Many of you have heard about Awesomeness Fest, the epic event Mindvalley puts on every year in November. But something not everyone knows is the back story of how Awesomeness Fest came to be…

I firmly believe that the best way to grow a company is to focus first and foremost on growing its individuals. While the old paradigm was all about managing people, the new one is about growing people. It’s all about creating the next generation of empowered individuals who are able to go out and make a shift in the planet.

Mindvalley is known for taking young people and turning them into superstars. A stunning statistic about the company is that 25% of everyone ever hired by Mindvalley goes on to become an entrepreneur. And 10% of everyone ever hired becomes a Mindvalley venture backed entrepreneur. Yes, 1/10 people end up with their own business funded by Mindvalley.

We accomplish this through our process of growing individuals. The whole company is focused on the idea of advancing human potential.

Our unique annual team retreat is one such way we “grow” our people. We put together a a private seminar packed with bonding, fun and knowledge sharing; where the team spends 4 days together on a beautiful beach, working on all areas of their lives. We bring in personal growth leaders and inspirational entrepreneurs to rub shoulders with our employees, which often times results in close friendships. Representatives from role model companies like Google and Zappos also join us.

People eventually got wind of the Mindvalley retreats, and wanted in! We had so much outside interest from our partners and authors, that there was no way we could accommodate everyone. This was how Awesomeness Fest came to be. We wanted to take the experience we had created at our team retreats and open it up to everyone. And so Awesomeness Fest became a ‘public’ version of our team retreat.

We’re going to give you a quick preview of what happens at these famous team retreats. Now keep in mind, this is far from your average corporate gathering. Even compared businesses in Silicon Valley, this is pushing the limits of company culture. So make sure to have an open mind while watching ;)

Online piracy costs us hundreds of thousands every year. Tons of folks pirate our courses. We suffer no less than any other publisher or content creator. But there’s no way in hell we’d support SOPA or PIPA. The greater public good has to be taken into account and this means an Internet that’s free of government regulation.

Protest against SOPA in NYC. Photo taken by Alec Perkins, via Wikimedia Commons

SOPA and PIPA are awkward, dumb, dangerous bills put forth by folks who are only looking after their own interest. Hollywood, CNN, Murdoch and the rest of the SOPA supporters need to grow up. Times have changed. Adapt and quit whining. Piracy is NOT going to cost American jobs. That’s a myth. These jobs would simply move to industries that are up and coming such iPad app development, games, interactive media and technology.

Secondly, new distribution services would emerge. iTunes fixed a broken music industry and empowered both the artist and the consumer. The only people to suffer were the record labels. The iPad, Kindle and Amazon are going to do the same for book publishers – while authors and the public will win. Hollywood and the TV networks are due for the next big shift. But the general public and the moviemakers will WIN. No jobs will be lost, old business models will simply die. With characters like Murdoch running our TV networks, this is perhaps a good thing.

Piracy costs me hundreds of thousands a year. That’s a lot for a small business. But we won’t vote to harm the greater public good to protect our own wallets. We’ll adapt and innovate.

What’s your move Hollywood?

And because we’re not the type to follow the status quo, we’re always looking for new cool ways to make an impact. Particularly when it means having a load of fun whilst doing it :-)

Awesomeness Fest, 2011

This philosophy (high impact + fun = Mindvalley style) has fueled the development of some of the most-talked about initiatives we’ve launched. And on 3 – 6 November 2011 in Hawaii, we held what’s turning out to be THE hottest personal growth movement on the planet – Awesomeness Fest.

This is our annual non-profit event which brings together authors, speakers, entrepreneurs, game-changers, pioneers and visionaries…

Lisa Nichols shares in a hands-on session at Awesomeness Fest 2011

After the success of Awesomeness Fest 2010 in Costa Rica, we realized something. Given the huge amount of community support, and the passion plus donation of talent & time that comes from its members, we want to make sure every penny earned goes to causes supported by the tribe. We’re not seeking to create just another seminar or event. We’re aiming to create a movement. And movements belong to their community.

