Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - #99: Coaching in Competitive Intelligence with Coach Michael Burt

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

In this episode of "Escaping the Drift," host John Gafford interviews Coach Michael Burt, renowned for his impact on high achievers.Coach Burt shares his journey from being a women's basketball coach to a top competitive intelligence coach, delving into his unique coaching methods, such as developing the person as a whole - body, mind, heart, and spirit.The discussion covers various topics, including the importance of tapping into internal drive, the evolution of sports psychology, the significance of teaching life lessons through sports, and effective parenting techniques for raising successful kids.Coach Burt also offers insights into building confidence, overcoming complacency, and the importance of self-awareness in personal growth.The episode highlights the mindset of winning, both in sports and in life, emphasizing Coach Burt's philosophy of competitive intelligence.Highlights:"A lot of people asked me how do you win so many games? It's tapping into that internal drive and helping them grow all four parts of their nature: knowledge, skill, desire, and confidence.""True self development starts with self-awareness.""Confidence is a memory of success. It is an internal knowing you can create or manifest what you see in your mind."Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction and Background02:12 - Coaching in Competitive Intelligence04:03 - Coaching Beyond Sports05:26 - Raising Successful Children08:45 - Self-Awareness and Growth10:59 - Overcoming Imposter Syndrome17:26 - Overcoming Complacency23:03 - Playing Offense32:25 - Building Identity39:03 - From Hustler to CEO

If you talk to people who have world-class hunting dogs, I say, when are they most excited? It's not when they capture the prey, it's when they know they get to go hunting. There is no external factor that is greater than their ability to pursue the prey. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Right. Back again, back again, back again for another episode of Escaping the Drift.

Like I said, man, the show that gets you from where you are right now to where you want to be. And I talk about having a great knack for having the ability to get high achievers to kind of drop their secrets on you. But today I got something a little better than that. I know that sounds weird because rather than go to the achievers, let's go to the guy behind the achievers, the guy that builds the achievers, the guy that makes those people the high achievers. This dude that I got in the studio today is an absolute legend. I am so happy to have him. And he is a guy that his coaching programs just have affected the lives of, dude, I can't even tell you how many people.

And the level of skill that he brings to that arena and the insight that he has, if you don't get something out of the next hour of this, something's wrong with you, not something wrong with me and something wrong with them. But without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio. Welcome to the show.

The one, the only, Coach Michael Burt. Coach. Nice to be here, man. How are you, man? Wonderful. Thank you for having me. How are you? So you are the, you are the builder of great humans is a good way to put it in some ways. Yes. In some ways. Yes. And this is something that you developed through sports was where you started. Yeah. I started as a women's basketball coach, uh, for 13 years at a big high school in Tennessee, actually the second largest high school in Tennessee. And I was a deep disciple of Covey

from 18 to 25. This was a very instrumental period in my life where I really learned how to tap into the whole person, body, mind, heart, and spirit. And I started calling that competitive intelligence. So I'm really teaching the know-how of winning. I'm really teaching the know-how of how to find a deep drive inside of you. And that was 19 to 31. People were always asking me what I was doing. How are you winning so many games? What age was this? What year was this? This was, let's see, 99 to 08. Okay. So sports psychology was already something that was big in a lot of programs. It was becoming big. It wasn't like, it wasn't as common in the early 2000s for business coaching. Like this has really been a trend that's happened over the last, you know, 15 years. Yeah.

And so I was fascinated by how to absolutely get the most out of a person, how to really tap into the internal drive, how to, how to help them grow all four parts of their nature, knowledge, skill, desire, and confidence. So a lot of people were always asking me, how are you doing it? And, and I cannot imagine trying to do this with teenagers. Like this is where you cut your teeth. I mean, I mean, it is easier to do with teenagers than it is adults. What do you think? Was it? Well, the teenagers had a desire to do what you ask them to do. Yeah. Right. Like they had a desire.

