How to Create Profitable Collaborations
03/12/21 • 30 min
1 Listener
The definition of collaboration is: “a working practice whereby individuals work together for a common purpose.”
When collaboration is great, (whether it’s business or personal) it’s just about the best thing you can do with the lights on. 😉
When collaboration goes badly... the results can be disastrous.
Today Gay and Mike are going to tell you about the collaborations that changed their lives... for better or worse.
They’ll give you a “checklist” on how to create great relationships and collaborations that are profitable. Ones that allow you to express yourself fully, and prevent you from falling into dangerous pitfalls that they’ve both lived through.
More importantly, if you’re currently in a challenging collaboration, we’ll show you how to get out of it, so get comfortable and make sure to listen or watch us on YouTube.
One of the great things about a profitable collaboration is, if you match with the right person, you can build an amazing business, create profound wealth, and expand your consciousness dramatically.
On the other hand, collaborations can reach a point where they don’t make sense any longer.
Maybe you hit a point of resentment, or overlap of talent, or one partner is taking too much. Whatever that challenge is, you know it’s time to retire the relationship.
Early on in Gay’s career he experienced a bad collaboration with the co-author on his first book.
One day he was sitting in the back of his daughter’s classroom when she was in the first grade. He noticed the teacher ate up a tremendous amount of time getting the children centered and in a learning place after they’d come back from recess so he wrote a little book called “The Centering Book.”
He developed a partnership with another writer named Russell Wills who had some really interesting educational stuff from an anthropological perspective that he wanted to have in the book. Gay took him on as a co-author and ended up giving him half the royalties. 😫
Russell turned out to be a person with the inability to keep agreements and it drove Gay nuts because he’s a very precise guy. After many attempts to get his stuff into the book, Gay had to take a weekend of his life writing a few chapter using Russell’s notes. The book ended up being 98% of work Gay had to do himself.
They ended up maintaining a modicum of a friendship but he certainly never hired Russell for any other projects. Gay calls this a “persona interlock” and a case of bad hiring.
Collaboration is an art form. In contrast to his awful, first co-author collaboration, Gay has written 10 books with his wife Katie, without a single cross word between them. They adhere to the principles they teach. Talking honestly, sharing feelings,and if somebody’s got something they’re angry about, they talk about it.
One of Mike’s first collaborations was both the best and worst he’s ever done and it had to do with blurry lines.
In his early 20’s he met a guy named Dean Hyers. At the time Mike was writing video games and animation. Dean and his brother were making feature length science fiction movies. They hit it off immediately and became like brothers. They decided to make movies together and created “Digital Cafe.”
We were one of the very first digital marketing agency agencies in the world.
Along the way, they met another young producer / director so they decided to collaborate together. What ended up happening is there was jealousy, because the other guy was a director and Dean was a director. The other guy was a writer and Dean was a writer. They had different styles and just weren’t compatible.
Mike ended up being the linchpin between them. All he wanted to do was keep the peace. Mike hated confrontation and didn’t know how to manage it. He did his best but both of them talked about each other and the tension grew and grew. It left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth but there is a happy ending. They sold the business, they made a movie and Dean and Mike are still friends today but they don’t do stuff together anymore.
Here’s a checklist that Gay and Mike feel make for great collaborations that produce monumental products:
- A Basic Structural Agreement: Create “swimlanes.” Get VERY clear on who’s going to do what and agree that each person takes responsibility for those actions. This way you’ll avoid the “blame game” and it’s not a race to occupy the victim position.
- Find a third party tiebreaker
The definition of collaboration is: “a working practice whereby individuals work together for a common purpose.”
When collaboration is great, (whether it’s business or personal) it’s just about the best thing you can do with the lights on. 😉
When collaboration goes badly... the results can be disastrous.
Today Gay and Mike are going to tell you about the collaborations that changed their lives... for better or worse.
They’ll give you a “checklist” on how to create great relationships and collaborations that are profitable. Ones that allow you to express yourself fully, and prevent you from falling into dangerous pitfalls that they’ve both lived through.
More importantly, if you’re currently in a challenging collaboration, we’ll show you how to get out of it, so get comfortable and make sure to listen or watch us on YouTube.
One of the great things about a profitable collaboration is, if you match with the right person, you can build an amazing business, create profound wealth, and expand your consciousness dramatically.
On the other hand, collaborations can reach a point where they don’t make sense any longer.
Maybe you hit a point of resentment, or overlap of talent, or one partner is taking too much. Whatever that challenge is, you know it’s time to retire the relationship.
Early on in Gay’s career he experienced a bad collaboration with the co-author on his first book.
One day he was sitting in the back of his daughter’s classroom when she was in the first grade. He noticed the teacher ate up a tremendous amount of time getting the children centered and in a learning place after they’d come back from recess so he wrote a little book called “The Centering Book.”
