The Big Leap

The world wants YOUR unique genius!The sooner you figure out your GENIUS ZONE and get it into the world, the happier you’ll be.Today's guest will help guide you on your Genius Zone journey - he did it..Scott Donnell created the Hapbee (includes a discount code).It’s a unique product that can CHANGE YOUR STATE OF MIND.Gay and Mike both have one and it’s a life changing device.They'll talk about consciousness, entrepreneurship, Big Leap lessons, operating inside your Genius Zone and Scott tells you how to get the attention of mentors and stand out. And Scott will share how the Hapbee works (it’s very cool - and has improved Mike's deep sleep patterns dramatically).Listen or watch to find out more about this radical, revolutionary device that actually lets you CHOOSE how you feel. The simplest way to explain the Hapbee is that it’s “digitized drugs.”The technology is 18 years in the making with $80 million invested, 38 patents, and 15 doctors and scientists on the team. There are certain types of compounds in the world that are called non-covalent, meaning they’re free ranging electrons in the body. There's no chemical bond. Some physical drugs are covalent and need to be physically present to create the chemical bond to change the protein receptor shape to cause an effect. But what if you could trigger a stimulant, suppressant or hormone, using the free range electrons?Imagine if you could resonate in your body the same magnetic signatures of caffeine, melatonin or CBD. Things that help you sleep better, focus, be more productive, relax or alleviate lower back pain.Einstein had the idea first then came Richard Fineman and quantum physics. He had the string theory that talked about all things being connected on a subatomic level through noise and sound. They said, what if we could record the electrostatic surface potential of certain compounds and play it back on your body? What would happen?Scientists found a technology called magnetometers that the Navy has been using for decades. They’re the world's most powerful electromagnetic frequency recorders used to figure out where nuclear subs are within a 2000 mile radius. So they bought a few back in the day. It wasn’t a business decision, it was more science nerds having fun and the only reason Scott found out about it was because his uncle did their taxes in 2005.People like Mike Butters and Dr. Ferguson were geeking out working on faraday cages, seeing if they could get a reading and magnetic signature of certain compounds and that's how it started. Scott invested in the technology 15 years ago because they were trying to help cure cancer (and still are,) but he didn't necessarily want it for the technology. He thought, what if there's an easy way to go to the consumer market as a general wellness product? The board of the parent company said we're not app builders or consumer product people, we're scientists. So Scott got to work building it out as a wireless product that connects to an app and plays a host of different signals that can help you be more engaged, productive, calm, relieved or have better sleep. They’ve sold 5000 Hapbees since launching last October and people are LOVING IT.That’s not to say that they haven’t had their fair share of bumps and bruises along the way. When they first launched, they had a bunch of trolls come out of the woodwork saying things like “there's no way this works, where's your science, this is crap!” They got hit really hard and their competitors paid trolls to make YouTube videos against them.It was before anyone actually tried the product and before anyone knew the science behind it.Over the last year they’ve been backing the science, showing the high end reviews and studies that they’ve done internally and externally and getting it out to the public.Since then there’s been a HUGE interest and tons of celebrity endorsements. They’re now partnering with people like Dr. Gundry, Dr. Drew, Dr. Molly Maloof and Dr. Z just to name a few.People like Ben Greenfield, Dave Asprey, Suzy Batiz, Joe Polish, Dan Sullivan and Mike are BIG fans that have given public testimonials about the effectiveness of the Hapbee.Tune in or watch the whole episode to hear about how Scott has successfully built several businesses and why having great MENTORS and belonging to like-minded, entrepreneurial groups and masterminds have been integral to his success .Make sure to visit www.Hapbee.com/BigLeap to get a discount on your own Hapbee.

