Coach Micheal Burt breaks down what it truly takes to WIN in life, business, and leadership.
Speaking from the heart of The Greatness Factory, Coach Burt shares the untold story of how he built a powerhouse coaching business from scratch—after 13 years of leading a women’s high school basketball team to 7 state championships. From $50K a year and a green Bonneville to closing multi-million dollar deals, Coach Burt reveals the mindset and prey drive that made it all possible.
You’ll learn:
– Why Prey Drive is the missing ingredient in 99% of professionals
– The 4 parts of personal activation: Body, Mind, Heart, Spirit
– How to reignite your hunger and never go complacent again
– Why “motivation” is not a feeling, it’s a skill—and how to trigger it daily
– The difference between playing to win and playing not to lose
– How Coach Burt turns skill into scale—coaching top producers, scaling teams, and landing equity deals
This isn’t just motivation—it’s transformation. If you’re ready to activate your greatness and unlock your next financial level, this is the mindset reset you’ve been waiting for.
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Events:
https://www.coachburt.com/events
Masterclass:
https://offer.coachburt.com/preydrivemasterclassregister
Hire Me To Speak:
https://www.coachburt.com/hirecoach
Check out my Books:
https://www.coachburt.com/resources
Transcript
You’ve got to remember that you know how to win. You’ve got to remember that when you walk in a room, you’re somebody. You’ve got to remember, you’ve got to get back to knowing that those other people cannot compete with you. Everyone, welcome to the Greatness Factory.
I always joke and say it took me eight years to build this and eight million bucks of what you’re sitting in today. But I locked in and I saw it through to its conclusion. So I’m excited about kicking off today. And number one, I want to say thank you to Randy.
Randy saw me speak at an insurance conference in Missouri. I feel like Springfield, Missouri. And he immediately came up to me right after that and said, you’re one of my new coaches. And I said, I’m open for business, right?
So I love people who are hungry, humble, teachable. I can tell you within 15 seconds if I have a legitimate prospect or not. They’re alert, they’re curious, they’re responsive, right? I can tell when I’m talking on the phone to a person, when I make an outbound call.
Do I feel celebrated? Do I feel tolerated or do I feel rejected, right? So I make up my mind if I’m going to follow up with somebody in the first 15 seconds of meeting them. So when I met Randy and Ben in Missouri, I’m like, I like these guys.
Cowboys, right? I’m from Tennessee and they’ve got these cowboys in Wyoming. I’m like, let’s do some business together. So we’ve been working together for now for the last year, I think.
And the first week, Randy called me and he said, man, I did something that I learned in your online academy to help me pick up $120,000 more in the first week. And I go, sounds like a pretty good investment, right or wrong? All right, so how many of you have ever had a good coach at some point in your life?
Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a good coach. How many of you have ever had a bad coach? Okay, so I spent 13 years of my life as a high school women’s basketball coach. That’s why you see this big Gaudy championship ring on my right hand.
I wear it because it reminds me of starting somewhere and building somewhere.
something. They had never won a championship at that school. It was the second largest high school in Tennessee and it took me about 10 years, 80 hour work weeks. I used to say 80 hours.
I was married to winning. I didn’t have a wife at that time. I didn’t have kids. I worked 80 hours a week every single week.
It took me about 10 years to turn that place into a national powerhouse that would go on to win seven of nine state straight championships in the state of Tennessee. Now, how does that equate to insurance? Because I want to tell you how I got into the insurance business and started coaching people.
At 18 years old, I was at a coaching clinic here in Nashville. I was a young basketball coach and I was going to college at Middle Tennessee State University. I was coaching at this high school and I went to a coaching clinic at David Lipscomb University. Don Meyer actually won more games than John Wooden.
Most people don’t know this. He was this great NAI coach at David Lipscomb University and he would do these free coaching clinics. I didn’t have any money in those days, so I would go to these coaching clinics and he said, if you don’t read another book this year, read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
He said, while you’re there, pick up a copy of First Things First. I’m an 18 year old kid. I grew up in a small town, less than 2,500 people. I go straight to the bookstore that day and I buy The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
How many of y’all read that book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? I go, man, if these are the habits of the top performers in the world, A, I want to acquire these habits because you can actually do studies today. In some of my books, I actually break down the top five habits of the top 1% of performers.
That’s true for insurance, real estate, mortgage. I mean, I could take it across any industry. I go buy this book. I had never read a self-help book in those days because my little school, where’s all my small town people?
My little school, I wrote a book called Small Towns and Big Dreams only to figure out that lots of people in small towns don’t have big dreams. We had a hard time selling that one. We just gave it away to schools because we couldn’t sell it to anybody.
I go and I read this book and I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s Seven Habits.
understand what he was saying, because I was 18 years old. And that’s a very tough book to read at 18, right? I thought a paradigm was a paradigm. And I’m like, what is he talking about this?
But I read it again. And I read it again and I read it again. And then I make up my mind that I’m going to teach my players these seven habits. OK, so every player that played for me learned the seven habits of highly effective people.
This is also in the days of good to great. Remember that book? So I was teaching about 14 to 18 year old kids when they come into play for me. Every player learned the seven habits.
First thing, when they come into play for me, they learn the principles of good to great. They learn the five dysfunctions of teams because every team in America is dysfunctional. I don’t care how good you are or what you got going on. And I’ve coached some of the most dysfunctional teams in the world.
OK. So so I was teaching my players these seven habits and I was growing the whole person, the body that represents skills. The mind that represents knowledge. The heart that represents what you’re going to hear me refer to today as prey drive.