He developed a partnership with another writer named Russell Wills who had some really interesting educational stuff from an anthropological perspective that he wanted to have in the book. Gay took him on as a co-author and ended up giving him half the royalties. 😫
Russell turned out to be a person with the inability to keep agreements and it drove Gay nuts because he’s a very precise guy. After many attempts to get his stuff into the book, Gay had to take a weekend of his life writing a few chapter using Russell’s notes. The book ended up being 98% of work Gay had to do himself.
They ended up maintaining a modicum of a friendship but he certainly never hired Russell for any other projects. Gay calls this a “persona interlock” and a case of bad hiring.
Collaboration is an art form. In contrast to his awful, first co-author collaboration, Gay has written 10 books with his wife Katie, without a single cross word between them. They adhere to the principles they teach. Talking honestly, sharing feelings,and if somebody’s got something they’re angry about, they talk about it.
One of Mike’s first collaborations was both the best and worst he’s ever done and it had to do with blurry lines.
In his early 20’s he met a guy named Dean Hyers. At the time Mike was writing video games and animation. Dean and his brother were making feature length science fiction movies. They hit it off immediately and became like brothers. They decided to make movies together and created “Digital Cafe.”
We were one of the very first digital marketing agency agencies in the world.
Along the way, they met another young producer / director so they decided to collaborate together. What ended up happening is there was jealousy, because the other guy was a director and Dean was a director. The other guy was a writer and Dean was a writer. They had different styles and just weren’t compatible.
Mike ended up being the linchpin between them. All he wanted to do was keep the peace. Mike hated confrontation and didn’t know how to manage it. He did his best but both of them talked about each other and the tension grew and grew. It left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth but there is a happy ending. They sold the business, they made a movie and Dean and Mike are still friends today but they don’t do stuff together anymore.
Here’s a checklist that Gay and Mike feel make for great collaborations that produce monumental products:
- A Basic Structural Agreement: Create “swimlanes.” Get VERY clear on who’s going to do what and agree that each person takes responsibility for those actions. This way you’ll avoid the “blame game” and it’s not a race to occupy the victim position.
- Find a third party tiebreaker
Previous Episode
How to Use Artificial Intelligence to Enhance your Creativity and Income
Remember watching sci-fi movies 10-20-30 years ago like The Matrix and Bladerunner and wishing the gadgets they used existed?
Here we are in 2021 and they’re not far-fetched anymore.
Does the thought of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) replacing the need for human interaction scare the 💩 out of you?
There’s no need to freak out... you just need to change your framing.
These tools can enhance your creativity, business and income in a BIG way WHEN they’re used properly.
That’s what this episode is all about. Becoming a better “augmented human” with virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence and why it’s should be so important to you. Today we’re going to give you a sneak peek into the future.
Gay and Mike are endlessly fascinated by the idea of using these tools to help us get our messages out there and connect better as human beings. We’ll explain how we’re using virtual reality in our businesses and lives, plus something really cool we’re doing right now and how you can participate too. If this piques your interest even a little then you’re not going to want to miss this episode.
Even as a graduate student, Gay was interested in how he could use technology to deliver his message to more and more people, (yet retaining the very important human element.) He was looking for something different.
At the time, things like PBS and cable TV were just getting started and he became one of the first people to teach a psychology course on cable TV. He loved it because he could still interact with people. He was living in Colorado at the time and could be sitting in the studio and have people ask him questions from a ranch out in the middle of nowhere, where otherwise they’d never be able to get in the same room with him.
When he launched “Spiritual Cinema Circle” (it was like Netflix for spiritually uplifting films) one of the most exciting emails he ever received was from somebody who had walked miles in Pakistan to get to a US aid library so they could watch the Spiritual Cinema Movies on DVD.
That’s why he started writing books and making videos. He wanted to make it EASIER for everyone to have access to the messages he wanted to share. When AI started to come about he had a sense that it had a lot of potential, but he confesses that it was a bit bewildering to him. (That’s where Mike comes in)
If you haven’t realized it already, AI is already around us in every possible way.
Like the fact that anytime you get on any social media network, content is being recommended to you. Apps like Uber, DoorDash, Amazon etc. are constantly paying attention to huge volumes of information and personalizing it just for you.
Maybe you’re a creative person that needs to write articles, blogs or website and social media content but you have writer’s block (it happens to ALL of us) There are websites like Headlime that can write just about anything for you just by typing in a few descriptive sentences.
The AI researches and pulls down information from hundreds of thousands of other websites, analyzes them, figures out best practices, then writes copy for you based upon some very vague inputs.
