Even a highschool wannabe philosopher couldn't output such pretentious bullshit without feeling a bit shaken by the cognitive disonance. You, sir, are a true businessman!
Their writing and marketing is very effective. But they are close to my definition of evil with selling points like these:
The correct way to do healing visualizations, whether
someone’s suffering from cancer, liver problems, or any
ache or pain.
Hard to believe? Well… consider that a world-renowned
cancer therapy researcher Dr. O Carl Simonton called the
Silva technique: “the most powerful single tool that I can
offer my patients”.
It’s supposed to help depression, control pain, increase
longevity, slow down cancers,...
Cancer Patients:
Show significantly higher wellbeing levels, improved
cognitive functions, and less inflammation. Subjects even
report greater sexual satisfaction.
Learn to protect yourself against chronic diseases such as
cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and heart attacks.
I've been able to cure the cancer I had, help to solve
murders, find missing people.
You put yourself at risk for developing diseases such as
cancer ... Through a technique called Quantum Jumping,
you can learn how to access deep restfulness.
Cancer patients can cause their cancer to go into
spontaneous remission (which means “disappear”)...
through the practice of creative visualization.
Could a doctor really cure cancer? Does this seem too
impossible? And if it’s true then why don’t more people
know about it? A Healing Miracle – How One Doctor Used
Silva To Cure Cancer... people just don’t want to take
that step and realize the healing powers of their own
mind. It is after all easier to go see a doctor and have
them tell you what pill or treatment to take.
Wow, particularly scummy practice when trying to close the tab on that page as well. Blocked me from closing it with a popup by saying data I had entered would be lost, while replacing the page in the background with the pricing box.
Thought we'd left those kind of practices behind a decade or more ago.
"Are you sure you want to leave? Stay on this page to try Chakra Healing for 30 risk-free days and join the thousands who have already experienced this phenomenon for themselves."
I meant to reply this here: There are certain clues, including prominent language use, that shows that this company isn't being guided by someone or people who would be practicing these philosophies - they are just wrapping them up in a marketing package to try to make money off of people. I won't give specific examples of the language as to tip them off to change it.
Here are some of the products this company sells (they own the products, they are not just affiliates--- they create or license personalities such as "Burt Goldman" and it LOOKS like that this person/character is behind the site, not the company Mindvalley):
http://www.modernqigong.com/ "“HOW A DISASTROUS FALL PUT ME
ON THE PATH TO A MIRACULOUS HEALING
THAT SCIENCE COULD NOT EXPLAIN… ”"
These products cost hundreds of dollars. Essentially, they are a serious bastardization of Eastern concepts (I wonder what kind of karma that is creating for you, Vishen?), which in all reality, are available for free, and certainly not dressed up in this way... this is spiritual fraud at worst, misleading useless bullshit at best.
I find it insulting they think they are moving the "human race forward", when it's obvious the exact opposite is happening here. You are exploiting gullible "New Age" people who think anything out of the ordinary can fix their problems, especially when it's Eastern™ AND backed by Science™!
Seriously, this is an abuse of the "mysteriousness" of the East, and the "authority" of Western Science.
We're a publisher. Do I practice Chakra Healing? No. But Our job is to publish an authors work and Alternative healing has a huge following in the USA. Penguin books publishes 100s of genres - including many of the same here. Publishing companies need to cater for a wide audience.
publisher:
Noun
A person or company that prepares and issues books, journals, music, or other works for sale.
You are not only preparing [publishing] it. You are creating it, marketing it, and billing for it.
Are you seriously going to try to bullshit us here? You are trying to shift blame regarding the efficacy of these products onto the authors (like Burt Goldman, "the 85-year-old man who jumps across universes" as your sales page puts it), which is obviously one of the very reasons you license authors to be the face of each of these products (the other reason is because people would rather trust personalities instead of companies).
If you really cared about "reaching a billion people with enlightened ideas" you would not be selling this BS...
We are in every way a publisher. And no, meditation is not BS. Google the scientific evidence. 30% of the US population bill themselves cultural creatives. They embrace yoga, alternative healing, meditation and more. We cater to that market. Another 30%, such as you, are billed modernist. They tend to shun religion, and by default anything that smells of spirituality. Both are opposing cultural ideas - but just because you don't believe in something does not make it false.