Instinct to pursue. Passion. And I was coaching the spirit, which is their confidence. You could sum every person up into those four parts.
If you’re not selling enough insurance, one of those parts are not working. You don’t have the knowledge means you don’t know how to do it. You don’t have the skill. Making a phone call is a skill.
Yes or no? Following up on a lead is a skill. Converting a person to a close is a skill. Connection to people is a skill.
OK, some people and I actually believe that your income is in direct proportion to your skill level. My goal for every person I coach is to earn a million dollars of personal income because I think your life changes at a million dollars. Would you agree? Yes or no?
OK, because I’m coaching insurance guy once and he come up to me and I saw him yesterday and I can never forget this about this dude. He goes, Coach, is there really a difference between 250,000? He’s like, because I make it 250,000. I’m really.
good. And I got a good life. And he said, is there really a difference between making $250,000 a year and $650,000 a year? And I’m like, I hear a lot of dumb questions, but that may be the dumbest one I’ve ever heard.
There’s a four time difference, yes or no? Okay. So if you can go from $250,000 to $500,000 and from $500,000 to a million, and your life would change at a million dollars of personal income. It just would, right?
And then beyond that, it’ll definitely change, but it’ll change a lot depending on where you live at a million. So when you’re thinking about it, I believe that your skill is in direct proportion to your income. The most skilled people make the most money if they’re in the right vehicle.
Okay? Then we coach the heart. That’s passion, prey drive. Some people that I’ve coached in the insurance business have lost their prey drive.
You used to prospect. You used to follow up seven to 15 touches. You used to engage with people. You used to have events for your customers.
You used to do these things that made you great. And then the passion cycle ran out. Where there’s no prey drive, there’s no profit. Right?
Where there’s no prey drive, there’s no profit. So when you’re coaching people, you’re looking at all four parts of their nature, knowledge, skill, desire, or confidence. And if they’re not moving to where they need to be, it’s one of those four areas. So you could coach any kid in those four areas.
You don’t have the confidence you need. You don’t have the skill you need. You don’t have the prey drive you need. Right?
Or you don’t have the knowledge that you need. So I’m coaching these kids and I’m winning games because the more I poured into the kids, the more games we won. The more I coached the whole person, the more games we won. Right?
And so the more games we won, guess what people started asking? What are you doing with those kids? And I said, man, I don’t have time to explain it. I’m working 80 hours a week.
So I’m going to sit down and write a book about it. And that was 22 books ago when I wrote that first book at 25 years old, I’m 48 now. And so when you think about it, I wrote this little book called changing lives through coaching, but guess who I couldn’t sell it to coaches because they’re stubborn and hard.
headed, even the ones that ain’t any good. And they’re like, I ain’t buying a book from this little 25 year old kid. So I write this book for coaches, but I couldn’t sell it to coaches. And I was smart enough to know, like, I need to get this out here to the world.
Like I need to get this message out to people. So, so I started doing speaking engagements. Okay. And one of the first groups I started speaking to was a little company called State Farm.
Okay. And they started saying, well, you come speak to this regional meeting and when you come speak at this meeting, and these were back in the days when they were doing meetings where they had 400 agents, 600 agents, like big rallies, y’all remember those days? Okay. And then I’d go do one in Ohio and they’d say, no, no, now we want you to come over here.
And then the next thing you know, I was doing 10 or 20 of these around the country in different areas, which spun off to agents, hire me to be their coach, which spun off to me doing private masterminds for groups, which spun off to a lot of things. And this was back 15, 20 years ago, guys.
So when I write the book, I figured out this one concept. I could make more in an hour than I made in a month. I’m working 320 hours over here, but I’m building a skill and I’m building a skill. What skill am I building?
How to connect, how to activate prey drive, how to get a team to a higher level. I call that competitive intelligence. I get asked to go speak after I write the book, because now I got an asset and I go over and I speak State Farm, Dell computers, national healthcare, and I’m speaking one day at Dell computers for one hour and I get finished and I go, thanks guys.
I got to get back to my team and I’m trying to win championships. And they said, we want you to come back. And I go, I’m not interested in coming back. I love kids.
I love coaching kids. I have zero desire to coach adults. And the guy goes, no, we really want you to come back, man. Our people loved it and we need to keep them motivated.
And I’m like, I’m not interested, dude. Thank you for buying the book. You know? And then he says, fine.
And he reaches in his pocket and pulls out an envelope and he handed it out. He’s, here’s your check for speaking to our people. And I opened up that check and it was more in one hour than I made in a month. What do you think I said then?
I said, somebody else.
I love them kids. I mean, I love them kids, but somebody else to come along and love them just like I do, right? The truth is my boss hired me when I was 22 years old. And he said, I’ve got a stack of resumes here and every one of these people have more experience.
Some of them have won championships. Now, you give me one reason why I should hire you over all these people and this was a pre-drive moment. I said, when I’m their age, I’ll have twice the resume they do. And I’ll bring you one thing nobody else has ever brought you at this school, which is a state championship.
And I’m not leaving until I bring it to you. So although I started writing books at 25, I didn’t actually retire from basketball coaching to 31 because I made a commitment to that dude and I would not leave until I kept that commitment. Everybody with me. And that’s a lost art in today’s world.
That was true loyalty because I was already making a lot of money speaking while I was a high school basketball coach. I had already written four books before I retired. I was already getting six figure contracts with people. And I said, I’m staying until I see this through to its conclusion.
