Getting Smart People to Work For You with Vishen Lakhiani - Genius Network Episode #19

Welcome to the Genius Network show. In this episode, you'll discover how to get smart people to work for you, finding talent and creating winning culture with Genius Network member Vishen Lakhiani. Vishen is an entrepreneur, education technology innovator, speaker, investor and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, an education company specializing in innovation by introducing mindfulness and personal development into global education and and perpetual learning. Recorded live from the Genius Network annual event. If you'd like access to the full feature video presentation, the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 19 that's geniusnetwork.com 19.

All right. Vishen is a very creative guy, very smart marketer, has built a big business, co founded a company called Mindvalley. They represent lots of gurus, lots of authors, do some very unique stuff, has really awesome perspectives on hiring and recruiting and retaining people and just has a kick ass office in Malaysia. And you know, what else could I say about Vishen? Let me think. He's all about awesomeness and creating fun in his culture and creating unique experiences for his clients and, and his team. And I have no earthly idea what the hell he's going to talk about, but I'm sure it's going to be fantastic. So give it up for Vish and Lakhiani. Okay.

Thanks Joe.

Thanks, dude.

Where's the clip? Okay, so I was originally going to talk about accelerated learning, right? Like how to speed up learning in employees. But after talking to people in this audience, I realized that one of the biggest issues that many of you face, one of the biggest challenges is getting smart people to work for you, keeping them and allowing them to grow your business. So I'm going to be talking about that. So first, mindvalley, we are basically a media company, a media and technology company. We are probably the world's biggest seller of meditation products right now. We have apps, we have 20 something websites, festivals, events. We represent some of the biggest meditation teachers. We're basically like a recording studio for personal growth superstars. And we have about 100 people across five different countries right now. Now, however, the funny thing is we actually started two blocks down from this hotel in that little apartment above the playwright's tavern on 8 and 45th. And the funny thing is, before I moved into that apartment, it was a Thai massage parlor. And we all know what Thai massage parlor means in New York. So I guess what I'm trying to say is one of the world's biggest spiritual product companies was actually founded in a whorehouse in Times Square 10 years ago. So about a couple of months back, I was with Joe, with Joe Renee and a whole bunch of people. Couple of you were here on Necker Island. Richard Branson's Necker Island. And we were having a toga party, right? And that's what Joe looks like in a toga, by the way. So I was, I'm just gonna leave that up. Joe Renee gave me permission. So I was talking to Richard and I said, richard, people, focus, focus. I said, richard, you've built eight different businesses in eight different industries and taken eight different different businesses to a billion dollars. If you could just sum it up in like one paragraph, what do you think it would be? Now this is what he said, and I'm quoting him. It's all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your business and giving them good work, then getting out of the way and trusting them. You have to get out of the way so you can focus on the bigger vision. Okay, so Dan Sullivan said something similar. Never think of human beings as. Oh, sorry, that or keynote problem. Never think of human beings as a cost. Human beings are an asset. Peter said something similar. Talent is key. So there's a constant theme here. Talent is really a key ingredient in growing your business. But I find that many people, many people here who are my friends have this problem. They are so immersed in their business that they have no time to do as Branson says, focus on the greater vision. So recently I made a decision. I decided to not double my company, but increase it by 2.5 times. In a span of 12 months, we went from 41 people to over 100 people. I've been hiring people like crazy. And while doing this. So that's my team right now, we have still managed to keep headcount to only about 15 to 20% of revenue. But the beautiful part is right now, I've basically outsourced every single aspect of my life. I don't do anything right now except just think about the vision. I wake up in the morning, someone has planned my entire day. So I'm still immersed in growing the company from a vision point of view. But everything else has been outsourced. All I want to do is take all the lower revenue generating activities and find smart people do it. The question is how? And I want to show you just three ideas, three powerful ideas that you can apply in your business to do the same, right? So the first thing is imagine this. Imagine the impact you can have if you had 100 people whose full time job was to Support your vision. That's some pretty powerful impact. Now, the first. So it's all about attract, growing and monetizing great talent. And the first idea is how to hire. So one of the things that occurred to me is that the US only has 5% of the world population, but there are millions of smart people outside America who want to come here and work for American companies. And the thing is, you can hire global talent, but many people don't know the secret. So there's this one organization I use, and I'm gonna ask you to take out a pen. Cause I'm gonna share a couple of email addresses and contacts which are gonna be really useful. It's called isac. I know them well because they are nonprofit. They don't market themselves because being a nonprofit, you know, they're not really marketers. But get this. They are one of the only organ the US Government that can issue work visas. And they work with 800 top universities around the world, grabbing amazing talent and then finding these talent jobs in foreign countries. They are 50 years old. And ISAC was basically how I got into the US I didn't just sneak in on a boat. I actually got a visa from isac. I was one of those raw talents that ISAC helped bring in. So when I started my company, I used them to