America's Coach Michael Burt On How To Achieve A Freakish Level Of Success (#204)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

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Coach Michael Burt is considered America's coach, a unique blend of a former championship basketball coach, combined with a deep methodology of inner engineering people to produce at a higher level in the business world. Coach Burt found his unique voice early in his life at the age of 15 by starting his basketball coaching career with a junior pro basketball team. Coach Burt is the author of 17 books and an international speaker who holds the world record for the most speaking engagements in 24 hours. He has coached thousands of top-performing individuals and businesses around the world.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast and the coach is in the house, but not just any coach. We have Coach Burton. As you heard from the official introduction from a young age, Coach Burt has welcomed success, taking it from the arena into the boardroom.

And I promise you, my listeners, you're gonna come outta this episode knowing a whole lot more than coming in with some actionable strategies that will help you grow your business. And as you know here at Deep Wealth, we're all about strategies. Grow your business, so, when you show up for your Exit or liquidity event, you have a more valuable business.

But enough about that, we're gonna have the coach himself talk to us, so, Coach Burt, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. Such a pleasure to have you with us. And there's always a story behind the story. Coach Burt, what's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:03:01] Coach Burt: The story behind the story was as a very young boy, I was raised by a single mom, and when my mom was working two and three jobs, she used to take me down to a local baseball field where I would stay for hours and hours, and it was then that I had a big revelation that everybody needs a good coach in their life.

It was then that I decided that I wanted to be a coach so, I actually started coaching athletics very early in life, as early as 15, was a head coach at 18, was the youngest head coach in Tennessee at 22, at the second largest high school and really fell in love with inner engineering people. You know what it takes to tap into the deepest part of a person, body, mind, heart, and spirit.

How do you activate the drive inside of a person to want more, to do more so, that really became kind of my life's work over the last 20 or to 30 years, but I found that very early in life.

[00:03:51] Jeffrey Feldberg: And I'm wondering, as I was mentioning earlier, from the sports arena, you've had a tremendous amount of success at a very young age into the business arena. Are you seeing any patterns from one to the other? Because I know offhand people may say, yeah, Jeffrey, leave it in the arena. Nothing to do in the business world, I think otherwise, but you'll tell me whether I'm on base or off base with that.

I mean, where would some of the similarities be that you see from the arena into the business?

[00:04:16] Coach Burt: Well, There's really three phases to the drive from the new book called Flip the Switch that's coming out January 31st, and that drive has to be activated and it has to be activated both in the sports world. It has to be activated in the business world. Then there must be a persistence to that drive, which is a long obedience in a same direction or a consistency to do things you don't wanna do.

And then there must be an intensity to that drive. Those are three phases of what I'm calling prey drive, P R E Y D R I V E, and when I left the sports world, the first thing I noticed is that people in business were not clear on their targets. They were not clear on their persistence, they were not clear on their intensity levels and there was actually lots of areas that I could immediately bring value to people from my background as a championship basketball coach.

[00:05:04] Jeffrey Feldberg: And let's talk about the book. And for the listeners, we'll have this link in the show notes. And by the time this episode airs, it'll have just come out and it'll be a point-and-click. And again, the title of the book, Flip the Switch: Activate Your Drive to Achieve a Freakish Level of Success, Love how you worded that, Coach Burt, so, for the business owner who's listening in and say, hey, yeah, you know what? I want a freakish level of success. Talk to me. Let's go with what's in the book. And let's also take that to where most business owners are, and I like to rely on Pareto's Law a lot that 80% of the issues that you're probably seeing Coach Burt in your coaching practice are probably coming from 20% of the same issues time and time again, and you probably even mention some of them just now when you're talking from the basketball world to the business world, to the corporate arena, what you're not seeing there, but what would be perhaps the top one, top two issues that are holding most business owners back, and they may not even know that it's holding them back.

[00:06:05] Coach Burt: You're exactly right. Everybody has missing structures, and as it relates to this specific book, on Flip the Switch, the number one missing structure is people not being able to activate their drive daily. I live outside of Nashville, live in the United States, and we have become somewhat of a complacent nation.