When I win a championship, I will then retire and then I’ll go do this for a living. Everybody with me? So 31 years old, I retire and I start this coaching business. This was 17 years ago and I start going out and I start coaching insurance companies and I start coaching real estate companies and mortgage companies and top performers.
I spent four years in the prison system rehabilitating maximum security offenders and have all these experiences of coaching people and I started to realize that we had something in the athletic world that the business world didn’t have. What do you think we had in the athletic world that the business world didn’t have?
Just give me some things. Discipline, which is a derivative of the word disciple, which means to give yourself to a person or cause you believe in. If you believe in your future, you will be self-disciplined to that future. Yes or no?
Okay, I just hired a new trainer, 90 days, it’s five grand, 30 workouts, watches what I eat, works me out in the morning at five, I hate it.
Hate him. Yesterday, right in the middle of work, and I said, lose my number, man. Because I was trying to get my body fat down. And he said, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
It’s five grand. If you hit the, if you hit your numbers, I’ll give a thousand of it back to you. I go, no, that’s a good deal. Yes or no?
See, I said, look, I’m working out, but I ain’t working out as hard as I need to. I need you. When I paid the five grand, guess what I did? I committed.
That’s called psychological demand. When you pay, you pay attention. When you don’t pay, you don’t pay attention. Everybody with me?
A lot of people get a lot of free training. They don’t pay attention. They don’t do anything with it. They go to trainings that they never do anything with because somebody else paid for it.
You pay five grand, you pay 20 grand for something, you pay 50 grand for something, you’ll show up. You with me? So when you think about it, 31 years old, I started this business and I noticed that in the athletic world, we had intensity. We had targets.
We had discipline. We had accountability. We had structure. And I’m going to get over to the business world.
I’m like, man, where is all these things? Like there’s no real goals. There’s no targets. There’s no intensity.
There’s no timelines. There’s no accountability. And it was totally foreign to me because I was used to everything being probability driven. Everything having a metric, everything working a play, everything working a strategy, measuring that strategy.
Does it work? Does it not work? And I really noticed that what people are really missing is what we’re going to talk about today. And we’re going to call that prey drive.
Okay? Prey drive is prevalent in an animal. How many of you have a dog and you got a sweet little dog that would never hurt anybody? You ever told people that?
Well, that dog actually has something inside of it called a prey drive. And prey drive is its ability to stalk, capture, and kill prey. If that dog thought you were in danger as its owner, what would that dog do? I don’t care how sweet that little dog is, you would not want to be alone in the room with that dog.
because the dog has a prey those two words, I go, th it. Animals ability to st these two words. I actuall have a prey drive, but it to stop capturing kill. I in the mind and to have t intensity to pursue it.
S in the body. All things a see a deal, we see a drea of a greatness factory. S here. It cost me $3.6 mill I go, I’m gonna take this into private offices on l turn into a lounge on lev turn into a cool place on coaching.
What if I could that I coach in this thea days a week produces 840, in this little room right I was looking for passive 225 times a year like I d in my own bed and I’m loo I built this, I’m like, a paid, paid the rent, pay everything on level three What if we rented this th 800 grand right there.
Wh a million dollars a year just by owning the buildi Where did I go there firs all things are created tw than physically. So prey
and pursue it with what a persistence and an intensity. So when I heard those two words, I picked up the phone that day and I called my intellectual property attorney and I traded those two words, prey drive. And I said, I wanna be the only person on planet earth that can talk about this term in humans.
So this is what I did next. I went and I studied the top 20 motivational theories. They all say the same thing. We move toward things we want.
What happens when we have everything we want? You know, one of the biggest things I hear successful insurance people do, they say, well, we got a little, what? Complacent. What does that complacency mean?
It is a gradual settling to a place of mediocrity. Mediocre means to go halfway up the mountain. Anybody think I put my kids in the car this morning and the last thing I told them is here, here’s what I want you to do, sweetheart. I want you to go gradually settle to a place of mediocrity.
Anybody put, tell their kids that this morning? Okay, so I have three kids. Three year old, four about to be five. Well, I put them in the car this morning, my little three year old and I look at her and I go energy in motion, energy in motion.
Money follows energy. She looks at me and she goes, energy in motion, daddy, energy in motion. And then I look at my four year old son and I go, you’re the best son in the world. I grew up without my father.
Never told me he loved me, never hugged me, never came to a baseball game. It’s very important for me to tell my son, you’re the best son in the world. And in the beginning, he would look at me and go, you’re the best son in the world. And I go, no, I’m dad.
And you’re my son, right? At night when I put him in the bed, I say you’re the best son in the world, right? Cause I didn’t have a dad that did that for me growing up. That’s called a because goal.
And I look at my 12 year old daughter who’s got cheerleading tryouts tonight. And I say, we’re going pro today, sweetheart. And she looks at me and she said, cause the amateurs ain’t never gonna make it daddy. I’m training my kids.
We show up, we grow up and we deliver. We don’t whine, we don’t complain and we don’t make excuses. We are in the top 1% of performers.
Everybody with me? You’re like, man, it’d be great to be that dude’s kid, right? Now here’s my point. So when I study these motivational theories, I actually deconstructed those top 20 theories and then I basically came out with my own theory of motivation.
And I wrote about that theory in this book, which became a Wall Street Journal bestseller called Flip the Switch. What if I told you that highly motivated people don’t always wake up motivated? What if I told you that after 33 years of coaching people, some days I wake up and go, I don’t want to do this shit.
I don’t feel like being motivated today. I don’t feel like doing a video this morning. I don’t feel like prospecting today. I don’t feel like following up seven touches.