> you don't believe in something does not make it false.
What makes things false are empirical studies.
I'm cool with people catering to that market, but I think there's a fine line to walk between selling stuff that's maybe not really that useful, but makes people feel good about themselves, and snake oil. Yoga is probably beneficial for people; 'alternative healing', maybe not so much, in many cases.
I guess you can make the argument that people are going to buy that stuff in any case, but that's kind of going against the idea that you're making the world better, which was a very nice statement in the actual article.
I practice Buddhism. I also study Islam, Hinduism and Christianity.
I said your products are BS, not that meditation is BS. The Buddha's teachings are free, he preached his Dhamma to kings and peasants alike.
You've basically resorted to ad hominem because you know you are peddling scams, and you can't argue that.
And showing statistics proving there is a market does not change the nature of your business. That is analogous to me saying it's okay to sell illegal drugs because people buy illegal drugs.
So, the main problem I see here is that all of the topics you try to promote have an underlying foundation of being genuine and/or authentic behind them. How are you the best people to serve this group if you don't experience it or live by it yourselves?
"Never go 50/50. Always make a list of what each partner is bringing to the table and split accordingly. 50/50 partnerships are done by amateurs."
I don't agree. 50/50 deals are done by two people that trust each other. Just because the guy got burnt by a partner, going it with someone else that you can work with, communicate with, double check key decisions, etc, is still way better.
As for the concept of splitting non 50/50, if you're close to 50/50, say 45/55, you need to just make it 50/50, come on. But also, the idea that you can sit and that accurately apply a worth to "what you bring to the table" at the outset I find unlikely, especially pre-revenue.
It sounds like he likes to be fully in control, no partners, no investors. Don't get me wrong, great achievement, best of luck to him. But I think the business structure and evolution happens to specifically suit his personality, I think it's unsuitable in the majority of situations elsewhere.
"1. Your College Degree is Meaningless (and sometimes a liability)"
"6. No other Skill is as Important as Sales & Marketing"
"7. Don’t Build Crap for the Sake of Making a Buck."
These last two partly conflict with each other. Sales and marketing dominated businesses tend to view the engineering as a necessary evil. It's true that better sales will shift a shittier product better than a poorly marketed average product, but only up to a certain delta in technical quality.
Poorer quality engineering, certainly in the area of software, not only means more bugs in the short term, but the accumulation of piles of technical debt is virtually always ignored in such organisations, that's much more serious.
Yes, it's true that some of these companies grow so fast that they have enough money for a rewrite when the code become unmaintainable, but I still believe that distinctly higher quality code has a cumulative effect and can offset the need for large amounts of sales people (although this depends on the price point), and I've seen that strategy work.
Such companies will claim high levels of quality and as long as from the outside it looks OK, who cares. But I'll bet 98% of these organisations are fire-fighting from dawn till dusk, sapping the morale of the engineering with endless deadlines while the all-important sales staff work towards that 7 figure annual sales bonus.
I don't like points 1 or 6 at all. Engineering is more intellectually demanding academically than the vast majority of non science/engineering subjects, and many engineers are rightfully proud of their academic achievements. You wouldn't get away with being this dis-respectful to them in an engineering focused company, which his clearly isn't.
I don't believe the "I was too busy to do my course" line, either. Frankly, I think he just found it too hard.
I don't like points 1 or 6 at all. Engineering is more intellectually demanding academically than the vast majority of non science/engineering subjects, and many engineers are rightfully proud of their academic achievements. You wouldn't get away with being this dis-respectful to them in an engineering focused company, which his clearly isn't.
I don't get the feeling he's being disrespectful to engineers. He's just listing qualities that are important for an entrepreneur in his opinion.
Academic achievements are worth respecting, but they're not a necessity for becoming a founder, and can indeed be a liability.
If I were looking for a co-founder and met someone who is, say, 30 years old and has published several peer-reviewed papers yet has never worked outside academia, I would be wary of starting a business with this person.
Startups are nothing like university research, so there would have to be something else to offset this liability. To be fair, the same suspicion would apply to someone who has spent her entire career climbing up the corporate ladder in a traditional big enterprise.