And complacency sits in because our needs are met, satisfied. Needs never motivate only unsatisfied needs. And what happens is reach a certain level of success, and then we become complacent, and we don't set out to be complacent, but we gradually settled to a place of mediocrity, and we quit going into battle.

we take the path, at least resistance. We don't pursue our potential. The number one problem for all people is, I say nothing happens in a company until the prey drive is activated. You know, no different than what we talked about on your podcast. I can't build a company that is more valuable until I make a decision and back that decision up with commitment and resource and can help me and it all starts with the prey drive being activated, which is a desire to pursue.

Prey Drive is prevalent animals. I've actually taken a cons prevalent in animals. I've trademarked it and said they're human. There's a prey drive in a human. It is their ability to see something and pursue it. For you, pursuing something for me may be building a company that's valuable enough to liquidate or sell.

It could be building passive income that's greater than my living expenses, but all of that takes effort. It all takes an energy, it takes a movement. So, the number one thing I see is just people wake up and listen to their feelings, and amateurs listen to their feelings. Professionals do listen to their feelings. They set a target, I call that a B in the book, And then they move toward that target with a persistence and with an intensity.

[00:07:49] Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And you're absolutely right. As I like to say, one of my sayings at Deep Wealth is within today's success are the seeds of tomorrow's failure. To your point. Exactly, coach Burt, because with success, hey, everything's going great. I did it. I made it. I can take my foot off the gas pedal. I can not work as hard and not have to pay so, much attention.

I'm gonna lose my curiosity that perhaps I once had. And It's a terrific segue into one of the principles that you talk about in your book, and I'm gonna quote, it's some very direct language that you're putting out there, and in many ways, it goes against the common wisdom, which sometimes isn't so, wise that we have today.

Screw your why. How to get your purpose to activate you? Can you share with our leaders? And again, I just love how you're using the words to grab our attention and make it colorful and get that out there. But for our listeners, what's going with the screw your why, how to get your purpose activate you?

What's behind that?

[00:08:47] Coach Burt: Well, a very popular concept, and it's a great concept. It's greatly packaged is that you have to find your why. And it's an easy thing to say, you know, Jeffrey, find your why, and it's all gonna work out. And so, actually, chapter three of the new book is called Screw Your Why. And it is strong language, and it's intentional because I have been coaching people for 30 years.

First I have let a coach. Now as the business and performance coach, I actually don't believe you have to find your why to do something big in the world. actually, believe your purpose finds you or you discover this when you are pursuing something. I didn't know I wanted to write books until I started writing books.

I didn't know I wanted to coach adults until I started coaching adults, and I think a lot of people feel like they're losers if they, because they haven't found their why. Now, the argument I make in the book is I could actually know my purpose. I could know my why and still not be motivated to go into battle today and so, think about prey drive as activation so what I refer to in the book versus find your why is what's called a because goal. And a because goal is a big reason a person takes action when they don't feel like. Okay, because I grew up without a father, I made up my mind I was gonna be a good dad to my kids because I grew up poor.

I made up my mind. I never be poor because I want time and freedom. I chose to build a business that would give me time and freedom. See, because goals are big reasons to do something when you don't feel like it. The whole chapter is like, hey, pursue something. Pursue an interest, pursue a curiosity, pursue a partnership, pursue something, and in the process of pursuing something, your purpose couldn't find you.

That's really what that chapter is about.

[00:10:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: And what I really enjoy about that, what resonates with me, Coach Burt, is to me, society and social programming tells us, hey Jeffrey, you gotta be perfect. Before you go out there. Before you hang up your shingle out there. It's gotta be perfect and you're resonating with me because there's also a belief of mine.

Done is always better than perfect. I'd rather get out into the marketplace today. Maybe I'm not gonna be so great. But to your point there, I'm gonna find my why along the way or find my purpose, but I'm not gonna wait for it. And just hold off until it becomes apparent in the process of doing the marketplace will tell me very quickly what's working, what's not working.

And then I wanted to find out, because from the Screw your Why, chapter three into four. The five activators of your prey drive. And again, for our listeners, we're giving a very high level over this. There's only so, much that we can do in this episode here. And please go click on the link and get the book.

But Coach Burt, for our listeners, what's going on with these five activators? What are they and how do we leverage them?

[00:11:29] Coach Burt: Well, I started thinking, what activates a drive inside of a person? Let's think of inspiration as breathing life into another person. I can be inspired.

[00:11:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yep.

[00:11:40] Coach Burt: Maybe, but not even motivated. I can be motivated, which means to move. What I'm focused on here is the active activation or initiation. What initiates the drive inside of a person to want more?