I don’t feel like listening to people’s excuses. What if I told you that those Tennessee Titans that play football don’t always feel like getting hit on Sunday? What if I told you that Journey don’t always feel like singing Don’t Stop Believing? What if I told you I’ve coached some of the top people in the world, even people making millions and millions and millions of dollars who don’t feel like doing things on certain days?
Can y’all feel that? Yes or no? And if you’ve been in this insurance business for a long time, you wake up and go, man, I don’t feel like doing this today, but this is what I have to do. So when we think about motivation, the word motivate means to move.
When I don’t feel motivated, one of the things I can do is move, right? I can get out and walk around Nashville and sometimes I’ll go down to Broadway with just a notepad and I will just sit there and listen to somebody sing and just take notes, right?
And okay, not drink five drinks and then come back to work. But that’s what some people do. And I go down there and I go, okay, cause it’s energy, it’s movement, circulation. So the word motivate means to move.
The word inspire means to breathe life into. You’re going to get inspired while you’re here. But that’s like, to me, like cotton candy. It’s like amateur hour.
I don’t want you to go to conferences where you learn things that you don’t ever go do. You with me? And there’s a lot of professional people that go to conferences to learn things that they never go do. And I see them every week.
When I do Zooms, if I do free Zooms, same people over and over and over. And I’m like, you’re here. Could I go to the gym in the morning and I see people that go to the gym that never, ever, ever change their body. Could I do that, yes or no?
Good. They’ve been going to gym for two years. They look exactly the same today as they did two years ago. Why?
No pace, no intensity, no shift, no change, no real change, no new habits. Everybody with me? So they’re gonna say, I went to the gym, they’re gonna check out the box, and then go right back out in the world. They’re gonna go back tomorrow and go to the gym.
And they’re gonna look exactly the same as they did two years ago. Because there’s no shift. Your business is the exact same way. Okay, so when you’re thinking about this, motivate means to move.
Inspire means to breathe life into. But what we’re gonna focus on in this session is actually how do you activate this deep drive inside of you? And what actually activates a drive inside of a person to find a real freakish level of success? Because you’re gonna have to do this when nobody’s there with you.
You’re gonna have to learn to do it for you. So there’s a very specific routine I use in the morning. So prey drive is finding your instinct to pursue. Now, this is what we coach people on in my coaching company.
Okay, number one, and if you’re looking at your business right now, I want you to see where you’re deficient. If you are the owner where there’s no prey drive, there’s no profit. Okay? And I get it.
I was in strategic coach for three years and I was 38 years old. I was the youngest guy in the class and I loved Dan Sullivan, but then I woke up one day and I go, I’m in a room of middle-aged white dudes who wanna figure out how not to work.
I get it. But I also know that where there’s no purpose, there’s no life. See, my mom worked in nursing homes as she got to the…
you know, later in life, she was a nurse. And I called her one day and I said, why do people pass away in those nursing homes? She said, three reasons. Number one, they run out of money.
When they run out of money, they run out of good care. There’s only one nurse for every 23 residents. She said, number two, they run out of love. Nobody comes to see them.
Family forgets about them. Only people love more the nurses than the residents. She said, but you wanna know the real reason they pass away? She said, they run out of purpose.
The word retirement means to be taken out of use. You guys realize that the government created retirement, right? I’m gonna work to a certain age and I’m gonna retire. I’m gonna take myself out of use.
Okay, there’s only so many days you can fish. There’s only so many days you can sit on the back porch. There’s only so many days you can wake up, right? And I know because my stepfather just went through this.
He was at a job. He was a main guy for many years. Couldn’t wait to get to retirement. After about three weeks, my mom called and said, please find something for him to do.
Here’s what he said. He’s depressed. He’s got no sense of purpose. He’s got nowhere to go.
He’s got nothing to do. He loves fishing. She said, he’s even tired of fishing. This is what we’re told though.
We’re gonna work and we’re gonna retire. Joe Paterno, 82 years old, walking 25 miles a day, running gassers with his linemen. When they fired him at Pitt State, he was dead in less than six months. Why?
He ran out of purpose. So I get it. When you’ve been into something for a long time, it’s like, hey, I’m deactivated, man. I’m just not feeling this.
I’ve lost my passion for this. And so I want you to think of this in a different way though. I want you to think passion, duty, burden, commitment. That is a passion cycle.
Everything starts with passion. Then we move to a duty stage. Like I do it because I got to do it. Then we move to a burden stage.
It’s like, man, I can’t believe I got to do this. Then we move to a commitment. We come back home to commitment and we find ways to reactivate that drive. So all of my coaching is around this.
How do we get you?
higher frequency. How do we activate you? Number two, how do we change your language? Because there’s a language of winning and there’s a language of what?
When I started coaching State Farm 20 years ago, y’all dominated. I don’t know if everybody’s State Farm people in here, but if you are, when I started coaching State Farm 20 years ago, you dominated. Everything. Everybody.
I remember a time that when you were a State Farm agent, you were somebody in that city. Y’all remember that? People looked at you in a certain way. When you walked in the room, everybody in the city knew you.
You had a very, very high status. Everybody in my little town knew who a State Farm agent was. Everybody did business to that State Farm agent. Everybody trusted that person.
But what happened to you, just like happens to everybody, is the forces of commoditization came in. Creative destruction happened. Other people sat there going, how do we do it better and faster and cheaper? You with me?
And if you don’t change, the market actually creatively destroys you. Is that fair to say? Yes or no? Okay.