Another example is a website called Writesonic that can write 10 Facebook ads in 30 seconds just by typing in a brief description of your product and promotion. You can either copy and paste the option you like, tweak it or ask it to try again and it will write 10 more. Copysmith will write Google Ads for you... We could go on and on but as you can see... there are endless possibilities available to you right NOW.
All of these websites are either free or super cheap starting at around $10 a month.
Here’s where it gets more interesting. Microsoft recently got rid of their writers. They’re using AI to write all of their copy for articles now. On one hand, that can sound super scary... but only if you’re thinking through the limited lens of “what’s going to happen to humans?”
If you think of AI as a CREATIVE TOOL that can make your life easier and allow you to work in your Genius Zone, then the sky’s the limit.
There are literally tons of affordable AI tools out there right now that can design 100 different logos for you, write a blog or a fiction piece or even design a chair that’s shaped like an avocado, if that’s what you want.
One of the things that humans are great at, is coming up with a problem that needs to be solved. AI is not going to do that any time soon, but AI does have the ability to use hundreds of years of wisdom and accumulated knowledge that you couldn’t possibly store or interpret, or execute...
Next Episode
Conscious Eldering
No one likes the thought of getting old.
Your body starts to break down... becomes more fragile, a lot more aches and pains, less flexibility and unfortunately... worse SEX.
What if we told you it doesn’t need to go down like that?
... that there was a way to feel 20 years younger than your chronological age?
... that sex could be BETTER in your 70’s than it was in your 30’s?
These sound like really big, (maybe unrealistic) claims but Gay and Mike have both experienced these things (well, Mike’s not in his 70’s) and today they’re going to share their secrets with you.
They’ll talk about the art of the “breathgasm,” what “conscious eldering” is all about and transcendent sex in your 70s. They’ll also cover dealing with regrets, something called Gyrokinesis and a magical substance Mike found that is SUPER effective for getting rid of your aches and pains and helping you feel and look younger – and it’s cheap!
If this all sounds exciting or if it scares the hell out of you, you’re going to love this episode. Keep listening or watch us on YouTube.
Gay is 75 years old and has been engaged in conscious living and conscious loving his entire adult life. When he turned 50, he started thinking about what he could do to have a great elderly life and it’s working like a dream.
What is conscious eldering?
When Gay was 50 he heard an interview with the Dalai Lama, who was 58 at the time. The Dalai Lama said that he was beginning to turn more of his attention to his death and to making the most of what he had left.
Up until that point, Gay hadn’t given any thought to his death consciously, so he started thinking about how he wanted his elder years to be and came up with a broad framework that he and his wife Katie, sat down and talked about.
They made the decision to refine their lives so that we were only doing what they most loved to do and were only doing it with the people they loved the most. At the time, they were running a big operation so they started refining and “right-sizing” their business and life. Getting rid of a big office building, selling a few of their homes, a lot of their “stuff,” and employing less people, therefore reducing their stress levels immensely.
Gay went out of his way to create a life and job that he would never want to retire from. His life is now full only of things he most loves to do.
He says every breath you take after 50 is a choice between creativity or stagnation. When you get into your 50s, you’ve probably got a pretty good life. You’re making money, you have great friends, and a home, but if you don’t make the jump to what’s regeneratively creative in you, then life won’t be pretty in your 60s and 70s. The GOOD NEWS is that he knows people can feel happy, vibrant, creative and alive into their 80s because he’s seen it with his own eyes.
Mike is 54 years old right now and he’s definitely noticing aches and pains when he wakes up that he didn’t notice before and he doesn’t like them. It can be a massive distraction that affects his focus and ability to deliver value to his clients. Historically, these things get worse with time but he has discovered the miracle of peptides.
Mike broke his collarbone 12 weeks ago and was in the most unbelievable pain. He was doing research on pain management and discovered peptides. Peptides are basically little proteins that get activated when they’re injected or injested. We’ve got tons and tons of peptides but they activate different parts of your body. Mike found one called BPC 157 that has pretty much relieved ALL of his pain AND healed his 30 year old gut issues. It’s miraculous.
There are tons of other peptides that help with many different health issues. Mike has found that the injections are the best option. You can buy them online and they’re really cheap. He buys his from a place called www.peptidesciences.com (FYI, he’s am not a doctor, nor does he play one on TV 😉This is his own personal experience)
Transcendent sex in your 70’s.
Gay says, “If you think sex was good in your 40s 50s and 60s, just wait till you hit your 70s!” He and Katie have had some of the most transcendent sexual experiences they’ve ever had since they’ve been in their 70s.
“Just know that there are treasures to happen later on in your life that I had no idea were available.” – Gay Hendricks
This revelation caught Gay and Katie by surprise. They’ve been together for 42 years and always had great sex, but what’s been happening in their 70s, he says is a direct result of all the breathing and body work they do.
Gay has written several books on breathing including, (what was at...
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