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.

• List of speakers »
• More on the event »
• More on Mike’s views about workplace democracy »

“Targeted blogs and podcasts are nearly a perfect vehicle for marketers, but they have one serious flaw,” said Mike Reining, CEO of Mind Valley, creator of the SocialRank blog discovery engine. “It’s way too labor intensive for a marketer to contact and deal with the amount of blogs/podcasts it can take for them to reach critical audience mass, if they’re not working with the huge ‘A-listers.’ The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network solves this, by enabling media buyers to work with thousands of niche blogs, while only needing to make one phone call and send out one set of creative.”

His answer to why most entrepreneurs fail was: They give up

It is as simple as that.  The successful ones just NEVER stop!  They have a pigheaded determination to achieve the goal they set out to achieve. 

Brian Tracy shared a really powerful analogy with everyone at Jay Abraham's seminar.  What he said is that entrepreneurship is similar to flying.

a) You need a destination - where do you want to go?
b) You need to take off - just get started and take action!
c) You constantly need to adjust course

Did you know that a plan is always off course?  99% of the time it is making constant adjustments to ensure that it gets to the desired destination. 

Entrepreneurship is not that different.  The problem is that that most people don't have the stomach for the constant ups and downs.  It is an emotional roller-coaster!

This is how most entrepreneurs view things:

In order to get from A to B, most entrepreneurs will say that they experience a constant series of ups and downs. 

It is a never ending struggle and somewhere along the way most entrepreneurs drop out of the race.  They simply give up, pack up, and go home.

However, the successful ones just keep on going.  What helps them along the way? They view the world differently.

Here is how successful entrepreneurs view things:

Successful entrepreneurs think of climbing a new mountain and to climb a mountain you hardly ever choose a straight path. 

Instead, you have to feel out the terrain and constantly make little adjustments.  One second you are moving towards the left and the next you make a small adjustment and continue towards the right.  But you are constantly moving forward, learning, and getting closer to the top. 

So, the "ups and downs" have become course corrections.  There are no "downs" in the eyes of successful entrepreneurs.  These are simply learning opportunities on an exciting journey towards the top.

The book is very profound and it will take months, possibly years to fully digest but it is one of the single most important books that I have read in a long time because it addresses some of the biggest challenges facing all of us and it really expanded my understanding of what we are up against and what is required to change the world for the better. 

Some key learnings that I took away:

1) The world and science is too fragmented and we must learn to think of the entire systems and "the whole." 
2) We must focus on the fundamental problems and stop "shifting the burden" and stop applying quick fixes.
3) Creative breakthroughs and deeper understandings can easier emerge when we learn to quiet the mind (meditate) and lead from the heart
4) We must continue to develop our awareness of the problems that we face and make the right choices as individuals

The last point also reminds me of a conversation that I had with a friend over lunch last week.  Why do so many 'smart' and educated people continue to fail to make the right decisions that would be in the best interest?

Examples:
* How many educated people don't recycle?
* How many educated people continue eating junk food even though they would never fill up their car with junk fuel?
* How many educated people keep driving SUVs even while global warming is a real problem facing all of us?

It is not for a lack of awareness that educated people continue to do all of the above...

Their goal is to help make organizations more democratic.  The instant I learned about this organization I was deeply moved by their vision.

I was also determined to have MindValley enter the contest for the world's most democratic work place.

They have a scorecard to measure what this really means.

Just going through the process is already helping me learn and grow as a leader and fortunately we have already come pretty far. 

Here are the WorldBlu Principles of Organizational Democracy:

1) Purpose and Vision

Score: Great!

MindValley has come A LONG way in the past couple of years and I am happy and excited to say that we have never had a clearer vision of who we aspire to be and where we aspire to go.  I will write a separate post on this in the future with more detail but our sense of purpose has never been stronger!  Will keep reinforcing and overcommunicating our vision going forward.

2) Transparency

Score: Very Good!

We like to run MindValley like an open book.  Our wiki makes all goals and processes at the company very transparent and we love to share the financial results that we are achieving across all of our projects!  As soon as I get caught up on accounting, we will also continue with the monthly updates where we share all of the nitty gritty details of our overall financial health.

3) Dialogue & Listening

Score: World-class

All of you should know me by now well enough that I always do everything I can to create an open work environment where everyones opinion counts.  We take extreme care in listening to feedback and treat everyone as equal thought partners in the projects and tasks that you are working on.  Can we do better?  You bet!  I have to say this because I believe in continuous improvement and we have just gotten started. 

4) Fairness & Dignity

Score: Great!

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to me to treat everyone with respect, to be fair, open and honest.  As a leader, everyone will have to make tough and at some points painful and unpopular decisions.  However, I will always be fair and treat everyone how I would like to be treated if I were in your shoes.   That much I can promise. 

5) Accountability

Score: Solid (huge improvement over the past 3 months)

I must admit that this was one of our weaknesses until recently but with lots of process improvements (scrumming away) we have made huge progress.  At times things are still not "world-class" but for an organization that has doubled in size since July, I think we have come a long way and I am very proud of the accomplishments of the team.  Having clear lines of accountability seems to be liberating to the entire organization.  At least that's how I feel.

6) Individual & Collective

Score: Admirable

I must say I was overjoyed when I saw our project leaders, Meike and Katalina, reach out to the entire team and thank every person that has helped them to accomplish so much over the past month!  It is great that we can celebrate both individuals and team effort!

7) Choice

Score: Very good

We do our utmost to give people choice!  So much in fact that the entire organization is shaping and taking on new projects that have been pushed and promoted from the bottom up because these were projects that some of our employees felt strongly enough that we had to pursue. 