So I was doing something, I think, with Randy’s group the other day, and I said, y’all got to remember that y’all are the original OGs. You got to remember that you know how to win. You got to remember that when you walk in a room, you’re somebody. You got to remember, you got to get back to knowing that those other people cannot compete with you.
Because I used to say to the State Farm agents, you start on the 50-yard line with all your branding and all your marketing and the amount of money that’s being spent on you, you start on the 50-yard line ahead of everybody else. Quit forgetting that. Am I resonating with you?
Because if I went back to high school coaching today, you know what I know? I know how to win. And it may be 20 years down the road, but I guarantee you I know how to win. And I would figure out how to win.
Why? Because I got to change and evolve and adjust and get better. Now, the language says this, oh, we got all these competitors. Oh, my God, the corporate office is changing all these things.
Oh, my God, our rates are getting higher. Oh, my God, we’re in a disadvantage. That is the language of losing. That is the sewer cycle.
Sewer cycle starts with one negative thought.
the body. Produces a negative subconscious emotion. Produces a negative physiological effect on the body. And now you are playing not to lose versus playing to win.
And anytime you play not to lose, it guarantees what? Losing. We had this football coach at the University of Tennessee named Butch Jones and I like Butch Jones but I knew that he didn’t believe they could win because every time he got up, he would move into prevent.
He would actually lose the games. He would get up ahead of everybody else and then play not to lose losing. And I’m sitting there as a coach going, he don’t believe they can win subconsciously. Cause I could recognize it when I was a basketball coach and I didn’t think we could win.
I’d go run the clock stall, right? Even when we were up cause subconsciously, I didn’t think we could win. That was him. That cost him his job at Tennessee.
Get up, lose a game. Whose fault is it? So it’s got to be somebody else’s fault other than mine. No, you’re in charge of the program.
You’re calling the plays. You’re making these decisions. Well, leaders do this with their language. I want you to be very careful with the language you use.
I practice the language of winning, which is opposite than the language of losing. The language of winning starts with one positive thought. It’s going to be a great day. We’re in a great industry.
We could all make a bunch of money. Everybody needs insurance. Ain’t nobody better than us. We’re going to show up today and kick everybody’s butt.
It’s going to be fun. Now guess what that does to the body? That has a positive subconscious mind, enthusiasm, energy, excitement. That’s you stress.
That’s good stress. That produces a positive frequency with the body and that actually loosens the body up. Now we’re playing to win versus playing not to lose. How many of you can catch yourself going to the sewer cycle?
Right? I’m actually a defensive pessimist. Like you read my books and you think I’m really positive. I was raised by mom in survival because she was a single mother had me when she was 16.
A lot of my scripting was we were broke growing up. We didn’t have anything. I went to headstart, which is good.
government-supported programs. A lot of the way I was hardwired was actually lack and loss. That program made me more of a defensive pessimist than a strategic optimist. That means when things are not going good, I can go to negative town quickly.
Everybody with me? But now I recognize it. I’m like, I’m not going there today, man. I’m not, because nothing positive happens in negative town.
Follow me? So when you’re walking around the office talking, God, this business is so hard. Gosh, we used to. Man, we used to do this.
Man, we just, you got to, you got to recognize that. And you got to go, I’m not going there today. I go from mental creation into positive action. Everybody with me?
That’s language. Then we got to activate this business. What should a good business do for you? Kick off what?
Excess cash. What it should do for you is give you excess cash at the end of the month. Profit, right? Now I’m coaching an insurance company right now that’s doing about $2 million of profit.
I’m trying to get her to $4 million of profit, and then I’m going to help her roll that up and sell that for about $40 million. The way I get paid in that is she pays about $60,000 a year for me to coach her team. Her executives do events for her.
I’ve been her coach now for three years. She’s at $2 million of profit. We’re going to try to drive up the enterprise value of that. Then we’re going to roll some insurance companies together, and then we’re going to sell that for about $40 million, and I will get 10% of that exit.
So if I can, right now it’s worth $14 million. If I can get it to $40 million, that’d be a $26 million increase, and I would get 10% of that. So $2.6 million to help her sell that company. Now why would she do that deal?
Why would she do that? Because she knows that she has a skill set and I have a skill set. If we put those skill sets together, we can go get a much bigger result, okay? So what I’m trying to help her do is get that business highly profitable here, and then we’re going to get down in this area, and we’re going to look at her skill and the problem she’s solving and the vehicle that she’s trying to do, and I’m doing this with a roofing company.
I’m doing this with about five different companies where I’m coaching them for a percentage of the exit.
to help them go. And right now there’s about 1.7 trillion dollars of private equity money that’s dying to buy something. Everybody with me? And they got it, they got to buy something to return to the investors.
Okay? So it’s like, all right, skill, problem, vehicle. Now, what if I told you my skill was activation? I can’t cook, I’m geographically illiterate, and I cannot fix a car.
Okay? Because I was raised by a single mom. I solve a very specific problem, which is activation of you, the business, your wealth. And then, at first, I was using this in the skill where they paid me fifty thousand dollars a year.
I was in a vehicle that couldn’t get me to my financial goals. So I spent a lot of time with my students getting them to think right here is what is the vehicle and can it get you to your financial goals. I remember one day the principal came down to see me and when I was coaching he said, man, we don’t ever want you to leave.
Could you stay? Could you stay forever? And I said, I don’t know. I mean, I love coaching these kids.
And he said, we don’t have any more money to give you. We’re giving you as much as they’ll let us give you. He said, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you take the driver’s ed car home as a courtesy car.
True story. Y’all been in a driver’s ed car before? And I said, excuse me? And he said, well, you know, we can’t give you any more money.