A few members of the tribe at Awesomeness Fest 2011 on a catamaran sunset trip, off the coast of Maui, Hawaii.

So ALL profits of Awesomeness Fest are now donated to worthwhile causes making an impact around the world.

Awesomeness Fest 2011 was an epic success, with around 250 of the brightest most talented people on the planet flying in from all over to take part.

Ground-breaking ideas were shared, new friends and venture partners were made, future visions were mapped out.

And best of all, not only was it a life-changing experience for many of us on both a personal and professional level, but it also gave us the opportunity to contribute to worthwhile causes around the world – with all profits of the event totaling almost $30,000 donated by Mindvalley to these these three causes:

The Pachamama Alliance

Led by award-winning philanthropist Lynne Twist, the Pachamama Alliance strives to preserve over 8 million acres of Amazonian rainforest in Ecuador. They do this by working closely with the indigenous Achuar tribe, empowering them to preserve their own land and culture. Using this strategy they’ve saved millions of acres of rainforest, and successfully lobbied the Ecuadorian government to become the first country in the world to add a Right of Nature to their constitution.

Lynne Twist, founder of the Pachamama Alliance, with Vishen and Kristina Lakhiani at Awesomeness Fest 2011

Shine on Sierra Leone

Shine on Sierra Leone is an organization led by United Nations Woman of the World Tiffany Persons. Their mission is to introduce groundbreaking education, healthcare, micro-financing, sustainable building and agriculture programs to communities in Sierra Leone. In just 5 years they’ve helped local women set up 3,500 businesses, trained 6,000 people to be computer literate, and built 3 community buildings.

Tiffany Persons on a Shine on Sierra Leone education project

AIESEC

Present in over 110 countries and territories and with over 60,000 members, AIESEC is the world’s largest student-run organisation. Focused on providing a platform for youth leadership development, AIESEC offers young people the opportunity to be global citizens, to change the world, and to get experience and skills that matter today. As well as sponsoring two AIESEC representatives to attend Awesomeness Fest, we donated a percentage of the event’s profits to AIESEC and signed up to be a Global Partner, committing to hire at least 20 AIESEC interns from across the world over the next 2 years.

Members of national AIESEC leadership teams from over 110 countries at the AIESEC International Congress 2011 in Kenya

Lynne (of Pachamama Alliance) and Tiffany (of Shine on Sierra Leone) both attended Awesomeness Fest and sparked a chain reaction amongst the tribe. Yep, the involvement isn’t stopping at the event. Everyone was so inspired by the work of Lynne and Tiffany that a few suggestions started floating round… and now there are two pretty unique Awesomeness Fest meetups scheduled for 2012:

With 20 people signed up for for a trip to Sierra Leone in March and 30 people signed up for the Amazon Rainforest in August – the tribe is heading out to see the impact these organizations are making and go through a pretty awesome (and eye-opening) experience together.

New friends, connections, business partners and yep, perhaps even loved ones, being made at Awesomeness Fest 2011

For Mindvalley’s birthday, we thought streamers and balloons just wouldn’t cut it, so we planned a mind-blowing mix of events and parties to celebrate the crazy ride so far. Photos of these to follow next week :)

And with 8 years under our belt, Mindvalley will be letting out a few more notches as today – on Mindvalley’s 8th anniversary – we’re unrolling an awesome new brand identity and logo.

Firstly, let us introduce you to the guy who made this happen. Jason Borzouyeh is a branding maven who has worked on some of the biggest global brands – including Android. Hailing from the urbanscape of NYC, he’s been living in Malaysia for the past few months along with his wife Simona (who works for Mindvalley) working virtually with his US based and international clients.

He’s a regular fixture in our office – he much prefers it over working from home – and over these last few months he fell in love with our culture, our people, our mission.

And as he’s a pretty damn awesome guy, he decided to help us rebrand Mindvalley so that we can really communicate who we are and what we’re about.