find talent. And ISAC is amazing. So ISAC gets you young people from universities around the world who put learning first, not money, but learning. Now, all you guys here are educators. So what you can offer this young talent is actually amazing skills. I mean, from Joe, they could learn networking skills. From Neil, they could learn how to pick up women. So there are tons of amazing talent from all around the world who would want to be working for you if you know to tap that. The key paradigm shift here is it's not about money anymore. The current generation, they care more about opportunities to learn, right? So here's a funny statistic. I use ISAC to advertise my company all around the world. We get video cover letters from people all around the world who want to work from mindvalley. In fact, we get so many applicants that we say the only way to apply is to create a video cover letter and put it up on YouTube. And I found that ISAC talent is so smart that right now, 50% of my management team and my management team is 18 people. Nine of those 18 people were young people that I hired from ISAC. That's how powerful that group is. So Ohmlife, which is the product that Paul Hoffman shared his product Paul, I published it, but I didn't come up with the idea, nor did Paul. A young Argentinian kid who came to us through ISEC came up with the idea, he developed it, he built the first website, he turned it into a million dollar business. That's how smart outside talent can be. But the other cool thing is I had all this other talent in my company from different countries. And we were able to take Paul's business, Omharmonics, from English to Polish, Spanish, Russian and Italian in a span of like three months. So we launched this in November. We already now have a multimillion dollar business in five countries because we take that ISAC talent from Poland or from Italy and I tell them, hey, listen, I'm going to give you a license to take all the products we create in America in English, take it back to your country. I'll keep 55% of the revenues, you keep 45. You do whatever you want. And I spend one hour a month on the phone with them just being a coach and advisor. They run everything else. So using this model, I've been able to expand my business to about seven different countries. And now a whopping 20% of all my revenue comes from this team of international talent that have taken my business global. Great way to source international talent. Okay, secondly, think about attending Awesomeness Fest. Awesomeness Fest is my mastermind. It always happens in a paradise location. So we bring in entrepreneurs, but I also selectively invite smart talent whom I know want to find jobs with these entrepreneurs. I mean Kevin. Kevin is an example. Joe met Kevin at Awesomenessfest and Kevin now works for Joe. Second idea, growth. Okay, so couple of tips. We insist that all our talent work 45 hours a week. But five of those hours they have to spend learning and growing themselves. That's a key ingredient. So I grow people like crazy because we insist on growth. A couple of tools you can use. Google Wikis. Okay, so Google Sites. It's a free tool. Everything in my company is documented. We have a 3,000 page wiki. And what we do is, okay, let's say someone wants to learn a new skill, say video sales letters. I buy them Ryan Dice's product. I then have them summarize the product on the wiki. So everybody who studies something summarizes it to create Cliff notes for everyone else. So I don't actually have to spend time going through hours of product. My talent is creating it for me. Okay, again, Google Apps, powerful tool. We then ask them to create a summary, a 20 minute training explaining the product to the Entire team. That happens. Then we ask them to blog about it. And in fact, almost all our trainings are now available. We decided to open them up to the community. So you can go to mindvalleyinsights.com and you can basically get access to all the knowledge from my company for free. Now, by doing this, I'm also grooming my talent. There's a psychological thing that issues that happens when you ask someone to teach. They become better at what they do. Okay, so those are some ideas for growth. Now the final idea is space. So anyone can do this. This is freaking radical. It's completely changed the way my company runs. I simply hired an empty office and I turned it into an auditorium and I gave it away free to the community. So I told my programmers, I want you to start a programming meetup group. Invite all the other smart programmers to come together for about three hours every month. I'll provide free food, I'll provide free rent. And you guys just organize amongst yourselves, get to know each other, do TED talks. So our programmers did it, and before you know it, we had 150 programmers showing up in our office every month. We did the same thing with iOS development, databases, social media, copywriting, motion graphics, web apps, user interfaces, public speaking, video editing. These are all key talent areas that people are looking for. And what I've done is I created all these groups in my city. And so a simple group like webcam KL has 1,600 members, techies on Facebook. So what happened is I created a system where the smartest people in the city come to me every month. Every single day, there's a group of hot talent meeting in my office. And the result is I get to poach everyone. So I get the best programmers, the best designers. And so that's how I was able to hire 60 people in the last one year. And not just 60 people, but 60 epically smart people. So by this, anyone can do this. All you need is space, you know, So I. And it literally just cost me like 2000 extra dollars a month to rent a space and give it out for free and encouraged my team to form these groups. So, amazing idea. I hope you guys can take it from that. That's it. Thanks, guys.

Thanks for listening to this episode with Vishen Lakhiani on Genius Network. If you would like access to the full feature video presentation, the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 19. That's geniusnetwork.com 1 9. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event. Go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com don't miss out on more insights, strategies and wisdom like this on Genius Network. Subscribe to Genius Network today by visiting Forward slash. Subscribe. That's geniusnetwork.com subscribe.