So what we’re going to let you take the driver’s ed car home. And I said, well, tell me how this works. And he said, well, the kids are going to drive during the day and they’re going to put a sticker on it. At the end of the day, they’re going to drive it over to your office and they’re going to let you take it home and just consider it a courtesy car on us.
OK. And he said, don’t tell the other teachers. And now this was cool. It was a 94 Green Bonneville.
And when people got in my car to go somewhere with me, there was a break in the passenger side. And people say, dude, what’s up with this break? And I’d say, it’s just how they make these Bonnevilles, man. It’s a special made.
But I thought I was somebody driving that Green Bonneville around. Now, here’s my point. I had a hard skill. I was solving a problem building championship teams.
All they could pay me was fifty thousand dollars a year in that Green Bonneville. Everybody with me? Then I took the same skill over here.
I made more in an hour than I made in a month. Then I go, okay, what if I could use this skill and raise capital? What if I could use this skill and buy real estate? What if I could use this skill and coach teams?
What if I could coach the CEO? What if I coach a CEO and help them sell the company? What if I got a percentage of the exit? What if I, see, now I’m starting to think vehicle.
Everybody follow where I’m going here? Okay, everyone in this room has a vehicle. You’ve chosen the insurance business. Yes or no?
That is your vehicle. If you don’t like how it’s going, there’s three things you can do. You can tweak that vehicle. There’s probably some tweaks that you need to go back to.
Okay, we can get better here, here, and here. Cause we’re leaving a lot of money on the table. May have retention problems. You may have engagement problems.
You may have follow-up problems. You may have lead generation problems. You could tweak that vehicle. And most of the agents in here who own the agency know what the problem is.
Yes or no? You talk about it, and you talk about it, and you talk about, man, we just got better at this. We just got better at this. We got to get out of talking and into doing, okay?
The second thing though, is you could torch the vehicle. And I helped a guy torch his company at 170 million. He was miserable. Most unhappy person I’ve ever worked with.
Financing company in Dallas, Texas. He completely torched it. Fired everybody. Changed the offices.
Brought a whole new crew in. Brought a whole new office in. Torched the business at 170 million. He was one of the happiest people I’ve ever met now.
Rebuilt the company. Same company, new people, new offices. Now he’s doing about 250 million. He’s going to sell that and make about 50 million.
And he literally went from one of the most miserable people that I’d ever met and been around to one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. It’s crazy. He torched it. He said, it ain’t working.
And we’re gone. We’re doing it over.
me. Okay, third thing you can do is you can use it. You can use the vehicle. How do you use the vehicle?
You meet people. You have new opportunity. You form strategic partnerships. You use it.
What if I told you most of my coaching students are now investing with me in the funds? One created the private equity firm. One created the data center funds. A lot of my students are now investing with me.
So now I’m, so one guy calls me the other day and he says, is this being your coaching program? He said, I’m up 350 grand coach. He says, best at 20,000 I ever spent with you. He put 20 in and back 350 back because he’s now he’s investing in some of the investments with us.
So this is what we’re trying to do, but here’s the problem. We got to activate this. We got to get back to this. So prey drive is your instinct to pursue.
These are the three phases of that drive. Number one, the drive must be activated. How activated, how often does that drive need to be activated? Every single day.
So I wear a bracelet that says we go to bed tired and we wake up hungry. It all goes to zero at midnight. So how do I activate my drive every day? Four parts of my nature, body, mind, heart, spirit.
What if I did all of this by 7 a.m. in the morning? I wake up every morning. The first thing I do is I listen to a sermon.
Jimmy Evans this morning on turning failure to success. One of my favorite pastors out of Amarillo, Texas. Listen to a 20 minute sermon that feeds my faith. First thing, I listen to a song.
Typically it’s called It’s a Great Day to Be Alive. It’s hard to be upset when you listen to a song called It’s a Great Day to Be Alive, right? So I listen to a song and I feed my faith. This morning I went to the gym, 5 a.m., got my boxing workout in, that fed my body.
Now I got my spirit and my body here.
Then I spend time with my kids in the morning, typically between 6 and 7 a.m., that feeds my heart. Then I listen to something on business. Right now I’m studying a lot of private equity, acquisitions, selling of companies, bigger plays, bigger table moves, because that’s what I’m interested in.
That feeds my mind. Now, what happens by 7 a.m., if I woke up deactivated this morning, it’s like, man, I don’t feel like doing this today. I’ve been doing this 33 years. I’ve got to go motivate these insurance agents.
They’re so, I almost said boring, I meant to say fun. They’re so much fun. See that sewer cycle versus success cycle, because I was coaching real estate agents right before this in Georgia this morning, so via Zoom. When you think about it, it’s like, and they’re all broke, by the way, because nobody can sell a house.
They’re trying to get me to get them motivated. I’m like, what do I say to y’all? Get out of real estate? It’s like, the vehicle you’ve chosen sucks, okay?
I can’t say that, though. What I’m saying they’re doing is I’m trying to get them activated, get them motivated. They’re trying to get their team on there. Now, they’re all getting in a coach and playing with me.
Here’s the deal. If I show up this morning and I’m not activated, what’s my problem? How hard is it for me to get you activated? I need to be the chief motivation officer.
If I own a state farm agency, I need to be the number one motivated person. If I lost it, I need to get it back. It’s hard to abdicate this. It’s hard to delegate this to other people.
You with me? Now, I have a chief revenue officer. He is in charge of running the company, but I own the company. You with me?