I coach girls basketball. They really wanted to do what I ask them to do. Adults, you know, don't don't yield to authority like teenagers do. Right. Like like when you're coaching kids like do this once you have the trust, they try to do it. Adults is much harder to get by in sometimes because of, because they're settled or their habits of thinking or things like that. When you were coaching the kids, did you find that, did you find that it was, it was all

sports or were you, did you have more of an impact on their lives, on their grades? Did you see all of that stuff come up? All of it. And all of it goes together, I'm guessing. I use sport as a distribution channel to teach life. So to me, I wanted to build winners. Okay. And that's really what that competitive intelligence was. So, so I had life after basketball programs. I had success academies. I had leadership academies. I linked all my players up with successful entrepreneurs in the community. So it's way bigger than just winning. A by-product of, of doing all of that

right was winning. The players played harder of doing all of that. Right. Was winning. The players played harder for me. They had more chemistry. They have more discipline. I call those intangibles. Right. And that's why we won so many games. I'm going to ask a weird question.

Right. Cause we're just talking about, we're talking about kids right now. Cause it is because one of my great fears of my life, um, of having a moniker of success that I have is raising worthless kids. So I am, it is always at the forefront of my brain, of my thought process. So how, what advice would you give to successful people on how to raise good kids? Well, I think, I think it's, your kids are going to take a lot of things from you just by being around you. They're going to pick up certain habits. Like I have a daughter that's 11 and she has a pretty good life, right?

She can fly around on a private jet and, you know, she goes to great schools and she gets great coaching. But also I'm on her constantly about, look, we're not entitled to anything. We work for everything we have. She has chores. She gets paid for those chores. She don't if she don't do it. Like I think the parents needs to be cognizant that, that what you don't want to do is set them up to fail later in life. And that's possible if you give them everything.

So I want her on a sports team. I want her being coached by somebody. I want her on a team so that she can learn team dynamics. I want her to learn discipline of showing up, being on time. And when she complains about the coach, I'm like, you're complaining to the wrong person. Yeah. Because that coach is in charge. I know what he's doing. I'm like, look, man, that coach is in charge with you. And I have that coach's back. So just stop complaining to me about it. Like, if you want to get better, get better. Stop complaining. Here's an interesting question. What would you do if they said, came to you and said they wanted to quit that sport? You know, my daughter is still at a period where she's studying a lot of things. You know, she wanted to do horse riding.

So we got her horse riding lessons. She wanted to do basketball. So she played basketball. She did soccer. She did all of these things. And then she kind of landed on gymnastics. And I can tell it's a real passion of hers because she studies it.

She watches it. She flips around the house. Like you can see talents in your kids early in life like a true unique ability to use a sullivan term is typically detected early in life right it's recognized by other people like like you can see her natural gifts and talents at a very early age now as a parent i go how do i put her in a position to nurture that talent yeah refine that talent right but the Refine that talent, right? But the mental side of it is really an important part of that component as well.

But if they don't have a genuine love for it, you got to move on to something else. Yeah. I mean, parents would drop their kids off to me and said, I want my kid to play basketball. And I'm like, well, she's, you know, she's not going to play here if she doesn't love it because it's too, it's going to be miserable. We practice five and a half hours a day. You got to do too much work. It's like, it's like, she's, she's not going to want to do this. So, so let's just not make her

do it. Yeah. I just had a, my son just retired from, from lacrosse. He's been playing for four years and finally he's got, he's got, he's got asthma and it was just kind of caught up with him. And he was like, look, this is just too hard on me. And my response kind of was, well, you don't have to do that, but you can't do nothing. That's right. You got to figure something out. So we've already kind of figured out a different angle, uh, going that, going that route. He's got some Ivy league aspirations. So we're going to transfer, we're going to transfer into debate in some, uh, mock trial and some other things that way. But, but I think that, you know, uh, you look at my kid, you know, my kids, one of the issues that I have now with my daughter who

very heavy to cheer, loves it, blah, blah, blah, but needs a little more humility. It's like, you want to preach that confidence, but they got to have a little bit of like, like when the coach brings her down a peg or two and she gets a little stung by it. I'm like, this is probably a good thing. Well, you want hungry, humble, teachable. Yeah. You want a teachable spirit. There's, there is a fine line between confidence. I wrote a book on confidence and not think people are aware of it until something brings awareness to it. See, true self-development really starts with self-awareness. Oh, God. Okay. I have an awareness.

I change a behavior. The change of behavior actually changes the neural pathways in the brain. Now I've got a new habit. I have truly improved myself. You've truly done that. But it all starts with a self-awareness. And like I was coached by one of the top connection coaches in the world, a guy named Dave Blanchard. He owns all of the rights to Augmandino's work.

