The Big Leap

Mike has an extraordinary episode for you today, one that is a soul-touching testament to resilience, recovery, and the human spirit.

Gay shares a remarkable and deeply personal account of his recent adventure – a harrowing, yet enlightening experience following a serious accident.

This episode isn't just about a physical healing journey; it's a spiritual odyssey filled with profound insights that arose from an unexpected ordeal. Those who struggle with imprints that command and control our lives, sometimes without us being aware of their presence, can relate to Gay's story.

Gay talks about an unfortunate accident that had him immobilized for weeks, forcing him to pause and look within. In these solitary moments, he uncovered deep-seated imprints from his early life. This episode is an exploration of how a painful physical experience can bring to light life-altering realizations about self-worth, existence, and mortality.

Gay’s candid narrative is nothing short of a modern-day hero's journey, a testament of grace and growth in the face of adversity.

Get ready for a roller coaster of emotions and a treasure trove of wisdom. You'll learn how even the most challenging situations can help us grow and heal in ways we never thought possible.

No matter what stage of life you're in, this episode will resonate deeply and offer a fresh perspective on dealing with personal adversities and unconscious mental imprints.

Gay's story will inspire, motivate, and change the way you perceive life's unexpected turns.

Key Takeaways

• (02:27) The worst pain Gay ever felt in his entire life
• (10:08) Early primal things arising from the past
• (17:59) Passing out multiple times in PT
• (28:44) How the accident affected Gay’s feeling about mortality
• (36:06) The birth of a new book

Additional Resources

• Get Mike's new book Punch The Elephant - https://sales.mikekoenigs.com/
• Get on the Early Bird List for The Big Leap Experience! - http://www.bigleappodcast.com/Apply

Are you ALWAYS in a rush? Does it feel like you NEVER have enough time to get everything done? Are you in a continual state of stress and anxiety because of time-related constraints?
This week’s episode is all about how to quit being a victim to time and take back control. It's about how to double your productivity in half the time. Gay and Mike are are HUGE fans of getting more stuff done in a shorter period of time AND doing it consciously.
Gay shares a story about getting out of his “victim” relationship with time. When he was in the first grade he got a wristwatch for Christmas and became obsessed with it. He would go so far as to spend a lot of time at the Western Union Club (which was the reference point for what time it was) trying to get his watch set exactly square on that time.
Needless to say, he’s been concerned with time for a long time. He went to extremes trying to manage his time, trying ALL of the different time management programs out there. But over the last 20 - 30 years he’s switched to something much more simple.
He calls it Einstein Time.
Most people have a victim relationship with time. They think time is their enemy and there's not enough of it. (or if you're bored, there's too much of it!)
Any complaint you have about time is trying to control something that is not actually within your power to control and the more you try to control your time, the worse the problem gets. There's no way to have enough time to do all the things that you don't really want to do anyway.
Mike's personal relationship with time has changed dramatically over the years. His trap used to be typical “entrepreneur time.” He would prioritize other people's stuff unconsciously before his own. It's because so many people have a negative self-image or feel a sense of duty or loss if they don’t take on other’s agendas.
For example, reacting and responding to texts and emails immediately because he thought, “if I don't do this, then this will happen.” He was fearing a loss of opportunity. Abandonment. Fear of loss. He became someone else's slave. He got stuck in the minutiae.
Changing your victim relationship with time needs to involve the way you speak about time. Saying things like, “I’ve run out of time,” or “I don’t have time to do this,” is coming from a place of scarcity.
Einstein Time goes in the opposite direction. Einstein had this great image of the theory of relativity. He said that “a minute sitting on a hot stove feels like an hour and an hour spent with your beloved feels like a minute.”
So what's the difference? When you're sitting on a hot stove you're contracting AWAY from your experience, trying to get away from where you are and of course, that never works. The more you're trying to escape from your current experience, the more you're creating time as a kind of a binding thing in your life rather than a liberating one.
On the other hand, when you're with your beloved, the reason an hour goes by like a minute is because you're completely open in your cells to experiencing everything that you can possibly experience. You're wide open and because of that time disappears. What we need to do is harness that insight and here's where to start.
Start monitoring every time you speak from the victim position regarding time. When you catch yourself saying, “I don't have time for that right now,” or “I wish I had time for that,” change it to, “I'm not willing to make time for that right now.” It puts you in the ownership position of time and anytime you can get into the ownership position, the better off you are because now you’re coming from a place of power.
A lot of people approach Gay by saying, “I know you're very busy but would you...” and he always stops them at this point and says, “I am absolutely not very busy. If I were very busy, I would consider that a terrible way to live but I'm willing to make some time for us to have this conversation (or not willing) to make time for us to have this conversation.”