What if I tell him one day, I’m tired of this, man, good luck. I don’t have any passion for this anymore. I’m over here. You show up every day and keep the troops motivated for me.
People can sense it. People can sense it in me when I’m not on my A-game. My employees can sense it. They can tell when I’m tired.
They can tell when I’m exhausted. They can tell when I want to quit. Over 33 years, I’ve wanted to quit a lot of times. Just be honest with each other.
So when I’m trying to teach you how to activate that drive, I’m like, all right, I’m a pro, man. Amateurs listen to their feelings. Professionals, right? This business has paid me millions and millions of dollars.
It’s given me a better life. It’s given my kids better schools. It’s helped us have better houses and drive better cars. It helped me get out of the small town I was in, broke and poor.
You with me? I need to wake up every day and go get it. That’s what I need to do, right? I need to have a good attitude about it.
And that attitude is either ascending, plateaued or descending. So when you think about how you activate the prey drive, you are a whole person. You have four parts to your nature of body, mind, heart, and spirit. The way you activate that drive is you feed all of those parts.
You with me? Because could I be strong in one and failing in another? Yes or no? Yeah, see, I could be very strong.
I could be a success in one role and be a total failure in another role. I could be a great businessman and a lousy dad. I could be a great dad and be a lousy businessman. So success in one role doesn’t justify failure in another role.
You follow me? It doesn’t mean you’re perfect, but it’s like, hey, we’re getting better. We’re working on these things, okay? Let’s go back to the PowerPoint.
Okay, now when you’re thinking about this, there’s three phases of this drive. And I want you to tell the person where you struggle. Is it activation of the drive? It’s okay.
We all struggle in an area. Is it persistence of this drive? Now I have 35 touches a day. That’s my personal goal.
That means when I wake up in the morning, I’m gonna try to touch 35 people. There’s a selling system that I use that I created and write about in some of my books. And I’m trying to get to 41,000 a day, 41,667.67 per day in sales, okay? Every day, five days a week.
If I hit 41,667.67, that’s 833,000.33 per 30 days. If I hit those numbers every month, 12 times, that’s $10 million. Everybody see that? And if I know my profit margins, then I know exactly how much money I’m gonna make on 10 million.
It ain’t easy to hit 41,000 a day in a coaching business.
have. Some people want what I have. I’m selling a want, you’re selling a need. I actually went back 20 years ago and got in the insurance business.
State Farm actually recruited me to be an insurance agent many years ago and I chose to go in the coaching business. I said I don’t want to do that, I want to go over here, but the truth is you’re in a better vehicle than I am. Would you agree with me?
Yes or no? Come over here and try to sell what I’m selling. Talk to a hundred people in a day and listen to their excuses. You hear them too, but listen to the one I hear.
I want to get better man, I just don’t have the money, like I want to be coached by you, but I just can’t do it. I’m scared. Adults are such wussies, man. Like get tougher for God’s sakes.
Like get tougher, okay? So persistence is, hey, I’m going to make my 35 touches, I’m going to go seven touches in my follow-up, I’m going to engage with my customers after the sale. Everybody see that? I’m going to touch more people every day, I’m going to go seven touches in the follow-up minimum, I’m going to engage with people after we’ve sold them something, okay?
And you could pick up a lot of business in one of those three areas. And then this is intensity. I do not like weekly goals, I don’t like monthly goals, I don’t like quarterly goals. I like daily goals.
It all goes to zero at midnight, baby. Zero at midnight, baby. I don’t care if we hit 100,000 yesterday, we’re back broke today, okay? And that comes from my coaching background because we could win on Tuesday night and get lazy and get beat on Friday night.
And it was actually embarrassing when we got beat. So when you think about it, where do you struggle? So take 10 seconds and tell the person beside you where you struggle at the most. Is it activation?
Is it persistence? Or is it intensity, okay? Just tell the person beside you. He’s got the list right there.
He’s got this.
Alright. Okay. When I’m looking at a business here, this is real simple. When I’m looking at a business, okay, when I’m when I’m when I’m looking at a business, here’s what I’m looking at.
Where there’s no prey drive, there’s no profit. Have you lost your prey drive? Number one. Number one job of the leader is to activate the prey drive in the people every day.
It ain’t to teach them everything you know. Everybody with me? I got to get my troops to go into battle every day. King David was a great king in the Bible until he stopped going into battle.
Met Bathsheba, got distracted, everything went down the drains. Why? He was a great king as long as he was going into battle. I see people that don’t want to go into battle.
Number one, I got to get the prey drive activated in my team. Number two, I got to generate the leads. I got to work on the lead machine. Number three, I got to get world class at follow up and conversion on those leads.
Number four, I got to engage with people after we’ve sold them something because it could be worth five to seven referrals or more over the lifetime of the consumer. But where I’m not talking about you, I’m not thinking about you. When I’m not thinking about you, I’m not telling other people about you.
Everybody with me? The truth is, as much as I love my state farm agent, I had to fire him. And I fired him because he lost his prey drive and he let one of my policies lapse and something happened that he could easily solve. And I said, I ain’t blaming you.
I’m blaming me. But I am blaming you for getting lazy. Now you had all my business, all my commercial business, all my residential business, all my cars, all my home, all my everything. And you got lazy, man.
And I love you, but I’m going to fire you because that’s what I do with people when they don’t perform.
me. And I hate that for him. Because my new insurance guy, he told me one day, he said, you’re one of our top people. The houses, the cars, the buildings, all the insurance that I have.
You with me? It’s crazy. You can’t get lazy, man. You can’t get complacent.