Okay. And I thought, I'm one of the best connectors in the world, man. Like as far as connection with people. Yeah. Until I was coached by him. And then I saw all of these areas that I could get so much better with connection to people. We got into agape love and intrinsic validation and just areas I had never been coached in. Right. So I got so much better. My sales numbers went up and my team kept asking like, what is going on? Like, why are our numbers jumping? And I said, my connection has gotten

significantly better because I've had a coach. Right. He brought an awareness to what I was not good at. See, for me, I'm like a hypochondriac, but for personality traits. I'll read something and I'll be like, oh my God, am I a narcissist? Can I possibly be a narcissist? And it's like, you read a little more and you're like, wait, if it says if you're worried about being a narcissist, you kind of can't be a narcissist. But everything I seem to read, like I'm always paranoid, like, oh my God, am I too arrogant? Am I all these negative things? Can I be this way? And I think that's how I hip check myself. I should probably get somebody to talk to about that and coach me in that area. But yeah, that's my problem is I'm

a hypochondriac to personality disorder. Well, you need so much confidence to do big things in the world, right? You really do. Like the more I won in sports, the meaner people were to me, like the worst they treated me, the more I won. So you need a healthy dose of confidence to just fight through the feelings you have about wanting to quit. But you also, I think a lot of people come to me or they see me speak and they go, man, you're authentic. You're real. You seem humble. You see what I'm saying? So I think you can have all, you can keep all of those things and still be really successful. And still be you. Yeah. So let's jump into like, obviously you're not coaching girls basketball anymore. And that translated into a monster coaching business

of some very successful people. We'll get to that. But I want to talk about things in terms of that now and not so much as. So when people are having those crisis of confidence and those crisis of imposter syndrome, how do you coach them through that? Well, I go through a lot of formulas. So I first start with what confidence is. Okay. And I think when you really explain what confidence is, it is a memory of success. Okay. That's a psychological definition of confidence. How do you build confidence? Repetition, role play, testing, systematic behavior. How do you lose confidence? You lose it by placing your destiny in other people's hands, by letting their opinion dictate how good you are,

right? How do you get it back? You start taking it, taking back control of your confidence. You start doing something over and over and over similar in sports. And so I just kind of work with people on confidence and I've had people worth millions of dollars, lose all of their confidence. You know, Lou Holtz used to say, what takes years to build up can take seconds to tear down. One of the first guys I coached was a huge home builder. And, um, I don't know, probably worth 50 million at the time. He's worth about 350 million today. But it was during the housing crisis of 08. I was coaching a lot of home builders in 08.

You were coddling a lot of home builders. I don't know if coaching's the right word. So they were watching their net worth plummet. They were losing money like crazy. They were, right? And my number one thing was to keep them in a forward posture. I said, here's the deal. As long as I'm coaching you, you're going to be the first one in the office and you're going to be the last one to leave. There's no whining. There's no complaining. There's no making excuses. We're going to get up every day and we're going to, we're going to go to battle. Yeah. Right. And it starts with you because,

because over the years you made a lot of money, it may be stopped going to the office. And I said, you're going to show your team that you're in here fighting every day. And he did right at the end of the year, he was profitable. He had budgeted to lose half a million dollars and we considered it a win if he did not lose that half a million. Fair. Yeah. So, so what, what did I do for him? Give him a routine, get him up and going. We're going to work on your body, mind, heart, and spirit. We're going to go to work on all four parts of your nature. Right? And then the dude fall through it and I look at him today, he's crushing it.

You know, that's such a good way to put it when you're having a rut, right? When things are going your way. I always say, like there was a guy came into the office one day here, just so you know, you don't know where we are, right? Coach Bert's like, where am I? I'm in a small room in this place. This is the largest luxury real estate brokerage in Vegas. This office that you're sitting in sold more real estate than any other company in Vegas

last year and consistently does on a basis. But like I saw one of the guys come in wearing sweats. Yeah. And it was like, man, things are kind of slow. I don't know what's going on today, blah, blah, blah. And I just basically said to him, are you dressed for the day that you have or the day that you want? That's right. And he looked at me. He's like, today, blah, blah, blah. And I just basically said to him, are you dressed for the day that you have or the day that you want? And, uh, and he looked at me, he's like, well, somebody calls, I can go change. I'm like, then why don't you go change now? See

what happens. Yeah. I think, I think, you know, I go back to when I was coaching junior pro basketball, I was 15 coaching nine to 12 year olds. And I wore a suit. I wore a suit when I coached in elementary basketball. Did you do that because you were emulating the coaches that you admired? Yes. The Pat Riley's from back in the day? The Pat Riley's, the Phil Jackson's, the Rick Pitino's. They wore a suit. I'm like, if they're doing it, I need to be doing it.