How do you GET and STAY inside your creative Genius Zone?Gay and Mike will show you how to do it effortlessly so you can stay there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.They'll also share the distinction between true creativity and ordinary creativity, plus Gay has a unique way to access creativity through something he calls “the genius move.”This is a continuation of the last episode with the release of Gay’s new book, “The Genius Zone.”  If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, what are you waiting for? You’ll get a free 15-minute affirmation audio meditation. Then listen to or watch this week’s episode for more insights on getting into your creative genius zone. After working with 1000’s of different people over the years, Gay has discovered one thing that really surprises him.We get dozens if not hundreds of opportunities on a daily basis to open up to our genius.In the Big Leap he calls this the “upper limit problem.” A lot of people shorten it to ULP.In the new book, The Genius Zone, Gay coined a new term to replace an “upper limit problem.” He calls it an “upper limit opportunity”, or ULO.An ULO is like a sign that says “speed bump, slow down” rather than plowing right over it at 60 miles an hour and rattling your teeth.We get little moments in life, which look like upper limits, but they're really invitations to let your genius shine through.It might sound trite to say to BE IN THE NOW, but a lot of times we get into situations with certain expectations and those expectations either get met or they don’t. Either way you go in with a certain energy that doesn't allow the open spaciousness of possibility where you could have something different occur. Gay goes after making the most of every individual moment so that if you have an interaction with somebody that you're not looking forward to, for example, the thing to do is to open up and wonder, “What am I expecting here? What am I afraid is going to happen?” The moment you can do that rather than going into a situation with fixed expectations, you open up a whole new way of relating to the world. Another important point in the new book is Gay’s distinction between true creativity and ordinary creativity. From the time Gay was 19 until he was 23, he was a disc jockey at a top 40 radio station. The whole time he worked there he was using his creativity but using it to serve someone else's vision.He made good money but he couldn't wait to get out of a job where other people were telling him what to do. He loves serving his own vision.The moment you begin to say “what do I want to create in the world, how do I want to employ my genius for my own goals and visions?” That's the magic moment. Even entertaining those questions begins to send a new surge of creative energy through your body.In his travels, one thing he’s noticed is that people everywhere are suffering because they don't have an outlet for their creativity. They’re suffering just as much in Beverly Hills as they are in Berlin or Bombay.Everywhere in the world, it’s exactly the same kind of suffering… not being open on a daily basis to your creative genius. One of the legacies that Gay wants to be known for is helping people open up a conversation with themselves about what they really love to do and how could they express that in the world.He’s been around the world 37 times and he’s seen a lot of people who are not doing that because of economic circumstances or because they're one of 28 children.There's so much suffering on our planet because of lack of connection to our creative expression and Gay wants to make sure that he’s spoken to that passionately during his time here on earth.Listen to the whole episode to hear about three more important moves in the book.One is a new way to access creativity by asking yourself something Gay calls a WONDER QUESTION. The other he calls the GENIUS MOVE. (This is something he asks people to spend an hour mastering and it’s so much easier than you might think.) We end the episode with something he calls the POWER OF COMPLETIONS and you’re not going to want to miss it!We’ll also talk about an opportunity we call “The Big Leap Experience.” It’s an opportunity for people to get into their Genius Zone and learn the moves that allow them to stay there for 90 days. This is SO exciting because in all the years that Gay has been working on The Big Leap and Genius Zone he’s never done a big training or mastermind on it.Gay and Mike have been working on this training together for the last year. It's going to require people to take a stand for themselves because to put yourself in that kind of an environment is extremely transformative. It's profound and we've both got a lot of attention going into it. This the first and last time that Gay will be doing something like this in this format. It’s a ONE TIME ONLY EVENT.To find out more information about The Big Leap Experience, TEXT BL - +1 (858) 434-5316 or go to www.BigLeapPodcast.com/Apply