The new brand identity was unveiled yesterday in our Hall of Awesomeness, and here are a few images that will give you a flavour of what to expect from the new Mindvalley brand moving forwards as of today – on our 8th Anniversary:

The Official Logo

A few of the Messages

Note a key tagline throughout: Awaken, and the use of wings as a common theme throughout all the manifestations of our logo.

This is representing that Mindvalley is enabling people to reach new heights. From the 120,000+ customers we’re inspiring and helping grow through our personal growth programs, to our employees where we’re planting the seed of entrepreneurship (25% of all Mindvalley employees have gone on to become entrepreneurs – a large proportion of these being Mindvalley backed partnerships).

The Inspiration

We’ve played around with the idea of wings through the concepts of superheros, a key element of Mindvalley culture already – from the giant life size model of WonderWoman in our entrance to the 5 superhero figures that are given out to members of the team each month in our community-voted awards.

What’s cool is that the new brand visuals have emerged right out of our culture. Jason says he found inspiration in many things within the office – the shapes of the beanbags, the design of our bookshelves and the structure of our meeting rooms…

Looking around our HQ against the new designs, we can see that he’s right :)

Interpretations

But the beauty of all this is that the new logo can be interpreted in so many different ways and styles. Just as each one of us is unique and changing the world in our own way, together we’re also part of a bigger movement to have a positive impact on 500 million lives by 2050.

On the date of our 8th Anniversary…

Many synchronicities came about over the past few months which led us to this point, launching our new brand identify on the day that Mindvalley closes it’s 7th year and enters into a whole new chapter.

Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture (as it sounds similar to the word which means ‘prosper’) and I have a hunch that this year is going to be the most epic one yet :)

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.

We love this quote as it really brings to light the happiness that helping people can bring. Customer support is a lost art form, and we’re on a mission to breathe life back into it :)

Now let us introduce to you the happiest (and most rapidly expanding) team at Mindvalley…

From all corners of the globe, this innovative team are striving to bring Mindvalley customer support to a world-class level. We’ve been listening carefully to all your feedback over the past few months, and based upon what we know is important for you and all our customers we’ve created five core values. We call them the 5 Pillars of WOW, developed for us to live by so that each and every one of you – anyone involved with Mindvalley – experiences WOW quality learning and support.

Definition: WOW quality

noun a new level of awesomeness, the type that makes your toes tingle and gives you butterflies inside. Also known as Mindvalley Standard.

We’ve never released these 5 Pillars of WOW to our community before and we’re excited to share them with you today…. they’ve emerged out of our interactions with you so that we can serve you better so hopefully these values will give you a glimpse into the heart of our WOW Team. If you’re a Mindvalley customer, we hope you’ll recognize a few things from your experiences with us :)

Support and Trust

We like to think of it as holding your hand as you take on a journey.

As with all epic journeys, sometimes the road can be bumpy as you face challenges and personal obstacles – but we’ll always be here supporting you and guiding you along the way.

And that’s because we’re on the journey right alongside you. As individuals in the team, we’re as committed to learning as you are. Not only do we study the courses ourselves, we learn directly from the authors in person so that we can give you quality support.

The photo here was taken in May this year when Laura Silva flew out to Mindvalley HQ to spend time training us on advanced Silva techniques.

Results Generating

We don’t just publish pretty products. Nope most certainly not. Everything we publish goes through rigorous testing to ensure it delivers a life transforming experience.

This means it’s high impact – like a shot of wheatgrass juice it’s packed to the max with life enhancing goodness.

We listen to the comments and feedback from our customers so if there’s a module in a program that isn’t proving effective, we work with the author to improve it straight away. All our products are designed to deliver change and create breakthroughs and improvements in your life, and this makes our job pretty easy – it’s awesome doing support when the products work so well :)

Community

As a Mindvalley customer, you’re never alone – you’re part of community.

You’re part of an awesome movement of people having a large scale impact in the world so it’s important to us that we nurture this community and connect you with like minded people.