And so I began playing around with these drivers, Daniel Pink wrote a book called Drive, and he said that people were motivated by autonomy, by mastery, by purpose. I actually started thinking more granular. Let's say I woke up today. and I didn't feel like coaching people. Okay, what could activate my drive to want to do something even when I don't want to? So, I started thinking, what activates a person's drive? Fear is an activator of drive, specifically fear of loss, which is why I love a concept psychologists call mental subtraction. See, when I'm not motivated, I take something I love and I pretend that I have to give it up because I didn't hit my goals because I didn't bring any revenue in because I didn't pursue.

 Fear is an activator, a prey drive, but specifically, maybe fear of loss or even fear of embarrassment. And when people are under fear, stress, they fight or they flee. Or psychologists are now saying they even freeze, which is what's happening a lot in our economy today.

They just don't do anything. They don't know what to do. Well, Prey drive is one. It is action. When you don't know what to do, take an action. Take any action, even if that's, pick up the phone and call Jeffrey and say, what do you think I should do? It's like, okay so, Fear activator.

Number two, competition. Some people have a desire to be the best when there's a competitor when there's a threat that activates the prey drive. I was a championship basketball coach, and I had one adversary, one nemesis, and it took me years to figure out how to beat that one dude. But it made me better.

It made me better. And so, I am a big believer that you need a trophy to win, even if it's in your own mind. A game to play.

[00:13:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: So, a little bit of healthy competition that you against an opponent or even you against yourself, whatever it is, just some kind of competition to get that prey drive activated.

[00:13:28] Coach Burt: Yeah, I'm a speaker and I got booked yesterday to speak at an event, and it's me and Real Estate Tom Ferry. Tom Ferry's, a big real estate coach, and I say, great man. May the best man win. We'll both have an audience of 150 people. We'll both have an hour with them. We'll see who connects with the audience the best he could win, I could win.

It's a little healthy competition. It's fun but it activates the drive, like, all right, let's do this. Let's go. Number three. Environment is an activator, a prey drive. See, I buy these properties, these real estate properties around the country where I do really cool retreats, and I've always said that inspirational things happen in inspirational places.

So, I place in Florida. I have a big lodge in Tennessee where I constantly looking at other places cause people can go there and get in an environment where their drive can be activated and they could think bigger and want more and wanna pursue and pursue their potential and deals and opportunity.

It's also when people are have the highest probability of taking an action with me when they're in those environments. Environment is an activator, prey drive. You need an environment where there's expectations.

You need an environment where there's standards. You need an environment where there's language.

You need environments where there's accountability. Those are environments. Number four, exposure. If you came to me and said, look, I really want to activate this person's prey drive. We do couples retreats. My wife and I do couples retreats four to six per year in Florida.

And many times, one party, one person in the marriage is wanting to grow, expand, get better, and there's another party that's scared and nervous and kind of wanna stay where they're at.

And they say, what can I do with my wife and my husband? I really wanna go to this next level, but they're stuck where they're at. And I said the best thing is expose them to people who are doing bigger.

We get 'em down to our house in Florida and inevitably they leave. They're going, I'm thinking bigger.

I need to be playing bigger level. I do have potential. I do have talents. I do have this. That is exposing them to something and that opens their mind a new possibility. That is an activator of prey drive.

And finally, embarrassment is an activator of prey drive.

[00:15:30] Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting embarrassment. Okay. Talk to us about that.

[00:15:33] Coach Burt: Meaning, I prepare and I prepare and I prepare so I don't get embarrassed. And there's two types of people in the world I talk about in the book. There's what's called a defensive pessimist. And a defensive pessimist is a person that thinks about all the things that could go wrong. Therefore, they work and they prepare so, that they don't go wrong.

It's because they don't wanna be embarrassed. It's embarrassing for Nick Saban to lose a football game.

So, he prepares and he prepares. That's a defensive pessimist. Then there's what's called a strategic optimist. And the strategic optimist is a person that shows up, generally believes everything's gonna work out.

They don't do much planning. They're optimistic. Now, the defensive pessimist is not a pessimistic person. It's just a person that mentally rehearses everything.

When I was a basketball coach, this was back in the days, Jeffrey, when people read the newspapers. This was 20 years ago. What people read every day was the newspaper back in those days.