I love that. Like I just always thought every day at my current role was an interview for my next role. Like today I speak, you know, maybe we pick up 500 more leads for the business. Yeah. Right. I mean, I need to be ready. I need to perform. I need to show up. And that's how you grow the business. That's where all the referrals come from is being really good in your current role. It seems like you're really

good at pattern recognition. Yeah. It seems like watching what makes success in others, following those steps and modeling those modeling success is something you're very good at. When you go with a new client, do you try to, is it a combination of digging into what they have and rebuilding them or trying to model them after something else? It's really, I start with an exercise, a simple exercise that is profound to do. And it's called from A to B. Okay. I wrote a book on this called A to B and B is your ideal picture. If you could draw it up as perfect as you could draw it up as perfect as you could make it. Where are you going? Like you and I were talking about, you know,

Newport beach. And I said, man, I have a house in watercolor. Well, I could tell you exactly in my ideal picture, what that looks like. I'm coaching three days a week. I'm coaching these people. My company's doing this much. My profit margins are here. I'm living in watercolor X number of months a year, right? I see my kids this much time. Like I can tell you exactly what I want, which I tell my brain over and over and over through the exercise of A to B. A is your current position. B is your desired outcome.

So we start there and I find that people have a lot of confusion, which is randomness in motion. It's like, okay, what's your B? And they go, hey, I really want to do this. And so then I add all of these tools. What's the biggest level 10 opportunity available to you? Meaning what? Talk about that.

The biggest opportunity that is available to you right now that is highly enjoyable, highly profitable, highly meaningful. Okay. And then I go, okay, who are our Blue Marlin relationships? Because I classify everybody Blue Gill or Blue Marlins. Okay. And I'm like, who's the Blue Marlin people who can help us get there? And they're like, okay, here it is. So then so then i go okay now we need to get from mental creation to physical action okay and so what i do is i bring structures like if you read a price pritchett

book on quantum thinking which is fascinating to me uh because you know our atoms and particles make these significant jumps with with ease there's no apparent, it's not hard. So when you read that book, you're like, oh yeah, I'm ready to jump 10 times or 50 times. See, I love how I say write like I'm up on quantum physics. I'm just going along with it for the podcast. So not that smart. Just keep, that's why I have Bert. So I'm Coach Bert here. I'm not that smart. Go ahead. But the book opens your mind to like, man, I can show significant jumps. What it doesn't tell you is, okay, how do I do it? Like, what do I need to do? So I think as a coach, one of the talents the good Lord gave me was the ability to deconstruct concepts, to codify, to package.

Pattern recognition. That's right. And to go, okay, this is how you're going to show a quantum leap in this business. So I give people tools like a tool maker, And that's what I do for super successful people. And a lot of people lose their prey drive, which is their instinct to pursue. They become complacent. They go, yeah,

I want to talk about, I definitely want to talk about that. So, and that is not relevant to how much money they make. It's, it's like, man, I've just been doing this a long time.

I've been successful. I'm a little bored. How do I get that drive back? Right? So when I wrote flip the switch, a lot of people came to me for it's like, man, I'm making X number of millions of dollars, completely comfortable. I'm living in Puerto Rico where taxes are 4%. It's like, man, I need that drive back though. Cause I know I'm, I'm 40 something years old, right? Like I know I've got a big future. I literally had a post on Instagram two days ago from this podcast where it was a snippet where I was talking about the reason that people fail after several years in

business is because monotony becomes the enemy of enthusiasm. That's right. It's because they just, and it can't, you've got to remember that the things that you've got to do every day to be successful, you've got to do. And I find that changing one word, which is have to get does that. I don't have to go do that. I get to go do this is one of my drivers. It's funny. You're talking about quantum physics. The only thing I know about quantum physics is it did give me one, one great moment of joy in my life, which is this, the movie interstellar that was on, which is impossible to watch and very complicated. I watched it with my wife and every time she looked at me and said, I don't know what's going on. I just basically looked at her like she was dumb,

even though I had no idea what was going on. And this went on for like two hours as I tried to explain it to her in a way that made no sense. And by the end of the movie, I was like, I have no idea what's going on. I don't think she's ever been as mad at me as she was in that moment. But yeah, that was a great moment of joy for me, for interstellars. There you go. Moving on, let's talk about prey drive again. So how do you get, going back to that, how do you get people to redevelop that prey drive? How do you get them to reactivate what made them great in the first place if they're losing it? Well, I think what's happened when a person loses their prey drive is they have captured something. See, when I wrote the book, prey drive is prevalent in an animal, right?

