Hi everyone,

I just wanted to send you an update and let you know that Felix was born at 3:01AM on Wednesday morning.  Michelle, Felix and I are super happy, healthy and also exhausted. Felix weight when born was 9 pounds and 4 ounces and he was born naturally after 51 hours of labor.

Yes, labor took a really long time (20 hours in considered very long and I did not even know that anything like 51 hours was humanly was possible - Michelle is amazing to hang in there for so long).

Due to the long labor we are staying an extra day in the hospital where I do not have any Internet and so I won't be back online and on email until Friday Vancouver time.

Talk to you soon,

Mike

PS: No pictures yet, I just rushed back home from the hospital to send of a quick email to let everyone know that Michelle, Felix, and I are doing great.

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 »

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.

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.

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 »

Watch it below:

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“Vishen says they chose Malaysia for various reasons, including the fact that Southeast Asia is rapidly emerging as an economic powerhouse, and there are some three billion people within a five-hour flight from Malaysia who are getting online.

But Malaysia also has a non-business advantage that is often overlooked by employers. With its beaches, rainforests and vibrant urban life, it is simply a fun place to be.
Why not offer bright, young talent a career that involves partying in the tropics? A MindValley job ad posted on an online recruitment page that read “Win a free trip to Bali” – referring to a recent annual company trip to the island – attracted a deluge of applications.

“Now, at some point we realised there’s an opportunity here. We can position MindValley as an adventure career. Give up your boring little job in the US or Europe, come live in Malaysia – we’ll give you flexible working hours, you’ve got a lot of holidays, you’ve got a 45-hour work week and in your free time, you can travel, explore Southeast Asia. That was our marketing pitch and people loved it,” says Vishen.”

Full Story »