Whether it be in our central community FinerMinds, or any other of our community hubs (check out Silva and Love or Above) you’ll always be part of a supportive network of people encouraging you and inspiring you along the way.

Innovative

We believe in the power of technology and unconventional thinking.

It’s important to us that our products are always on the cutting edge, with the hottest new techniques (eg. Quantum Jumping) and delivery methods (eg. web 2.0 technologies and video streaming).

Thanks for all your great feedback on our Mindvalley Library – we developed this with the insight that you needed a great platform to consume media on. We have plans to improve this even more so that as a customer, your experiences with our programs get better and better each time :)

As pioneers in conscious shifting, we’re like explorers shining the torch into new unexplored areas to bring you the most innovative solutions out there. It’s an exciting quest!

Quality

Because you’re our most important priority, there’s no such thing as 90% for us…. it’s 100% all the way! And we don’t measure things by profits – our customer satisfaction score is our top concern. Yep that’s right, we have a happiness index and the lives of our customers always come first :)

So with a combination of the most impactful products and top quality support (we’re aiming to be best in the world), we try to create an all encompassing WOW experience that brings results.

Because just like the Chinese proverb said, creating happiness in the world (and in your life) makes us happy.

And this brings us to the end of our 5 Pillars of WOW – we hope you recognized them from your encounters with us! Every day we’re striving to be better and better so that these values shine through in everything we do. We’d love to get your feedback on how we’re doing. Leave us a comment below to share the experiences you’ve had with Mindvalley’s customer support team….

The Hall of Awesomeness at Mindvalley HQ is our public space for space for speakers, meetups, movie nights and trainings. On any given week you might encounter Burmese refugee children watching a movie, or a Webcamp meetup with speakers who are the best tech minds in the city, or a meditation class by the Silva Method… or in this case, an amazing training by two of the best minds in publishing.

Check out what happened when Michael Drew and Andrea Reindl McLean came to visit last week :)

“Flip, where to even begin?! It was amazing…. not only because I learned so much about myself (during the self reflection and vision setting) but also having the chance to learn from (and party with!) such incredible people was mindblowing. It’s the kind of opportunity I know I couldn’t get anywhere else except for Mindvalley! Plus I’m an AIESEC Alumni, so it was awesome to see Sugar Cubes (little messages of appreciation placed in personal envelopes) up on the wall” – Leanne Beesley, FinerMinds Director

“I felt the my mind expanding to a new world of possibilities in a matter of days! I was so inspired by all the speakers there through the stories and ideas they shared. It made me truly believe that it IS possible to reach your goals… you’ve just got to have the right mindset. I left the team retreat with great wisdom in my hands.” – Celeste Parins, Brand Manager

“It was awesome to have the chance to listen and connect with top entrepreneurs and inspirational speakers from various fields. I was truly inspired by their presentations, including the ones by Juan (founder of Mindvalley Hispano), Mike and Vishen. They’re always geared with great ideas and more than willing to share them. I can still feel the retreat’s positive energy on my back even though it’s actually over. And not forgetting the sand stuck between my toes! So yes I definitely had a great time!” – Michal Piertrusinski, SEO Specialist

“I really liked the way we were welcomed upon arrival. I felt the love and saw the awesome effort they made and couldn’t be more thankful. And the parties were amazing. Every night was a different theme that it was hard to choose which was my fave. But I can definitely say the best speaker at the retreat was Amish Shah. He was phenomenal.” Melanie Chang Fung, Community Manager

After a record-breaking August, we kicked off September with a bang as we jetted off to our epic team gathering of the year – The Mindvalley Team Retreat!

Our destination? The tropical island of Langkawi, Malaysia…

This annual tradition plays a huge part in fostering our Mindvalley Mystique – that ‘can’t quite put a finger on it’ somethin’ somethin’ that draws great things to us like a cute moth to a hot flame. Packed with TED-style-talks, team bonding activities and not forgetting late night dancing, the Mindvalley Team Retreat is something that brings all of us (employees and partners) closer – learning, growing and having a blast in the process.

