The NovaMind Story

It was a dark, cold and lonely night, when suddenly a flash of inspiration came to me...

Actually it was day time, and stinkin' hot. I was living in Malaysia at the time, and working as CTO (Chief Technical Officer) of an international software company. It was just after a couple of 'planes had flown into some big buildings across the other side of the world, and I was living in Malaysia, a Muslim country. Amongst the ex-patriot population, there was a fair amount of speculation - would there be attacks against westerners in Malaysia? Was there a risk to our safety living there?

The company I was working for had close ties to the highest levels of US intelligence, and kept us appraised of developments, and we had plans to move quickly out of there should that be necessary - it kind of helps when your company owns a fleet of aeroplanes. Anyway, the tension was getting to my (now ex)wife, and she felt in danger there, and even though there had been no actual attacks, she wanted to move out for a few weeks with the children to let things settle down.

So we decided to take them all to Australia (her parents and my parents live there, even though I was born and raised in New Zealand) until she felt it safe to return. I had just signed up a fifteen month contract, and couldn't easily get out of it (although my boss did say that he would let me out of the contract if necessary for family reasons, but I really needed the money at the time). We went to Australia, but it soon became clear that the family would not be returning to Malaysia.

I therefore needed to move to Australia to be with my children as soon as my contract was over, and I would need to have some form of income.

So here I am, back in Malaysia for the first weekend without the family there. Work is hectic, and seems to be a constant battle of communication and performance issues, with little progress. We had dreams of staying a couple more years in Malaysia, then working in UK for 2-3 years (I'm three quarters English and one quarter French, so could work over there), and then a couple of years in USA before deciding where to settle down. All that was out the window, with my wife saying that she would not live in either UK or USA now that the terrorist incidents had happened. It was also now very clear that she wasn't going to return to Malaysia.

Things were pretty quiet in the apartment, and I didn't really have any close friends over there, so it was time to sit down and plan out the next phase of my life. Up until then, life had just happened to me - opportunities would arise and I would take them, but I had no real plan as to what I was going to do in the short, medium, or long term, or any thoughts of what legacy I would leave for my family or the world.

I started jotting down ideas, and pretty soon I had a mess of notes that made little sense and had no real direction to them. It was at that point that I decided to try to organize them, and got out a big sheet of paper, and started drawing a Mind Map of where I was at that time, and where to go from there, particularly planning what I would do for income when my contract ran out, as I would not renew it and have to spend more time away from my children.

I had been a contractor for some time, and now felt that it was time to make the big move to being my own boss, so I brainstormed some ideas, and part way through the process, a blinding flash of vision came to me - why not create a Mind Mapping program, so that other people could easily solve their problems and come up with their own empowering plans?

At the time, MacOS X had just been released, and as I had done a lot of development work using NextStep, OpenStep and WebObjects, I was very familiar with the technology and absolutely loved it. It was so far ahead of the things I had to use at work it was ridiculous - there I was having to use archaic tools to develop web applications when they could have been developed in 1/10 of the time using Apple's tools. Anyway, I looked at the Mind Mapping market on Macs, and found that there were few offerings, and the quality and feature set of those offerings was pathetic, and most of all, the maps produced looked ugly!. People need powerful and beautiful Mind Maps, so that you can get the full benefit and impact of them, and I wanted to provide this for as many people as I could.

I started developing NovaMind in my weekends and evenings, and was able to release the first commercial version in August 2002. One of my biggest buzzes at the time was when a customer bought it when it was still in beta testing!

In December 2002, I finished up my full time contract in Malaysia, and moved to Australia to be with my family, but kept a part time contract with the company in Malaysia, to guarantee some sort of income while NovaMind was developed to the stage where it could provide an income, and to provide seed money to build a company around it.

It started taking off in 2003, with the new features and translations into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish.

In spite of the success of NovaMind, I was still limiting the growth of the company due to my own insecurities around the product and building the team that I would need to make it big.

I decided that the key thing that needed to change was me. So I went on a personal journey, reading over 600 books on personal development and understanding the things that were holding me back. In the process, I learned a lot about a very wide range of things, and attended many seminars and courses. These things included studying the power of the unconscious mind, neuro-linguistics, goal setting and achievement, investing, money and finances, inter-personal relationships, public speaking, hypnosis, and many more areas.

This took several years, with the results improving over time, as I tested and refined different ideas to find the things that would work best for me.

Then it all started exploding into a wild ride of courage, new opportunities, company growth, inner confidence, travel, meeting many world leaders in a wide range of fields, and many adventures.

As far as NovaMind was concerned, this meant the doubling of the company size in 2006, double again in 2007, and more than double in 2008. Although we are still a small company, the growth is now allowing us to make many strategic improvements to the software which, although they take a lot of time to implement, will easily allow us to fulfill my vision of where I would like NovaMind to go...and we're talking both powerful and easy to use, and many capabilities that you just haven't seen in any Mind Mapping software before.

I would like to extend my thanks to the many people who have helped NovaMind either as full time staff, contractors, or in various other capacities: (in no particular order) David, Matt, Florian, Lloyd, Patrick, Andrew, Clinton, Lam, Karen, Ben, Ernesto, Katherine, Olivia, Rebecca, Damian, Jay, Chantelle, Anthony, Michele, Ralph, Margaret and Tony.

And most importantly to our customers, beta testers, translators, and for the many people who have taken the time and made the effort to give us feedback to enable us to continue to grow and improve NovaMind.

My focus continues to grow and expand, and I ask myself every day "How can I continue to develop, share and teach my success methods and tools to even more people in a fun and loving way?". The answers to this question have led me on a voyage of self discovery, sharing and building communities of people who also want to improve their lives. It has enabled me to overcome all the obstacles in my life, and design a great life for myself which I am now living. The outworking of these philosophies are reflected in the continued development of NovaMind, my involvement with various communities online and offline, the Mind Mapping books I am producing, and the series of books and other products with the working title of "Design yourself; invent your future", which I am working on at the moment. To give you a visual insight into how it all fits together, and what I have introduced to my life on a daily basis, you can check out one aspect of my direction in life in this Mind Map (for a full explanation of it, see the bottom of this page):

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I wish you great success with NovaMind, whether you use it for designing your ideal life, solving problems, coming up with creative ideas, writing your screenplay, planning a project, preparing a presentation, or any other use. You can also be part of the NovaMind success story by becoming a NovaMind affiliate. It's very quick and easy to get set up, and profit from the success of NovaMind.

...and if you don't already have NovaMind, it would really help me fulfill my mission in life, and hopefully help you to do the same, when you download and purchase NovaMind!