That's being in the ownership position. Wouldn't you rather be a producer than a consumer of time? When people ask him if he’s too busy he says no because we are ALL where time comes from. It’s just that most of us haven't claimed that space yet.

Do you remember the Bozo the clown toy? No matter how many times he got punched in the face, he bounced right back up.

That’s Entrepreneurship in a nutshell.

If you’re an Entrepreneur, you NEED to expect that you're going to hit turbulence now and again, but knowing how to recover is KEY.

The guest, Dave Colina, founder of O2 Water, is very familiar with this concept.

He has the grit, the guts, the determination and the hustle it takes to be successful AND he is operating in one of the hardest industries to succeed and make money in… The beverage world.

Dave is going to tell you a unique story about his product and the stuff that matters most. This is your opportunity to learn about an industry that has huge upsides and how to build a business like this. 

Listen to this episode because it doesn't matter what you do for a living. You're going to learn something today.

Mike met Dave through a show that he was involved in called “Elevator Pitch” with Entrepreneur Magazine. (Think Shark Tank in a 60 second pitch.)

He was a contestant on the show and as he stood on stage, Mike fell in love with who he was right away. Mike's immediate reaction was “this guy's got grit.” He's the kind of person that investors want on their team because he's not going to let anything stop him.

Gay and Mike know this first hand because they're both investors in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) products. 

Gay was an early stage investor in Kavita Kombucha (which sold to Pepsi for $225 Million a few years ago), and Mike was an early investor in Bullet Proof Coffee and Good Idea Beverages.

The business of Consumer Packaged Goods is really, really, really hard and the Big Leaps that founders need to face are very challenging. 

Case in point, when Dave was launching O2 water and on his way to his first big Crossfit event, he discovered that his manufacturer gave him hundreds of slime contaminated cans.

Rather than turn around and cancel, he spent the night squeezing 720 cans to eliminate the bad ones and the event went on flawlessly.

Despite all of the challenges, Dave has persevered, made an amazing, HEALTHY product, found HUGE success, puts relationships (over profit) first AND gives back to his community.

Tune into the whole show to hear more incredible stories about Dave’s journey and learn how you too can Get Back Up After Being Knocked Down.