*6. No other Skill is as Important as Sales & Marketing"
these kind of blanket statements always bother me. Is it true for selling meditation apps for the iPhone? Yes. Is it true if you're building say a self-driving car? Probably not.
It is true to convince people self driving cars are viable - yes, you need sales and marketing.
To this crowd mostly engineers I'd assume, proclaiming the importance of sales and marketing is valueable. How often do you encounter or do you remember feeling like - "if I build just one more feature it will sell itself". Don't get me wrong engineering is what we do its a given - so recognizing that what you can't survive without is marketing and sales will help a lot is what I take away from the others point...
It's really sad to see how the role of Mike Reining is being diminished here. He was one of the founding partners and quite important to the company, especially on the business (making money) side.
He dropped a really successful career to team up with Vishen to build the company up, so it's not very fair to leave him out of the picture, or suggest that he was a "mistake".
Knowing quite a lot of people from the company, I can also say their turnover rates are crazy - most of the best guys are gone, and not many people stay in the company more than 1-2 years. That's quite weird for a company boasting about a great corporate culture, don't you think?
Most of the advice is pretty basic, solid stuff. It seems they don't have a product that is all that 'interesting' for people here, but then again, how many of us care about bingo cards, either?
I think that's an important message: there are tons of 'boring' things that people will pay good money for if you can sell/market them well, and the product is reasonably good.
That idea has always fascinated me - the multitude of "hidden" small businesses and markets totally off the radar of hackers, and therefore effectively Terra Nullius for smart, curious hackers like Patio11:
There are so many tech-illiterate people controlling so many markets and so much wealth. Anyone who's ever worked at a small or off the radar business (or even a Fortune 500 company) knows how many backwards, inefficient processes (and people, let's face it) that are there just waiting to be disrupted.
As software expands its reach more and more into the real world through mobile, RFID, and the "Internet of things", it's just going to accelerate.
It would be fascinating to see any resources HNers might have on trying to discover these areas that have been under-served by tech so far. I've read plenty of articles on the actual development process (many by Patio) once you identify an under-served market, but best practices on how to find a big list of potential areas (that may or may not be promising) to investigate would be interesting. Maybe something like an Atlas of the small business world?
(Apologies for the buggy landing page. New one coming soon. If signing up doesn't work, email me directly at info@howtofindsaasideas.com and I'll hook you up.)
I feel distrustful seeing the photo where the founder is the central figure of the shot, and the only one wearing shoes, but I might be reading too much into this..
Mindvalley HQ its in Malaysia, where the culture is to NOT wear shows indoors. We allow a shoeless office. I don't know why he had shoes on, maybe he returned from a walk outside or something. yes you're reading way to much into this.
It's not clear whether the products that are being sold here are Mindvalley's or someone else's, and if the latter, what the margins are for reselling someone else's products. Is it $15M in total sales, but MindValley gets 10-20% of that (still not bad), or something else? It would be more helpful to say what the profits are rather than the top line here. I know folks that sell "millions" online, but only keep a small fraction of what is sold, with the majority going to the original producer.
That being said, this is doing a LOT better than most of the SaaS products out there, and it looks like the OP is having a great time doing what he's doing.
Its an interesting story, but if you dig a bit deeper into their business practices you will find stuff that is not so pretty. Thats pretty normal still, many successful businesses have some amount of upset customers, its the way things are but please stop claiming stuff like
> Business people do it for the dollars.
> But real entrepreneurs push the human race forward.
Spammy. But under no conditions could a 100 employee business be defined as a LIFESTYLE business!
Wiki: In conventional business terms, lifestyle businesses typically have limited scalability and potential for growth because such growth would destroy the lifestyle for which their owner-managers set them up.
Am I the only one who can't read through the happy-go-far text on the page and figure out what the company actually does to get to the $15m/yr revenue?
There are certain clues, including prominent language use, that shows that this company isn't being guided by someone or people who would be practicing these philosophies - they are just wrapping them up in a marketing package to try to make money off of people. I won't give specific examples of the language as to tip them off to change it.
$15m/yr revenue with 100 employees. Doesn't say what the founder is taking home, or what he still does at the business (does he film these educational infoproducts all day? Does he constantly fly out to different places to deliver seminars to rainmake?) so it's hard to translate it to an actual dollars-per-hour-of-effort figure.