Today we have a SUPER EXCITING episode.The Genius Zone completes a way of thinking that The Big Leap started. How to overcome your upper limit problems so you don't keep running into your self imposed glass ceiling. How to open up a conversation with your own inner genius, what you most love to do and what makes your biggest contribution in the world. After a 10 year long process, Gay’s new book, The Genius Zone, is FINALLY HERE! If you’ve followed Gay’s work, you know that he’s most famous for his book, The Big Leap. The Genius Zone is a sequel to The Big Leap, and continues the work Gay presented.We’ll talk about what’s different about the new book and why Gay has continued to evolve and develop.Make sure to listen to the whole episode and when you buy a copy of Gay’s book, you’ll get a free 15-minute audio meditation of key affirmations.People often ask Gay how long it took him to write The Big Leap. He thought about it for 30 years and when he finally sat down to write it 12 years ago, it took him a year to write.His work has continued to evolve over the last 12 years having worked with thousands of people and he began using different techniques that were more time efficient.Since we live in a much faster paced world, we need to get results quicker. As he began to use these new tools and techniques, he realized he had to write a sequel to The Big Leap so after 10 years of thinking about it, he sat down this past year, and wrote The Genius Zone. The book is about how to make the moves that allow you to LIVE in your genius zone rather than just poking your head in from time to time. It's kind of like hawks. Gay oftentimes sits in his backyard and watches the hawks fly over head using so little effort because they know how to ride the wind currents. They look like they're doing nothing but they make big, swooping turns by making tiny adjustments.The Genius Zone is the equivalent. It shows you how to make the little adjustments you need to make from day to day that keep you in your genius zone ALL THE TIME.Another big topic that Gay talk about in the book is overcoming negative thinking. It doesn't matter where you are in your life, we all suffer from it and if you don't think you do, it's probably because you're not paying attention to it. The breakthrough moment is when you find a way to stop a train of negative thought in its tracks. The second level is to stop them from appearing all together.The way to stop yourself from negative thinking is to realize that your negative thinking is pointing the way to a genius moment that's trying to break through. The fact is that 99% of your thoughts, (especially worry thoughts,) are recycling loops left over from situations in life that never quite got resolved. Roots that can sometimes go back to before you were born. A good example that both Gay and Mike have struggled with in the past (and Mike's embarrassed to say, his not so recent past) is limiting beliefs around money.Both Gay and Mike were both raised in households that didn’t have a lot and that carried over to our adult subconscious. Recognizing the pattern is half the battle but the moves that Gay covers in the new book help you bring that negative thought stream to an end.Tune in to the whole episode to hear more about how to get out of your negative thought loops, plus how IMPORTANT it is to pay attention to your breathing and learn about something Gay calls LSD breathing.Make sure to be on the lookout for our next episode. It’s a follow up to this one about getting into your CREATIVE genius zone. They’ll talk about how to spot and find opportunities and staying in your creative zone using some of the strategies from the book. They’ll also talk about an opportunity they call “The Big Leap Experience.” It’s an opportunity for people to get into their Genius Zone and learn the moves that allow them to stay there for 90 days. This is SO exciting because in all the years that Gay has been working on The Big Leap and Genius Zone he’s never done a big training on it.Mike and Gay been working on this training together for the last year. It's going to require people to take a stand for themselves because to put yourself in that kind of an environment is extremely transformative. It's profound and we've both got a lot of attention going into it. This the first and last time that Gay will be doing something like this in this format. It’s a ONE TIME ONLY EVENT.To find out more information about The Big Leap Experience, TEXT BL - +1 (858) 434-5316 or go to www.BigLeapPodcast.com/ApplyGet a Copy of Your Genius Zone Book www.GeniusZoneBook.com When you do, you’ll get a free 15-minute audio meditation of key affirmations.

What are the top five albums that changed your life?What about your top five books? Movies? People?Gay and Mike share what THEIRS are and they’d love for you to share yours with them.You’ll also hear the reason WHY these are their top, life-changing choices.Gay says his “top 5’s” are all about genius and the people behind them releasing their pure creativity into the world. We want EVERYONE to get in touch with their OWN genius so that we live in a world of pure genius.This is a really fun conversation that we know you're going to enjoy, so make sure to listen and watch this episode. Let’s start with Gay’s top 5 albums:The first Elvis Presley album (the one with Heartbreak Hotel.)Abbey Road by The Beatles.Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan. Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. (Gay learned how to dance listening to this one)Barcelona, by Freddie Mercury. BONUS ALBUM: The Third Symphony by Henryk Gorecki.All of these albums came at significant points in Gay’s life and hold a special place in his heart. Here are Mike's top 5 albums while I was growing up:The Wall by Pink Floyd.On the Threshold of A Dream by The Moody Blues.The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking by Roger Waters.Synchronicity by The Police.Joe's Garage by Frank Zappa.BONUS ALBUM: Kind of Blue by Miles DavisMike doesn’t have big specific favorites anymore. He's a variety junkie. We recommend looking up Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. There are definitely albums that you may have forgotten about. Maybe it’ll inspire you to re-listen to some of your forgotten favorites.Tune in and watch the whole episode to hear the rest of our top 5 lists including concerts, books, and people. We’ll give you a hint… some of them include Jimmy Hendricks, Led Zeppelin, Tinker “Tailor Soldier Spy” by John le Carré, “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Darren Hardy.Gay and Mike can’t WAIT to hear your top 5’s! Make sure to send them a message. They read them ALL!

