personal. Being one of the very few companies in Asia to have made the cut, also means a lot to the six-year old company that Vishen Lakhiani founded with former Silicon Valley exec, Mike Reining. And what’s more, in 2008, MindValley was the ONLY Asian company to be on the list. As testament to its sustainability and authenticity to democracy, MindValley applied and qualified for the second time in a row, after its 30-odd employees were successfully surveyed.

To illustrate, he admits in the last 30 days, he’s spent 21 of them on paradise islands around the world. “I was at Richard Branson’s private island in the British Virgin Islands, I was at Tony Robbins 500-acre resort in Fiji, and then I was at a friend’s wedding in Cabo, Mexico. In that time, I’ve spent only six days in the office. Yet, in that same time, our company went through one of our biggest, most profitable months, we had our single best sales day.”

All this just goes on to make one wonder what business is MindValley in. Well, it is a publisher of personal development material and thanks to the Internet and technology, which is now increasingly available, the company is able to take famous authors’ knowledge and transform them into mixed media that can be consumed by the public via several ways - podcasts, streaming video, membership websites and so on.

The full article can be downloaded here

John was in Kuala Lumpur to speak at an event for a couple of heads of state, including the Prime Minister. He was also kind enough to swing by our office and spend time with the crew. Mike and I were on Necker Island during this time so we missed John, but it was a real treat for many of the MindValley crew to meet him.

I read Robin’s book “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” some time around summer 2007. It sparked an idea in my head. At that time we ran a website called “The Goldman Method”. It was based on the meditation programs by Burt Goldman. After reading Robin’s book,  the idea of  the “Western Monk” captured my imagination and we renamed the site and the product “Lessons from an American Monk”. You can see it now on TheAmericanMonk.com. The result was a massive boost in sales. TheAmericanMonk.com grew into a million dollar business within it’s first year and to this day is one of MindValley’s most profitable ventures online.

Thank you Robin for your kindness and inspiration.

More on Robin here.

MindValley founder, Vishen Lakhiani, was one of the carefully selected business building experts invited to speak at Tony Robbin’s Ultimate Business Mastery Summit in Las Vegas in April 2009.

Vishen spoke about “Patterns of Influence on the Internet – How to Make Customers Fall In Love with You”.

Other speakers included Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, Eben Pagen, Scott Hallman, two time Inc 500 CEO, and Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.com.

After winning the WorldBlu Award for Most Democratic Workplaces of 2009, for the second consecutive time, MindValley was featured in an article in Fast Company.

“The vast majority of companies today are still organized under an antiquated hierarchical structure that was borne of an earlier era. But a movement toward organizational democracy—a more transparent style of workplace dedicated to employee self-governance—has been gaining steam in the last few years. And today WorldBlu published its annual list of the Most Democratic Workplaces, that includes some eye-opening descriptions of alternative office styles that will either delight or horrify you. Here are a few examples that stand out:

… At MindValley, a Malaysian consulting firm, each employee is given a monthly allotment of 100 points to award to colleagues for their contributions. The five people with the most points at the end earn a “Monthly Awesome Community Award,” and a bonus of 2.5% of that month’s profits.”

Continue reading the article here »