As with most "lifestyle business" guides, there are only real lessons here for people inasmuch as what this guy's lifestyle is, is a lifestyle you're willing to accept. Working 100hr weeks in finance is a "lifestyle" for some people.
If you pay the employees $80k/yr on average(which is pretty high especially considering its based in Malaysia), wages amount to $8 million. Assuming the costs of running the business is $2 million, the founder still pockets a cool $5 million.
Lots of assumptions, but just trying to show there is enough space for founder to earn 7 digits. But even if it's not, I am sure he's more than happy doing what he wants to do.
You made a huge and most likely incorrect assumption. The $15M is sell-through, of which they only get a percentage (my guess because they are reselling other people's products), and you are confusing top-line revenue with bottom-line profit.
From what I can tell from the business, they resell other people's products, which nets them most likely a 10-20% commission (affiliate revenue). So, that's $1.5M-$2M top-line revenue. Subtract salaries and overhead, and there's not much left.
Maybe you're right. Now I'm curious as to how he bought his shares back from his ex-partners.
"Dumb mistakes that cost me close to $5 million dollars when it came time to buying out ex-partners."
If it's just affiliate revenue there is no way, the company had $5 million dollars in cash. He couldn't have sold shares since he said he has "total 100% ownership" of the company. He also mentions he never got a loan or an investment. Maybe it's just a missed business opportunity.
From what I know - and I do know a few people in the company - the other partner is still not fully paid. So it seems like the profits from the company are going largely there.
The company reached the the 15M in sales only 1 or 2 years ago - they were much smaller earlier. So there is no way $5M in cash.
Also, knowing how the company used to function, I think Mike Reining was really important to its growth, so it's really unfair to ignore his input.
If you look at the company story, at the time Mike had a really great career - working for Boston Consulting Group and later as the Head of New Ventures at eBay, where he worked on the Skype takeover (Google his Linkedin profile).
It was Vishen who was chased out of the US with the green card/visa requirements and Mike just was the only person who decided to team up with him, drop his position at eBay and set off to Malaysia to do something fresh.
It's safe to say it wouldn't happen without the German guy at all.
heres an example of how we make revenue. Download Omvana app from iTunes. Check the Store within the App. We hit #1 highest grossing app in 24 countries.
The company sells products created by other authors. They have a few small ones (like apps), but they are not the core of the business. Take a look at other stuff, like quantumjumping.com - that's pretty... serious? They have things like astral projection too - and other weird stuff.
Employees are not paid much - most of these 100 people earn within 12-18k USD per year MAX. They opened and renovated two big offices in the last 3 years too, so I think they are quite saddled with debt if you ask me.
The overall profit margin for the whole business is about 5-10%, so really not much, considering renovation, hiring and equipment costs.
From interacting with Vishen before a bit, I would say he is doing whatever he is interested in doing in the company. It's not quite running Google level opportunity, but still quite something.
"If I ran a company like Pepsi or McDonalds, I’d be depressed. Exactly what benefit would I be providing to the world other than a marketing machine that is making high-fructose corn syrup and junk food seem cool and tasty?"
Pepsi tastes great and is a cheap coffee subsitute and McDonalds is the cheapest food you can buy fast - a decent couple of sandwiches + a salad & dressing go for $3 from their dollar menu. Those were useful to me many times when I was bootstrapping.
McDonald's food is far from healthy, but there are a lot of poor people in the world working two jobs and still struggling to get by. They may not have the luxury of buying fresh vegetables, let alone of having the time to prepare and cook meals involving them. They can pick up a decent premade hot sandwich for just a buck at McDonald's.
Again, it's a habit you don't want to be in if you can afford to do otherwise, but it seems to me that eating is better than not eating or repeated sleep deprivation because you spent your little time off cooking rather than resting.
I can afford other stuff now but I still crave McD once in a while. Some of their menu items are far healthier than others. Skipping the fries is a good start.
> But real entrepreneurs push the human race forward.
And Mindvalley is doing that by selling, ugh, stuff like Chakra7? http://www.chakrahealing.com/products/academy ? I got that from the link on the blog post page.
Even a highschool wannabe philosopher couldn't output such pretentious bullshit without feeling a bit shaken by the cognitive disonance. You, sir, are a true businessman!