Have you ever messed up, (whether it’s in your personal or business life) and thought, “oh geez, I really screwed up. I have NO idea how I’m going to recover?!”Gay and Mike have both created quite a few messes in our business lives that we’ve managed to clean up.Today they're going to talk about how to turn colossal messes into successes.They have a special guest, Scott Jeffrey Miller, author of a brand new book called Marketing Mess to Brand Success.He’s an expert at turning messes into success and FILLED with all kinds of great ideas. There are 30 challenges that he talks about in the book. One of them is about storytelling and he has a great story about an interview he did with Matthew McConaughey. You absolutely want to listen to and watch this episode. Gay said reading Scott’s book was the highlight of his week. He was amazed at how much of Scott’s heart and mind he put into the book.Scott worked at Franklin Covey for a long time. He's had the opportunity to see every imaginable mess, both internally and with his own clients. Right now he’s in the middle of one of the hardest things in the world to do: his own book launch. He was the Chief Marketing Officer for Franklin Covey, (where they sold 50 million copies of their books) so he’s been through 30 book launches over the last decade. “What worked last year isn't working this year and what's working this year isn't going to work next year.”He says the key to a book launch right now is being extremely agile, writing a great book and taking responsibility for all the marketing. (Because the publisher isn’t going to do it for you)His biggest advice is never rest on your laurels. As they always do with our guests, Gay and Mike asked Scott what some of his “Big Leaps” that got him to where he is today. Here’s what he had to say:“Quitting a seven figure job in the middle of a pandemic and going out on my own as an entrepreneur. That's the biggest leap I've ever taken.”Last November, after a year of negotiation with the board and the CEO, he left his shares on the table, and left the company amicably. He’s still an ambassador for the company and hosts their podcast but he left a seven figure job, opened up his own brand, and never looked back.Another major leap happened 25 years ago when he moved from Orlando to Utah as a single Catholic boy. He also moved to Chicago where he knew no one and again to London where he knew no one. “I'm not fearless, but I’ve got courage in excess.”He wasn't raised to take risks, in fact the complete opposite. Go to school, then college and become an engineer, doctor or lawyer. Scot never did that. He was always a salesperson / marketer / author.He’s not quite sure what gave him the courage to be a risk taker other than always wanting more. His father always said he wasn't worried about him because he had “champagne taste on a beer budget,” so he was always confident he would figure it out. Plus he had a great work ethic instilled by parents.He realized young that “if it's gonna be, it's up to me,” and that's been his motto for most of his life.This is Scott Jeffery Miller, Gay Hendricks and Mike Koenigs in our studios, connecting by Zoom!Scott’s new book, Marketing Mess to Brand Success is a really great one and it includes a set of cards that have the chapters on them. It’s such a great marketing tool!Here are Mike's favorites from his “30 Challenges to Transform Your Organization’s Brand (and Your Own)”#8 - Lots of Stuff Won’t Work#3 - Stay Close to the Cash#4 - Become the Leader of Business Development#9 - Don’t Only Do What You Know and Like Best#23 - Leverage Your Promoters#25 - Build and Model Consistent Brand Standards#28 - Develop Your Storytelling CraftYou’re going to have to Tune in and Watch the whole episode to hear Scott go into detail about Mike's favorite challenges PLUS he’ll tell you his favorites and WHY. This book and the challenges are a major game changer and you’re not going to want to miss the story about Matthew McConaughey!

What are your Big, Upper Limits challenges?What are YOU doing to block your reception?If you can start to understand this, your life will get better in every way. For instance, how do you eliminate the static from your reception so that you’re able to increase your flow of abundance, love and good things in your life?How do you fine-tune your “receiver” better?Gay recently worked with a very high-value individual who received a lot of everything very suddenly, including money and immediately her fears and old patterns kicked into high gear. In today’s episode you'll find out how they worked through those challenges super quickly. (Her challenges were making her physically ill and causing repercussions in her relationships.)Mike and Gay will take you through several steps that YOU can apply to your own transformation AND your clients, removing the blocks and barriers stopping you from receiving abundance. There’s nothing better than a transformation story, PLUS you’ll get an inside view of how Gay’s brain works which is really cool, so make sure to listen