 My team was ranked in the country and when we lost it was embarrassing. And I hated losing more than I liked winning. And the thought of losing, motivated me to wanna prepare and prepare so, that we didn't have that feeling what I find is that embarrassment will activate a person's drive. Take action to pursue, to do something. In the book, I kind of unpack each of these five activators plus those three phases of prey drive I talked about in the beginning of the interview,

[00:16:51] Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting, and I see how you've taken the science, and what I really like what you did is the science as you point out. It's vague. It's such big picture. How do we really apply this to our life? And you're saying, okay, look, here's the science. We know this works, but here's what you're gonna do on a day-in, day-out basis.

And perhaps from psychology, again, we all know that people will do more to avoid pain than to get pleasure. And for you, no different than any of us that hey thought of losing, that feeling of losing, man, that's gonna drive me to over prepare because I'm gonna do everything I can. I'm not gonna be negative, but I'm gonna do everything I can to show up overprepared to expect the unexpected, and then see where it's gonna go.

And I suppose that would be a great segue into the next chapter where you're talking about going all in. And for the benefit of our listeners, what would be some takeaways? Because you've now given us the foundation, we got the prey. We've got these five factors. We've got the science behind that going all in.

What's going on with going all in?

[00:17:53] Coach Burt: When I look at the habits of the top performers in the world, they have certain attributes. I'm talking about the top 1% of performers not necessarily top 1% of money earners, although there would be a strong correlation. The top 1% of performers have a remarkable boldness about them.

They have an intrinsic motivation, which would be the because goals I talked about, they have a connection. They treat everybody like family. The family they like. They have the ability to lock in and see something through to its conclusion and they have a grit and resilience about them. In the book, I have this chapter called Pretenders versus Contenders, and not that a pretender is a fake, it's just a person who has not made this important decision to go all in.

The word decide means to kill something off. The word should means to cut something away. The real top players that have high prey drive are making big decisions to go all in. They're making big decisions to invest time, energy, money. They make a decision to move toward their being with an intensity.

They don't dabble.

They decide, They really go to work on these habits of the top 1%. And that's really what I'm talking about in the book there is. Are you an amateur? Are you a pro? Are you a pretender? Are you a contender? Are you in it to win it? Are you just in it.

[00:19:10] Jeffrey Feldberg: And I'm wondering because I really like where you're going with that and so when you're talking about the top 1%, and hey, couldn't we all learn from them? They've already paved the road. They've had their many failures, now they're at the pinnacle. We can learn from that. One of the concepts that you talk about it in the book, which I like, it's creating value in the world, and what I also like about that, and we'll hear it straight from you, is, you know, for some of the naysayers that may be out there as well, Jeffrey, hey, you're just selfish. It's all about you. It's all about your success. You're achieving all the zeros that you want to get in your bank account, but you counterbalance that with creating value in the world, and it'd be great for our listeners for you to share what's going on with that.

What's the story behind the story of that one?

[00:19:53] Coach Burt: Well, I say money changes hands when the problems are solved. The bigger the problem, the more money people pay to solve that problem. And as long as there are ambitions, dreams. And as long as there are problems, there will always be ways to be valuable. See, value is an exchange of your talent and skill for someone else's problem or ambition.

And if you think of it like this, there's no shortage. There'll never be a shortage of money, there'll never be a shortage of opportunity. It is up to you though, to uncover and discover your gifts and talents, which very few people do. Package those talents, market those talents, and ultimately monetize those talents through value creation.

And value creation is me using my skill set to solve your problem. And that actually activates my prey drive when I'm able to go into battle every day, do what I love doing, be incredibly useful and valuable for others, use my knowledge, my skill, my attitudes, my habits to exchange those to To help you with your ambition, and that's where ultimately monetization takes place.

But it's also just where the prey drive is reactivated because it's like, man, I get to enjoy what I'm doing. I found my talent. I'm distributing my talent. The world is rewarding me in a very high level, in the form of love and appreciation and affirmation and reputation and even money. See, selling 10,000 copies of a book is an exchange.

You've delivered value to another person. That's why they purchased the book. That's why they wanna help and support you. A lot of people don't even think about creating value or monetization of that value, or they don't know how to do it. Which I've spent a lot of time in my coaching programs, teaching people, this is how you create unique value in the world.