Do you have a problem asking for help or support? Does it feel shameful to ask? Do you feel like you’ll be looked down on if you do?
Here’s the thing... EVERYone needs help to move forward and grow sometimes. Whether it’s in business or life and there is NO shame in asking for it.
In reality there is always someone out there that knows more than you and can teach you something that will help you. (In return it’s your job to do the same thing for someone else. Pay it forward baby!)
Humans are meant to be a part of a community, connect with one another and lift each other up. Not spend all of their time alone and only looking out for #1.
This week on The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks and Mike Koenigs are talking about pride, fear of asking for help and not feeling like you're far enough along. It’s something they think everyone's dealt with at some point in their lives as both of them still struggle with it sometimes.
Another really, REALLY cool topic they get into on this episode is epigenetic trauma and how it manifests, plus Gay’s love of gold, (where that came from and why he's still stuck on it) AND you get to hear a couple of celebrity stories from Gay (who’s had the good fortune of working with plenty of celebrities who had reached their upper limits with worthiness and what he did to get them through those difficult situations.)
One wonderful story is about Bonnie Raitt. A lot of people don't realize this about Bonnie, but for many, many years before she broke through into the national fame she has now, she was a club performer. She mostly played blues, worked a very small niche and always had plenty of work.
Then suddenly there was this moment where she became a national star. But just before she reached that level of fame she did something interesting. She asked for support telepathically. She visualized herself standing in front of the audience at the Grammys, thanking specific people for their help and their support. She started with an expression of gratitude for the support she was going to receive.
She kept working with that visualisation and suddenly... BOOM. You can't prove whether these things are directly responsible but there’s no arguing with the fact that not long after that, she was getting massive support from Capitol Records and has gone on to win over 14 Grammys.
The fear of asking for help and support sometimes starts with just sending out this message to the universe getting REALLY specific and visualizing yourself at that place.
One really important thing you have to ask yourself if you're not getting the support you want, is "why am I putting out a message that says, don't support me? Why would I be broadcasting to the world that I'm not interested in support?"
A lot of times you can go underneath that old programming but even if there's no good reason for it, just opening yourself up and saying, "okay, I am now available for support. I'm now willing to be supported, and then begin to look at how you receive it or repel it."
You're either defining your life through receiving support or defending against support because the universe is falling all over itself trying to support you, if you'll just let it know you're supportable.
The secret is... are you willing to receive all that the universe wants to give to you and are you open to receiving more than you could possibly contain in your vessel? Are you willing to receive it even if you don't think you deserve it?
The “I don't think I deserve it” thinking is part of one of those old upper-limit programs that gets installed in us early on.
Tune in to this episode to learn how to dismantle your old programming for good and open up to support and incredible growth, PLUS more fun celebrity stories!

Mike and Gay's guest, Troy Lavinia, says there is a lot of work we can do to help people see the intersection between entrepreneurship and spirituality.

The world is changing and growing really quickly.

We’ve never been more inundated with information or more stressed.

Yet SO MANY of us have an incredible desire to do something creative or entrepreneurial AND are super open-minded to spirituality.

This episode will show you how AND how to take it further.

Listen to this episode to learn how you can operationalize spiritual principles to create great organizations and LIVE IN "EASY WORLD".

Mike and Gay don’t do a lot of interviews on the Big Leap so when they do, it’s always with someone really special.

Gay has known Troy for over a year and has been really impressed with the way he goes about his business.

His company is Mosaic Research Management, and they’re what's called an “expert network.”

Essentially they’re a matchmaker between investors at institutional investment firms.

For example, they may have a client who is a hedge fund analyst and thinking about investing in Nike. They may end up taking a $100 million position in Nike, so they really want to do their homework.

They'll read everything there is to read but they also want to talk to “on the ground sources”.

Troy’s company might go find the former CFO of Nike, who understands that business and its drivers, or they might find competitors of Nike who can talk about on the ground competition.

They put those people as advisors in touch with their clients for one on one telephone consultations.

By speaking with those industry experts, their clients get more knowledgeable about the business, fortify their investment thesis, and have more conviction in their investments.

Then, about a year and a half ago, they started a subsidiary business, which is recordings and transcripts of those calls.

With the permission of the experts and analysts, they’re recording and transcribing those conversations and putting them in a library so that you can go in and read them.

So if you're an analyst who wants to do the research on Nike, you can go in and read the interviews that other analysts have done about Nike to get smart on that company really quickly.

They’re advertising and monetizing this subsidiary through a subscription.

There is SO much more valuable information on this episode including Troy’s first Big Leap that involves his concept of MIDNIGHT PIZZA. (You're not going to want to miss this... it’s life changing!)

PLUS you’ll learn about creating great organizations through spiritual principles and operationalizing them AND how to start living in “EASY WORLD", where everything IS easy.