to or watch this very special episode.Gay had a client who is pretty blessed. She was born into a wealthy family and things went well in her life so that she had always been in a prosperous mode.She made a passive investment about 10 years ago then recently the company went public. Suddenly she went from a very comfortable existence to having millions and millions more dollars than she had ever had before. It's a good problem to have, but in her case, it pushed every upper limit button that you can imagine.She got a sinus infection that wouldn't go away, she and her fiancé had a big blow up and her high-end SUV was totaled.Suddenly something seemingly good happened and then boom, boom, boom, all these systems started to fall apart. As she and Gay began to work on the problem, he could see how she had shut down in one area of her life which was, “how much love are you willing to receive?” He also uncovered that while she was shutting down in this area of her life, she was also shutting down in other areas at the same time. So when this big surprise happened with the stock that she'd owned for a long time, it pushed all of those buttons and she went into a cosmic nosedive. What he found during their time together was that her big windfall triggered things that went back to her birth. She was born into a complicated Middle Eastern situation with princes and very wealthy associates that were connected through family. At birth she was disowned by her father and raised by her mother and grandmother. As they continued to dig, they got down to the simple moment of her not feeling like she deserved to be here. Partly because she was a woman, and partly because her mother had fallen out of favor with the Father. We ALL have those same kinds of triggers. We may not have them with Saudi princes and millions of dollars, but we've all got disturbances in our ability to receive. It's an unconscious decision made that you’re not worthwhile.Gay was able to help her let go of a lot of those early decisions of, “I don't deserve to be here, I don't deserve love, I've landed in the wrong family, I've landed in the wrong body.” The only way you clear these types of things up is by shining the light of consciousness on them. You can't uproot them from your body or hypnotize yourself and make them go away.You simply have to open up and accept them into the wholeness of yourself and that releases the old unconscious beliefs. Your old unconscious events only have a grip on you because you haven't let go. They thrive on you trying to fix them and make them better. What actually makes them better is accepting them and shining the light of consciousness on them just as they are.Gay calls this the “Einstein Algorithm.” (We did a whole episode about this.) Einstein said that the best way to understand relativity, is that a minute on a hot stove feels like an hour, and an hour with your beloved feels like a minute. When you're with your beloved, all you want is to receive the goodness of the moment but when you're sitting on a hot stove all your systems want to shut down and that makes time crawl. With that in mind, make your life a big, explorative journey, looking for those upper limits. Be on the lookout for them. Don't shun them, don't move away from them. Make your life about uncovering them.Mike's question for Gay was “how do we become a great patient for opening up to receive and being able to identify what's going on in the first place?” because for Mike, in the past, he didn't realize when he was experiencing anxiety or depression until he was in it because it's not a normal occurrence for him. A lot of people Mike knows will either be in denial of it or they hit a slump, or as is the case today, we're all coming out of one of the strangest moments in human history, a grand pandemic. How do you tune up the receiver and open up to the upper limits once we identify it and don't deny it or push it down any longer?Gay says we can accomplish this by making a commitment to be more aware of our upper limits.Let's say you're driving on the freeway with a pair of dark sunglasses on so you can't really see what's going on around you. If you take off the dark glasses you can see cars that are half a mile away. The same thing happens once you begin to open up your awareness and expand your ability to receive. Just the act of opening up it makes it easier to see the things that are coming at you.You’ll be able to see things that trigger you but you see them out there on the edge of the clearing so they won't seem as scary.Make a commitment in this moment to be willing to spot your stuff quicker so you can move through it more nimbly and don't beat yourself up if you don't see them until they're right upon you because that's how you learn.The quicker that you can shift to learning… that's when the real progress happens without getting dinged all the time.To hear more stories and techniques to open up YOUR receiver, including a very simple, grounding exercise you can do right now, wherever you are listen now or Watch.