[00:21:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: And on that note, you mentioned something interesting. We're creating value, we're helping people. I mean, after all, that's what business owners are. And don't get me going because I can talk about how private equity and venture capital have raised a whole generation of entrepreneurs of, hey, I don't need to do any value.

I'm just gonna create a company. I'm not gonna have any real profits, any real clients, and I'll sell it for a gazillion dollars. We're not gonna go down that path. We're getting back to basics, which is exactly what you're talking about, but let's go back to something that you said now and something that you said earlier, and they both make sense, but how do we tie these together?

Earlier you said, hey, you know, Jeffrey, just go out there and start doing whatever you're doing, and along the way, you'll find your why. You'll find your passion, whatever that is. And then in my own words from what you just said right now is, hey, everyone's got a superpower. Find your superpower. Apply it to solving problems, and watch what unfolds from there, because I love what you said.

When you solve a problem, that's where money exchanges hands.

Finding the superpower, though, is that the same kind of methodology as what you mentioned earlier? Because I know some listeners are saying, I don't even know my superpower, just got into this business to get into the business. I'm not sure where my strengths are.

How do they not get caught up in that? Not get caught up in the why of the superpower. The superpower finds them, just like you said a little bit earlier, with having your why or your passion find you so, any methodologies, any insights, or tips?

[00:22:54] Coach Burt: Yeah. I actually teach this in a boot camp. I do of interest, but it is also in the new book, Flip the Switch, and it's, think of it as a cycle. I find that which makes me unique based on my unique past, my unique mentors, my unique experiences, my unique education, my unique breakdowns.

There is a discovery to go into the past and find my primary skill. And then, I want to take that skill and package it into something the world can consume, absorb purchase.

They don't wanna market that so when you go back to finding the superpower, there's four questions I ask people. Number one, what do you love doing? That's passion.

[00:23:30] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yep.

[00:23:31] Coach Burt: Number two, what are you really good at doing? That's talent. Number three, where is there a need in the world that you can fulfill with what you're good at and what you love doing? And number four, what is your conscience telling you? What are you supposed to be doing? at the intersection of those four questions, it's typically what's called your voice. I was a deep disciple of Covey and Covey's talk, find your voice, and then inspire other people to find in their voice. High numbers of people have no idea what their skills and talents are. There's no courses on it, there's no talents on it, and what I really look for people is crystallize their calling.

And that's part of the activation of prey drive cuz when I help a person crystallize their talents, their voice, their calling, their distribution, then it's like, boom. Now I'm on fire. Now I'm excited. Now, I'm ready to go into battle because now my drive has been activated cuz there is a big future for me. I am now excited about that future.

I'm not stuck in the book. I talk about the levels of energy dynamic, static and tropic. I'm not plateau stuck. I'm not disintegrating. I am dynamic, alive, vibrant, excited. That is when I am in my voice and calling in live, doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

[00:24:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for listeners and Coach Burt, I mean, no surprise here, you're successful yourself. With those four questions that you just shared it so, much remind me of the Japanese version of Ikigai, which is also, you know, what's your purpose? Why are you living? What energizes you? What has you feel good? And so we have ancient wisdom brought up into the modern-day world with some of your strategies in terms of what you're doing and what's getting out there. In your experience, when someone is asking those four questions to get that value creation going, everyone is different. I get that. Maybe someone finds it in an hour, someone finds it in a day or a month, maybe a year. Typically speaking though, is there kind of a back of the envelope that if someone applies themself, asks those questions, goes through the exercises, does the journey, how long are you seeing, we'll call it successful people, entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, finding themselves on that path.

What would you say to that?

[00:25:39] Coach Burt: I think this is a never-ending path. There's levels of mastery. If you study mastery, typically four to seven years, studying under a master, four to seven years, practicing what you see the master do. Four to seven years of actually mastering something, and that cycle missing many times in today's world. It's the cycle of apprenticeship, the cycle of working through, that is missing in today's world. Nobody wants to do it. I went through an apprenticeship where I was an assistant coach. I studied under a person. Then I went through seven years of studying Under Covey. People say like, where's your breadth and depth come from?

Well, It comes from actual studying under a master. So, for me, it's a never-ending cycle toward mastery. That's when it comes to the prey drive language. It's A to B, but once you get to B, there will be a another B. There will be a consistent cycle of reactivating the drive for a new championship to win a new. That's why sports is such an interesting thing to me because we won a championship and it all goes to zero at midnight. right?