Integrity

Score: Solid

Integrity has no shades of gray.  Either you follow strict ethics and morals or you don't!  While I love joking and kidding around, at the end of the day integrity is probably the single most important value to me that I made part of my life during years of martial arts training.  I love to empower everyone on our team and hand over great responsibility but everyone has to understand that freedom requires discipline, and strict morals and ethics.

9) Decentralization

Score: Too much! 

Hehe... these days it is hard to keep up with all the projects that everyone is independently pushing and pursuing.  Loving it! 

10) Reflection & Evaluation

Score: Getting better and better

Wow, for the first time in a long time I feel that I will be able to slow down to speed up.  A lot of it is thanks to Nicole, our latest all start task master that just joined MindValley.  Nicole is our new jack of all trades and has taken over accounting, HR, payroll, financial reporting, office admin and lots of other tasks that used to tie me up.  What a liberating experience! 

Hmm... reflecting on this post some more... I should really ask everyone on our team to evaluate us along the above dimensions.  Hopefully the results won't be that different but it will surely help shed some additional light on where we need to keep focusing to further continue improving our organization.

The above list comes directly from the WorldBlu site at:
http://worldblu.com/orgdemo/principles.php

Mike Reining, believer that Malaysia which is becoming Knowledge Sharing country needs an internet start-up success story which will inspire local technopreneurs and developers.

Growing development team from all over the world can pitch the ideas to them and transform it into writing an “under wraps” social app which will be released for internal beta testing in a few weeks. But MindValley is not only huge idea factory but also resource of good and relevant programming languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails.

Read the Full Article »

Yeah!  I am very excited because this is truly the next step in the evolution of the company.  The wiki is going to be a lot of fun and will become a huge asset for MindValley.  We have BIG plans to "wikify" all of our processes and to dramatically increase knowledge sharing inside MindValley.  In other words, MindValley now has a big shared  brain.

The other interesting thing about the wiki is that it was initially proposed and pushed forward from the bottom up just like Business Week had predicted:

"Wikis, blogs, and other tools will arrive in the workplace whether companies are ready or not, as younger employees tend to develop their own self-organized networks (learn more)

Well, I guess Business Week got that story right! 

Overall, I am very excited about the wiki because it will greatly help in making the organization run much smoother.  What I also love about the wiki model is that it is so organic.  Everyone is a contributor and if anyone has any ideas to make things better they don't need to ask, they can directly take action and implement them. 

I have read countless business books and articles on getting things done over the years and once in a while I come agross a new gem, a new insight that just hits me like a rock. 

As I was listening to some lessons from Bill Bartmann, one of the most successful serial entrepreneurs I have ever met, I had one of these moments.  What Bill had to say might be common sense but the insights are so profound they have changed the way I work and think about work ever since. 

Here is what Bill had to share:

To achieve extraordinary results, you must stop doing ordinary things.  

Why do I like this quote so much?

Because I have noticed that it is very easy to just "get busy."  I can think of many occassions where I just "got busy."  However, instead of making a list of tasks to do and asking myself which tasks are "extraordinary" I would be "too busy" to ask myself these hard questions and just plow ahead.  Well, it turns out that one never runs out of work.  Anyone can always find more things that have to get done.  So, the key truly is to focus on the stuff that matters, the extraordinary things that can help one to become extraordinarily successful. 

How do you know if what you are working on the right tasks?  Just ask yourself:

"Will doing this help me achieve extraordinary results?" OR

"If I keep doing this day in and day out will it help me achieve extraordinary results?"

If the answer is no, then find the items that will truly help you get to the vision that you have set out to achieve.  Now, this does not mean that one no longer has to do the little grunt work.  However, everday it is worth identifying 3-4 items that can really help move the business or project forward and making enough time to work on those. 

"It can get lonely at the top."

When I first started MindValley, I was not quite sure what to make of this saying but after having run a company for a few years, I now completely know what it is all about...

As a leader, it might be difficult to create an open work culture where employees are comfortable and completely at ease to voice their own opinion, especially if they have ideas that go against what the leader is pushing for.

Worse, if one is not careful, very soon, a leader can find him or herself surrounded by "yes men" that are too scared to contradict or question the ideas put forward by the leader.

Equally important, when a company is rapidly growing some items are bound to fall through the cracks.  This is not due to a lack of caring.  As a founder, you will  frequently find yourself juggling dozens of "urgent and important" items.  While focusing on the top priorities every day and every week is important, the founder will

1. Not always realize everything that is important and
2. Might not focus on what other people on his team would consider important. 

What I like to tell my teammates frequently is that "I have no crystall ball." I don't assume I know everything there is to know. 

So, if there are things that are "not working for you," I expect everyone to speak up!  I frequently mention this because I cannot over-emphasize the importance of having an open work culture. 

I am lucky enough to work with so many bright members that by discovering what is "not working" for them I can rapidly help to prioritize what it is that I need to focus on to help make MindValley more successful and to create a far more exciting and fun work culture. 

Creating this environment is no easy task. 

While I keep stressing the importance of open, honest, upward feedback, this is not easy for everyone to do.  Some people are just less comfortable to "critique" their boss.

Trust, me, we can take it and we want any and all feedback that will help make us more successful and will make work easier and more fun for everyone. 

If there are things that are "not working for you," then the MindValley Way is to bring them up.  I am not a mind reader, I have no crystal ball, and I am not as smart as the rest of you so I look forward to hearing all of your constructive feedback on how to keep making things better and better.