You’ve heard the terms NFTs and Cryptocurrency.Does stuff like this scare the hell out of you?Are they just a COMPLETE mystery?Are you under the impression that only techies are capable of understanding and profiting from them?We're here to tell you that’s just not true.Today, Gay and Mike are are going explain NFTs and Cryptocurrency in super simple terms and show you some really interesting ways they can be used.This episode is all about how creative people like artists, writers and musicians can use them to earn money, monetize ideas and intellectual property without getting hurt in the process. Mike will give you practical, tactical, real world examples AND Gay and Mike will actually invent an NFT together and talk about how it can be used. They’re really excited about this new evolution of the way human beings can be creative. Whether you end up buying cryptocurrency or not, after listening to or watching this, we promise you’ll walk away with a whole new way of thinking.(of course, we’re not giving financial or investment advice. We’re not financial advisors and don’t pretend to be on TV or the Internet…blah blah blah)Let’s start with the basics. What exactly is cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrency is a mechanism of storing wealth and being able to exchange it quickly. Bitcoin is the most popular one. You can buy Bitcoin and store it in a digital wallet, it's protected and then you can convert it back into fiat cash. Unlike gold, where you want to move it, it's going to be super heavy. Cryptocurrency is virtual. It's not necessarily tied to traditional fiat currencies.We're used to the US dollar being the most trusted currency in the world because it's standardized, fungible and existed for a long time where cryptocurrency is brand new. As of right now, it's hovering around $38,000 per Bitcoin. When we recorded this, it was at $60,000. Folks who bought it in the beginning and held on to it are multimillionaires right now. The way everything is tracked as to whether or not someone owns it or not, is using something called the blockchain, which is a distributed ledger. It is encrypted data that says when you buy it, it belongs to you. That ledger gets replicated to LOTS of computers, making it very difficult to forge.What about NFTs? What are they? It stands for “non-fungible token” and basically means a way of verifying or validating that something is an original.Here’s a real life example. Mike has a friend who recently acquired the last known unreleased video of a very famous musical artist who died some time ago. They’ve packaged the video as an NFT. What they’re doing is setting up what are known as smart contracts. The smart contract says that every time this video gets watched, the owners get paid a couple of pennies plus they’re allocating a certain percentage of that to the trust of the deceased artist's family.NFTs are going to change the way music and books generate money for creators.Here’s another example. Let’s say there's a very famous musical artist that is going to be doing a big concert. They could create NFTs of digital art that will be plastered all over the stage during the concert. Instead of going to a traditional organization that would fund the venue they could go out to the fans and say, “you can buy a piece of art for a certain amount of money, and you're going to own a percentage of the concert.” When people buy tickets to the concert, you'll get a certain percentage of that. In addition, your art will be visible during the entire concert, you will own that and be able to do whatever you want with it when it ends. There is an enormous amount of power and wealth being created in cryptocurrency.  Gay says, “remember where Bitcoin and NFTs come from which is the inexhaustible, infinite supply of human creative intelligence so make sure you take a stand for the evolution and growth of your creative intelligence today.” The possibilities for cryptocurrency and NFTs are endless and I am TRULY EXCITED about the future. To hear Gay and Mike spontaneously create their own NFT LIVE on the spot, listen or watch. Bitcoin! If you don't have bitcoin or a crypto wallet, here’s how to set one up and get some for free. Check out The Big Leap Podcast homepage where you can sign up and get on the waitlist for our upcoming Big Leap Year Experience. 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably heard the term “Algorithm.”What IS an algorithm? Think about it like a computer program. It’s a set of instructions that you follow in order to get a certain outcome with a certain input.Today Gay is going to tell tell you about two algorithms that can completely change your life. (Neither of them have anything to do with computers. We’re talking HUMAN algorithms)One is called the Epictetus algorithm, and the other is the Einstein algorithm.These algorithms will benefit every relationship you're in, including the one with yourself. You'll learn how to execute both of them to make your whole world look a lot different and genuinely BE better in every way so make sure to listen. Each of us needs a really simple way to do two or three big things in life. One is, how to feel good INSIDE by learning how to let go of the things that bother you so you can slip back into an easeful, centered state of being. The second is learning how to get in a flow of useful communication with other people. This is where Gay’s two human algorithms come in.The Epictetus algorithm has to do with letting go of trying to control things that are not within your power to control.The Einstein algorithm has to do with opening up and loving the things that are hardest to love, thereby releasing an enormous amount of creative potential.Epictetus lived about 2000 years ago, (around the time when Jesus was teaching in his part of the world.) and was running a pagen school in Rome. He taught things like physics and biology rather than theology. It was where all the smart kids went.Epictetus was an ingenious teacher who taught these aphorisms that his students collected in a little book best translated into “The Art of Living.” If you don't remember anything else about Epictetus, remember, this… he’s the guy that came up with the idea that's in the Serenity Prayer. The first line of his book goes something like this. “The secret of happiness is knowing that there are things you can control and things you cannot control.” If you apply that idea to any situation that you're stuck in, it’s a simple way to get a good flow of creativity going. When people think of things they don't have any control over, they're worrying about things that happened in the past or might happen in the future, or what somebody thinks of them. We have no control over any of these things. When human beings get tied up, in trying to control things that are not within our power to control, we turn on the stress chemistry in our bodies. Our muscles get tense, our heart beat speeds up, our mind fills with unproductive ideas and we generally make ourselves miserable.If we can get in the habit of asking ourselves, “what am I trying to control that's not actually within my power to control?” you can “unhook” you from a lot of the wear and tear on the stress machinery in your body. The moment you let go of trying to control it, your body relaxes and you open up a new space for creativity to move through. Gay’s new book, “The Genius Zone, (out in June this year,) talks a lot about the Epictetus algorithm. There are a set of processes in the book that will enable people to do this thing he calls “unhooking.” The moment you unhook, you free yourself and once you get good at it, you can execute it in a split second. It's a very useful thing to know. Gay calls the second algorithm, The Einstein algorithm. When Einstein was asked to explain his theory of relativity to a junior high school student he said, “a minute sitting on a hot stove goes by like an hour, but an hour with your beloved goes by like a minute.”What Einstein was saying is that if you can be with your fear, or your anger, or sadness, without trying to change it or make it go away… JUST BE WITH IT, that's the magic moment in which love enters the equation. It's the moment where you open up and love something as it is instead of censoring or being afraid of your fear, or your anger, or sadness, or another person's anger or sadness. It's that moment of accepting it as an equal that's the essence of what Einstein was trying to get at.To hear more about Gay’s Internal Algorithms and a tool he calls “one of the most powerful things any human being can get good at doing.” PLUS a really cool story about how he was one of the first people to mountain bike through Tibet interviewing Lamas, listen now. 