And this year, we were seventy people strong. Our key guest speakers included innovative Internet Entrepreneur Amish Shah, Product Manager for Zappos Insights, Robert Richman and Google Malaysia’s Senior Accounts Manager, Marc Woo.

Other high profile guests who joined us to share their expertise include the young female entrepreneur and founder of InstantTaxBack.com from Costa Rica – Mila Gamboa, serial entrepreneur – Darren Olstead, SEO expert and founder of Content Divas – Shelby Larson, world leading hypnotherapist – Steve G Jones, plus Energy Healer and Sexual Empowerment Coach – Ariel White.

Yep yep you read that correctly – surprised we’re learning sexual empowerment techniques at an official company event? Hey, we’re all about life balance here at Mindvalley – which means success in EVERY area of our lives ;)

With amazing sessions ranging from Arial’s insights to product launch formulas by Amish, we were taken on a 3.5 day journey that totally transformed our mindset and inspired us to do more, see more and be more.

Funniest part of the retreat? Most definitely when Steve G. Jones demonstrated the susceptibility of the human mind, hypnotizing members of our team to ‘become’ Mindvalley founders Vishen and Mike. Let’s just say those videos certainly won’t be getting released…. (and if you ever find them leaked onto YouTube, unless the camera caught the real Vishen’s ‘weeping with laughter’ face, we deny all knowledge and liability!) ;)

If you’ve already watched the video at the top of the page, you’ll have an insight into the impact of the last day. Shortly after Vishen’s closing session where we created a list of our goals and dreams we want to achieve in the future, we ended with a beautiful 10 minute activity. The tears you see are not of sadness, but heartfelt emotion….. as half the people in the room stood with their eyes closed, the rest roamed quietly to soft music – whispering words of personal appreciation in the ears of those who have inspired us, before reversing roles.

And while we could tell you how we felt during that special moment, the video above will give you a better grasp of the amazing energy we felt at that time – so check it out… 

Stay tuned for extra highlights of the team retreat! 

Nope we’re not on a mission to give you flashbacks to the early noughties hiphop scene. The reason we bring it up is because we know EXACTLY how sugar got so fly. Yep, there’s a scientific formula connecting sugar to hot sizzling flyness….

You could even call it our secret formula for post-conference motivation. If you’re a member or alumni of AIESEC, you’ll know EXACTLY what we’re talking about.

But for the rest….. welcome to our little secret. They’re called Sugar Cubes.

These inconspicuous envelopes hang unassumingly on the wall at our Team Retreats, each labelled with an employee’s name. Over the course of the retreat, you’ll notice them getting fatter and fatter – until the last day when they’re bursting and close to overflowing with small folded up pieces of paper.

Papers of L.O.V.E.

Each of these little papers feature a handwritten message from someone in the team telling them exactly WHY they’re awesome.

Maybe it’s a special moment they shared earlier in the day. Or perhaps just a general appreciation that they had never verbally expressed before.

Sometimes they are creative (we’ve even had poetry!). On occasions they may even be witty.

But always, without fail, they are filled with notes that make us smile (sometimes cry) and give us that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

The kind of feeling you get when you learn exactly why people think you’re awesome. Or pretty damn fly.

Sugar Sugar how’d you get so fly?

It’s easy. Tell them the reasons why they’re fly and before you know it, you’ll see them soar.

Ok, so it might not strictly be true. But we think it’s pretty unusual for a company to have successfully engrained such a positive word so deeply in its culture.

Even our resident Brit, who even struggled with the word ‘cool’ when she first joined us, has been baffling her family and friends with her frequent excitable usage of the word.

From the logo on our Team Retreat t-shirts, to our weekly Awesomeness Reports, to “The Bell of Awesomeness that is only to be rung in moments of sheer and total Awesomeness“…

the list goes on and on!

(btw, if you were wondering about the quote here – it’s our favorite line from Kung Fu Panda)

So why’d we do it? It’s simple – positive words have positive vibrations. And this leads to happier and brighter energy, not only in the office space but also internally within ourselves.