Because good people come in and say, I’m done. Who’s next? And there’s too many competitors today, right? That are just sitting there waiting for you to get lazy.
Okay? Am I right about this, Randy? Or am I right? Okay, so we got to get this prey drive back.
And we can’t rest on the past. So the third piece is intensity. So how many of you how many of you found something that you could get better at? Okay, all right, good.
Now let’s move to the next part. I think we just got just a few minutes left. So this is the reasons people become lazy. Okay?
Satisfied needs, never motivate people. Only unsatisfied needs. Satisfied needs only never motivate only unsatisfied needs. So why do people become complacent?
Got a good house, got a good car, got a good life. If you study complacency, one definition of complacency is a general unawareness that you have satisfied. And that becomes dangerous to your future. Now, when I bought this building, right at the very end, some things changed and the bank increased the rate on me from 18 to 20%.
And the deal almost fell apart in the last 12 hours. After I’ve been working on this deal for about a year and a half, it’s my dream to build this greatness factory. And in the last 12 hours, things changed drastically. And the guy I’m bringing in tonight, Tony Girotano, if many of you are going to stay for whiskey and wisdom, that was who I was negotiating with.
He’s probably a 500 million to a billion dollar guy. And I’m negotiating directly with him to buy this from him because he owns this whole building all the way up to the top, 45 floors. And my accountant calls me and she says, man, I got my accountants, attorneys, that man, we got real bad news.
And they said, you’re going to have to put in.
650,000 to do the deal in the last 12 hours. Now I wouldn’t expect it to put in an additional 650,000. So it’d be like me saying to you, by tomorrow at noon, you got to put in 650 more thousand that you didn’t expect. And here’s what I think about complacency.
What if I had gotten lazy all those years? What if I didn’t store away money? What if I didn’t have enough cash? You wouldn’t be sitting in my dream right now.
If I had gotten lazy, I would have had to say, I can’t do it, man. I can’t put it together. I don’t have the money. All those years of grinding, all those years of showing up, all those years of being consistent, right?
All those years was put me in a position and I go, okay, I’ll stroke the check. That’s what I got to do to have this thing. Then that’s what I got to do to have it. That’s what complacency does to you when you get lazy and complacent.
So let’s finish with this. Satisfied needs never motivate. What should we be doing every day? This is the language of winning and then I’m done.
This is what I want you to tell yourself every day. Look at number one, it all goes to zero at midnight, right? We go to bed tired and we wake up hungry. When I don’t know what to do, I do something.
Like if I’m sitting in my office, I’m like, what should I do right now? What should I do? I can call a lead. I can call a person.
I can invite somebody to something. I can post on social. I can do something. I can take an action.
Objects at rest, stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. There’s no wasted movement. Calling one of your best clients is not a wasted movement. Helping a person is not a wasted movement and I’m going to live in the success cycle versus go to the sewer cycle.
This is the language that we teach our students. This is the language we live by. My goal for every person I coach is typically a 30 to 43% increase in a one-year cycle and I do that primarily by getting that.
going to get that pray drive activated and and going to work on those areas of that business lead generation follow-up and conversion engagement at the sale and if we could fix some of those areas, how many of you would make a lot more money? Hey, some of you need to go back and reactivate that office.
You need to reactivate your people. You need to reactivate you and that is what we need to do. So, I’m glad that you’re here today. How many of you are staying tonight for Whiskey and Wisdom?
Okay. So, tonight, we have tickets left. I think they’re free. You can register.
I’m going to go ahead and show you the guy that I negotiated to deal with to buy this building. He is literally a 500 million dollar guy. He’s got the best negotiating skills I’ve ever seen. He’s got the best people skills and he is smooth with the capital S and he has built every major structure in downtown Nashville.
So, he raises a quarter of a billion dollars. He built something like this building here and his his investors are people like Nick Saban and Michael Dale and it would be to your benefit to see this guy tonight. I’m going to interview him tonight. It’s called Whiskey and Wisdom.
We’ll let you have some drinks. Uh then we come up to the theater for about an uh thirty-five or forty-minutes. I just interview him and then it’s just a big networking event but every every seat in this place will be full. So, if you’re interested in staying, Randy kind of strategically placed this in a way that you could come to this tonight and meet other people and meet and greet.
I’ve got a country music singer that’ll be playing downstairs uh because if I can’t compete with the bars down there, I’ll just create my own bar. Fair enough and uh so I got the whiskey and the country music singers. Now, this is one thing uh and Randy will tell you this but uh you’re sitting in the dream that I had.
You’re sitting in a dream that I had in 2016. God gave me this vision to build a greatness factory for adults. One place where you can manufacture greatness. All I went there in the mind before I went there in the body and that’s what I’m encouraging you to do.
So, here’s the deal. If you want to talk to me or schedule a call, I coach some of the top agents in the country just like Randy does. Randy’s one of our coaching students. Ben is one of our coaching students.
We’ve been working with Randy now, probably one of our most successful students over the last year. He’s also invested in a lot of the things that we’ve offered for him to invest in, including data centers and HTSE, which is a publicly traded company that we have, and I don’t know what else he’s invested in, but he’s invested in a lot of things that we’ve offered our students.
So if you wanna book a strategy call to talk to me or my team just about you and your future and where you wanna go, then just scan this code, book a call, and then we just spend 15 minutes with you and we just listen to what you’re trying to do and we try to help you move from A to B.
That sound fair? And we won’t even try to sell you any insurance. How’s that sound? Everybody needs a great coach in life.
Randy, thank you. God bless you guys. Have a great day.