I mean like, like, as soon as you win the championship, first question you get asked is, are you gonna come back and win another championship? And I'm like, it took me 10 years to win the first championship, but it is true that in business, you achieve a target, and it reactivates the drive.

You set a new target. You don't measure all success based on just achieving the target. You measure success in pursuit of the target.

[00:26:53] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Coach Burt, with your system, with the prey drive. Talk to us about that because you raise a terrific question. People call it all kinds of different things. I call it the moonshot. When the astronauts got to the moon for the very first time, And then they came back. They had that parade, and everyone was out, and a gazillion people and the world was watching.

But then in the days, weeks, and months afterward, in some of the biographies of the astronauts, they were downright depressed. And Coach Burt, I see this with the business owners that we work with here at Deep. Wealth, when they have their exit, we help 'em with our nine-step roadmap. They grow the business.

When it's time for them to have that liquidity event or that Exit, they show up with a more profitable, a more valuable business. And left to their own devices. We don't let this happen but left to their own devices. Their post Exit life could be miserable. They never find they're happily ever after. I shouldn't say never, but most don't find their happily ever after.

You're looking at one of them. When I had my Exit, I didn't prepare and had a rough landing to speak. That's why we built that into the nine-step roadmap now of making sure that doesn't happen. But in your world, Coach Burt, from what you're doing, when we achieve that moonshot with the prey drive now working as our ally and our friend.

How do we avoid that letdown of, okay, now what? I achieved the greatest thing in my life. Now what?

[00:28:13] Coach Burt: Well, think of it this way. You're using your talents in incredibly useful ways, and that makes you useful and valuable. And when a person retires, they are taking themselves out of use. What happens is we believe that if we just achieve a target or sell our business or become wealthy, that, you know, we'll be happy but an important part of prey drive is pursuit. It is purpose.

It Is pursuit of something. What happens when you sell that company? There's no pursuing. David was a great king in the Bible until he stopped going into battle. What happens is your prey drive is suppressed. You're disoriented. You're lost. You need a new target. You need a new goal. You need a new game plan.

You need something new to pursue. And without that pursuit, man, you can be incredibly unhappy. Progress is a natural motivator for people, if you're not progressing toward something, you can become chronically unhappy.

[00:29:04] Jeffrey Feldberg: And that is a terrific segue into one of the concepts that you talk about in the book. At a high level, you say everything is energy. Perhaps we can break that out for our listeners of how they can apply that to their lives, where they are now, but where they're heading. And when they do get that moonshot, when they do achieve that success.

So, everything is energy. What's going on with that?

[00:29:22] Coach Burt: Well, Energy's in three states. Okay. Think of a plane. I have a jet, a Hawker 400, that I've traveled around the world on, and it has an attitude indicator in the cockpit. Out of all the dials, there's an attitude indicator that tells you if the plane is ascending climbing, it is plateaued out.

It's climbing altitude, or it's descending. It's landing. Energies like that. The minute you stop growing, you start dying. So, how do you stay dynamic? I can't tell you how many people I've coached that are wealthy and stop growing now. They're dying. I can't tell you how many people that are plateaued, stuck, static, bored in a butt, and when I talk about it like that, people very quickly say, oh yeah, man I'm plateaued. I'm in a rut. Stuck, or I'm disintegrating. They don't say I'm dying, but they say I'm not growing right, and I need growing in the body, in the mind, in the heart, in the spirit. I need to be growing.

And that is an activator of prey drive. I don't feel stuck. I feel like I am in creation mode, and I'm at my best when I'm in creation mode, and I'm not going to negative town or anxiety or catastrophizing. I'm staying in creation mode. Cause that's when I am most dynamic when I'm in creation.

[00:30:26] Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting, and you didn't quite say it this way, and you can tell me if I'm on base or off base in creation mode, and you said, look, I'm not worrying, I'm not gonna be going down worry town or worry road, or anything else like that. It sounds like really being in the present moment and looking at your prey drive, what your goals are, what gift you're giving to the world. Would I be on base with something like that in terms of how I, I'm interpreting that?

[00:30:51] Coach Burt: Well, a lot of the book is around a real simple exercise called from A to B.

A is your current position. B is your desired outcome. And a lot of the book is this exercise of constantly reworking this A to b I'm currently here, I'm trying to get here my because goals activate my drive to go here. I'm activated by these things.