We all have regrets… When you look back on your life, are there opportunities you wish you had taken.... Or NOT taken, whether it was personal or business?Some of those missed opportunities may have been blessings in disguise because some of the best deals you will ever do are the deals you don't do. This concept will change your life when you understand it so keep reading...Gay and Mike will explain the concept completely, plus Gay shares a story about one of the deals he did when he was in the movie business, and how one big thing turned to a giant mistake. You’ll learn how to read your body and mind to reprogram your brain to start paying attention to your “failure points”, even before they happen to prevent yourself a lot of aggravation in the future.In the “Big Leap” book, Gay talks about “the upper limit problem,” which is our tendency to sabotage ourselves when things start going better than we know how to handle. Especially if we haven't built a structure for how to have more money, or fame. If those things happen, often times we find a way to push ourselves back down.When Gay first heard the term, “some of the best deals you'll ever do, are the deals you don't do,” from his entrepreneur friend, Jerry Jones, he was 40 years old and had just started flexing his entrepreneurial muscles.At the time he had done deals that overrode his internal system because the money looked good or he felt that working with a colleague would be okay. Those situations turned out to be disastrous. He learned the hard way and often reminds people that in business, hiring mistakes are one of the most costly things you can do but never forget. Sometimes the mistake is hiring YOU to do something that you're not good at. A lot of times, creative entrepreneurs do things that are not in their “zone of genius” once the business starts succeeding.In retrospect, Gay has made colossal mistakes and done things he wishes he hadn’t. A few years back, Gay had a very successful movie business called “The Spiritual Cinema Circle.” They were thriving, had investors and were making great money. Gay got the bright idea to start a book publishing company. It wasn’t as successful as the movie business and it got Gay thinking “what is it we do when we are successful that distracts us?”He discovered one of the things is we launch another project rather than going ALL IN on the one we already have. Instead of putting all of our attention into where you are right now. Don't try to do two (or more) things at once. You have to know what your limitations are. Generally speaking, the only way to find that out is by consulting the “Holy Temple” of your body. Figure out what lights you up and makes you feel good and what bums you out. Your body will ALWAYS tell you that information. In other words, when you contort yourself to accommodate and do stuff that is out of character, that's when you get yourself in trouble.Mike knows without a doubt about himself that his best creativity happens when he's collaborating and performing. If 99% of what he does is creating new things, innovating and collaborating by performing. It needs to be deadline driven. That's where he's going to do his very, very best.The bottom line is… KNOW THYSELF. Get out there, do a bunch of work and figure it out.Gay and Mike highly recommend taking a couple of personality tests like the Kolbe and Enneagram. They will really help you figure out your personality type so you can focus on doing the thing in YOUR zone of genius.Having some internal standards is really useful. For example, Gay had a person come to him with a well funded, great idea but there were some integrity issues. Little things. He was derogatory towards Gay’s wife and was rough with one of his cats. Those things stuck with Gay so he decided to decline, even though the money was great, the project was great, and it was an area he really cared about. Later on he was glad he didn't get involved because it crashed and burned. The key thing for whatever you're doing, is to find out what your internal references are, that go off and trigger you not to do something or to do something. That information is all there… you just have to learn how to listen to it.To hear more methods to help you avoid self sabotage and build your self awareness and success, including stories about how these methods have helped some of our celebrity clients and friends, tune in and Watch. PLUS we come up with a great idea for a future episode that involves interviewing celebrities that’s going to be fantastic. 