I have these three faces. I've gotta factory in, but I'm moving towards thing. If I stop moving, then I'm stagnant. And if I'm stagnant, I'm most likely unhappy cuz I feel like I'm progressing. Now, the percentages tell us. I mean, That's 67 to 75% of people are disengaged with their work in America.

It also tells us that almost 87% of people live their entire lives. Never find their purpose. There's some missing components here that I tackle, and I say, man, if this prey drive is activated in you, you will want to expand. You will want to grow. You will want to have a better life. But until he is activated, you just sit inertia.

You just sit with the resistance to move. Cause maybe you don't know any better. And I could say this with authority because I've been coaching people, and I have people come to my coaching sessions before that said, man, I had no idea what I was coming to. They just, somebody told me I should come to this.

And then they leave there on fire. Man, I got dreams, I got goals, I got potential. I've got talent, it's like it's been sitting there, deactivated and then they come and exposed to something, boom. And then it's like, oh I'm ready to go now it's just something I've been fascinated with for the last four or five years, just studying what really activates this, driving people.

[00:32:24] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so, in the book, Flip the Switch, and you talk about this, and it parlays right now into what you're just saying so someone reactivates themselves and they flip the switch, they got the prey drive going, but now they feel perhaps torn in different directions. And I know one of the principles that you talk about, one of the concepts in the book is how we can prioritize and personalize the prey drive so, we're not all over the map chasing different kinds of things. What would you share with our listeners about that?

[00:32:50] Coach Burt: Well, your goals are uniquely yours, but you need 'em. They're your life and B, what'd I say? Your be is totally up to you. My B is mine, it gives me something to work toward. And when you personalize it, and you write it out daily, and you have a system of actions that you take, because I'm a very tactical person, because of my background as a coach it's not just up here, it's really okay these are the daily actions I take to reactivate my prey drive. This is how I move toward creating revenue. This is how I create a B. This is how I move toward that B and what I'm teaching people is, hey, it's personal to you. There's no right or wrong here. It's your B.

Your B may say, I wanna build a company and sell it. Your B may be, I wanna be in the trenches working every day. Your B may be, I wanna live in Florida 40% of the time. Like it's totally up to you. One of my B's is my passive income is greater than my living expenses. My B's is that, and I live an intentionally congruent life where my wife and kids travel with us, and we build a life around our unique abilities and talents.

That's one of my B's, one of my B's is my company's certain amount of revenue per year. It's just really this habit of activation and initiation. It's initiating like starting a car. It has ignition and nothing happens until it's cranked. Nothing's happening until the button's pushed.

And that's really what I'm trying to do with this book. Like, hey, get out of inertia, get outta complacency. Get out of living here when you can go here. But something has to happen for this to start up.

[00:34:15] Jeffrey Feldberg: And we really talked. All the way through about this Coach Burt, and it's another concept in your book, and you've given us strategies to my next question, but I'll ask it anyways because it makes a terrific wrap-up question as we begin to go into the thought experiment that every guest, I have the privilege of asking the question.

But before we go there, one of the concepts that you talk about is how you reignite your prey drive. Not next month, not next week, but today and tomorrow, and every day after that. Again, you've sprinkled some terrific strategies and some insights on that, but perhaps you can round that out for us and giving us some direct takeaways of how every day we're re-energized with the prey drive.

We're re-reactivating it.

[00:34:55] Coach Burt: Yourself as four-dimensional body, mind, part spirit.

Each of these parts produces different needs, different intelligences, different capacities. Each of these parts need to be fed, nourished, nurtured. The way I activate my prey drive in the morning is I go to work on all four parts. Something physically, something mentally, something emotionally, something spiritually.

And when my prey drive is deactivated, today I'm working for my home office which is beautiful overlooking water and those things that inspirational things. But if I got stay all during the day, I go out and go for a walk or a run or a bike ride, I change my energy state. The fastest way to reactivate prey drive is change your state of energy. You know, listen to something, watch something, hear something move. Don't sit, get up and get going. I change my environment weekly. I work from downtown Nashville, which is movement and energy. I have this big beautiful lodge that's in the country. Then I have, right then I work from different places.

I go to Fort Howard, Florida. What I'm doing is I'm changing my state of energy and I never allow myself to get complacent or fall into that, because I'm changing that energy.