One of THE most valuable commodities a person could ever possess is TRUST.You can’t put a price tag on it. It’s absolutely invaluable.Every human being needs to know how to build it and keep it… in both their personal and business relationships.Gay and Mike are going to deconstruct building trust in all of those areas.  What prevents someone from trusting? What blocks trust? How to reclaim trust when you've lost it.They’ll do some deep thinking about managing our trust traumas and demons, and what prevents us from asking for what we really want and think we deserve.Through the lens of marketing, the hardest thing to get from anyone these days is their attention and a commitment of time. In order to get both… you've got to earn your potential clients trust.This episode is FULL of super valuable information that will benefit all areas of your life so do yourself a favor and make sure to listen or watch us on YouTube.Human beings go through a developmental stage of being very vulnerable in the first six months of life before we can learn to crawl and move around on our own in the world.Margaret Mahler said that in the first six months of life, you're establishing trust. It's a time of union. The second six months of life is about exploration, so if you don't have a very good time of it in the first six months, it's hard to go into that exploration stage.Margaret Mahler's point is that throughout life, we create the same situations in our grown up relationships. Oftentimes we have trust issues, because in the process of two people getting closer to each other, one or both people have done something that betrays the trust of the other person.Over the past 40 years Gay and his wife Katie have been working with couples who need relationship help. Recently they worked with a couple where the man had an affair and it ruined their trust when his wife found out, but in the course of working through things, she revealed that she also had an affair at one point and that started a cycle that had serious ramifications.The only way that Gay and Katie found to REALLY heal when there's been a breakdown of trust is through absolute open-hearted honesty.Most people say, “here's what I'm mad about, here's what I’m hurt about, here's what I'm scared about,” but when both people can exchange freely what's really gone on with them during the period of time that they've lost the trust, then trust can be rekindled. Short of that is very hard to do.We can all sense when things aren't going well in relationships. We can feel when the vibrations are off and a lot of us unfortunately deal with that by tuning out those vibrations and pretending things are okay or by digging into them in a way that alienates the other person.It's one of the big challenges of life. To openly acknowledge who you are, what you are and what you're feeling in the most vulnerable way possible. That's what human beings need to do to reestablish trust.Think about larger society and things that have happened in the world that caused us to have trust issues, (with our politicians, our fellow humans, and all of the things that have gone on with the pandemic,) all of it has brought our trust issues front and center.Who do we trust? Do we trust the CDC? The government? The police?Gay says that our solution always has to be open hearted honesty, with ourselves and the people we care about.From a marketers lens, Mike has his own mechanism for how he's built trust. He's always done his very best to operate with the highest degree of integrity because he never wants anyone to say, “Oh, you manipulative son-of-a-gun, I saw what you did there.” He wants to be able to say that everything he put out there came from a genuine place and he didn't seek to manipulate or trick anyone to do anything.Mike knows the rules of engagement in order to gain trust and move towards an offer, so he can't say that he doesn't have that in mind, but he's always upfront about it first.One of the favorite things Mike ever did onstage years ago was when he said, “I'm going to give you the most valuable thing you could ever receive from me in this marketing conference. I'm going to teach you how to make a product and how to sell it. Then I'm going to make an offer and a whole bunch of you are going to jump up and run to the back of the room before I even tell you the price because the bonus alone, far exceeds the value of the product.”Then he asked, “how many of you want to see that by show of hands?” Everyone raised their hand. Mike proceeded to deliver on his promise. Before his “close” and announcing the price, he showed a great bonus. People stood up, ran to the back of the room to buy the product. In less than an hour, he sold over $500,000 worth of products. The audience was amazed (to be honest, so was he). He was really honest upfront and he explained everything, every step of the way. He would say “here's what I'm doing and you're probably feeling this, raise your hand if you're experiencing this.” There were a lot of suggestions embedded, but it wasn't intended to be manipulative. He would say, “I know what you're feeling because it's designed that way.” We're mechanical beings. There are certain things that make us trust and honestly is one of them.Mike truly believes the only way people come into a state of deep trust is by showing up reliably. Trust is built over time, by showing up and being there and being present. Even if you're physically there and not present, people pick up on that.There’s much more to the story than this - and lots of “nuance” in the stories Gay and Mike share.Listen or Watch to hear more ways that you can connect deeply with people in your life and business and build the most satisfying and unbreakable trust. It’s one of those episodes you’re going to want to share with everyone you know. ❤️