[00:35:59] Jeffrey Feldberg: Awesome, terrific insights. And you know what, as you're speaking, Coach Burt, it reminds me when you're flying private so, you probably won't hear this, but when most people are flying commercial, they'll hear the announcement. If the mask comes down, put it over yourself first before you help the person next to you.

And it's a terrific, really take away strategy for life. Take care of yourself first. Re-energize yourself in your case, whether it's walking or your surroundings, your environment. You talked about that a little bit earlier as well. So, when you're taking care of yourself, you can then take care of everyone else around you.

And Coach Burt, before we go into the wrap-up question here I do have a question. It's a little bit of the story behind the story. Our listeners heard this in the official introduction because you hold a record, the world record for the most speaking engagements in 24 hours. So, what's the quick story behind the story on that one?

[00:36:47] Coach Burt: This was several books ago. I was looking to get attention for the book and I thought, let's do something crazy. How many people could I speak to? The Guinness Book of World Records had a record of one person speaking for 16 straight hours. They didn't have a record of the most engagements in a day I thought, why don't we see if we can coach 40 businesses in one day? And we geographically line those businesses up in one city. We went from business to business, people were ready. And I literally went and did speaking engagements at 40, actually 41 businesses in one day. And the funny thing was I could have done 80 if it would've been maybe planned a little bit better.

It's the first time we've ever done anything like that. But we literally started AM in the morning, went to five o'clock that day, and we just did business after business and speaking. And they had everybody ready, it was an interesting day to see if we could do something really cool.

[00:37:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. I love how you said, hey, yeah, I did 40, I probably could have done, or 41, I probably could have done 80 with a little more planning. There's a prey dive, right in front of us. Right. In action. And congratulations 17 books in, wow. That's absolutely fabulous. That said, let's begin to wrap this up. I'm gonna ask our favorite question here at the Deep Wealth podcast so, Coach Burt. I want you to remember the movie Back to the Future. And in the movie, you have that wonderful and magical DeLorean car that can take you back to any point in time.

So, here's the fun part, Coach Burt, you look outside your window. It's tomorrow morning. You look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car there, but the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in you'll hop in and you're now gonna go to any point in your younger life. Coach Burtas a child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. What are you telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom or life lessons, or, hey, do this but don't do that? What would that sound like?

[00:38:34] Coach Burt: Go back to the day I walked in as the new head coach at the age of 22, and I walked in with the mindset of, man, there's gonna be some change around here and scared everybody to death. And instead of walking in and getting people excited about playing, for me telling, you know, being an ambassador, being upbeat and positive, I really walked in with this mindset of, man, there's a new guy in town, everything's gonna change.

And it was really the wrong way to start off the relationship, I should've walked in and tried to get support because people don't buy into the message until they buy into the messenger. And I should have walked in and said, man, it's gonna be great. I can't wait to coach you guys. This is gonna be awesome.

A lot of great college coaches understand this. He saw Hugh Freeze do this at the University of Auburn. Cause he probably made a mistake like I did somewhere along the way to motivate through fear versus. Positive reinforcement and I would take myself back to that moment cuz I remember it like it was yesterday and afterward, I was like, oh, that was such a mistake.

[00:39:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: What a great takeaway. Terrific insight. People don't buy into the message, they buy into the messenger. A terrific way to wrap up this episode, and for our listeners, coach Bird, I'm gonna have all of your links in the show notes, particularly for the book and your website as well, to be a point and click.

That's said, though, if someone wants to reach out, perhaps they want to become a client or they have some questions for you, they wanna talk with you. Where's the best place online someone can find you?

[00:39:53] Coach Burt: I would just email us coach[at]coachburt[dot]com. You can go to our website, coachburt.com, it shows you our products and services. Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and anywhere out there, you search Coach Michael Burt. You'll see we'll put out a lot of content. But yeah, coach[at]coachburt[dot]com and I'd love to be with them, and thank you, man, for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[00:40:12] Jeffrey Feldberg: Thank you. And for our listeners, it doesn't get any better. The coach himself, hey, just email me directly, coach[at]coachburt[dot]com. Doesn't get any easier than that. And so, listen as we wrap this up it's official. It is a wrap. Thank you for taking part of your day spending it with us on the Deep Wealth podcast.

And as always, please stay healthy and safe.

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Enjoy the interview!