An animal has a prey drive, which is its ability to stalk, capture, and kill prey. Yeah, it's just innate. That's right. It's prevalent in dogs. Well, if you talk to people who have world-class hunting dogs, I say, when are they most excited? It's not when they capture the prey. It's when they know they get to go hunting. There is no external factor that is greater than their ability to pursue the prey, it's when they know they get to go hunting. There is no external factor that is

greater than their ability to pursue the prey. Okay. I'll agree with that. So when I wrote, when I, when I'm reading this, when I'm writing the book, I spent about two years writing the book and I'm studying, I broke down the top 20 motivational theories. I deconstructed those theories. And I basically said, look, people move toward things they want. What happens when you have everything you want? We lose our drive. We become complacent. Satisfied needs never motivate, only unsatisfied needs. So when you're hungry, you move toward food. When you're thirsty, you move toward water. When you're lonely, you move toward people. So what happens is we get something we want. We got a nice house. We got this. We got that. We got a good life.

And that suppresses the prey drive. Well, I find that a lot of people, especially when they start getting everything they want, it switches from desire to fear. That's a good way of looking at it. And that fear of it goes from I want, I want to, man, I could lose this. Right. Which in some ways is not bad because fear is an activator, a prey drive. But fear can be your friend. Right. Which, which in some ways is not bad because fear is an activator, a pre-drive, but fear can be your friend. Right. So I wear a bracelet. I got to hear that. Okay. So, so if you look up fear in the, in the dictionary, fear is an unpleasant emotion created by belief that something could harm me in the future. Yes. Okay. What if I told you March of 2020,

I was losing a quarter of a million a month in my coaching business because of the pandemic. Wow. Couldn't speak, no speaking engagements. Everything's canceled. Everybody who had booked me wanted their fees back, which was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay.

Because the way I generate leads, just like I did today, I spoke to 1200 people. We're going to pick up three or 400 leads. My team's going to work those leads. That speaking engagement should be worth or could be worth with the coaching programs. I have a quarter of a million in one hour, right? Okay. If I can't go speak. Not a bad way to spend the hour. Not a bad way to spend the hour. Not a bad way. But in 2020, I couldn't do those things. So I'm sitting there like, my goodness, man, I'm sitting here. My team is depressed and we're in the motivation business.

I remember doing Zoom. So I was just so pissed off because I couldn't get my own team motivated. They were depressed. They were used to flying around private jets and nice hotels and coaching, you know, cool people. And now they're all stuck at their house. It was miserable. And so I was really afraid that everything I had built and worked for, I was going to lose. I'm like, man. So first you go through fear, kind of grief cycles, right? But then I started remembering,

I know how to win. This is where the confidence comes in. I know how to win. I need another way. So, so I started doing virtual events. So a company approached me out of Houston, Texas named E3. And they said, let's do one virtual event, see if you like. And I said, look, I'll do one. And if I like it, I'll do another one. And we do one called Purpose to Profit. We did 500,000 in sales. And I thought, man, this is good. I coached for two days. I didn't go anywhere. From my lodge in Tennessee, we generated 500 grand in sales. Let's do another one of those. Did about two and a half million in virtuals during that period. But I would have never done the virtual if I wouldn't have been afraid. Well, here's the question though. Do you some, I mean, I love the pivot. I love when something happens and I'm forced to find another way. Like

that, that's where I'm at my best, that pressure. You know, during COVID, you know, it was similar stuff here. We had to shut down everything else, but we, because we're a completely vertically integrated business and we own mortgage and we own title and we all, we own all that. Everybody rushed to refile on those, on those sub three rates. All of that business went through our mortgage company. All of it closed to our title company. So every other real estate broker in Vegas was freaking out. We're like, let's remodel the offices. Why not?

But having, I love, like, that's where I love it. I love, if everything's going great, I, you know, I, I get bored. I think we all do. That's right. So how do you harness that same energy you got that same that same energy when when when shit was hitting fan what is the only way you can really put it yeah how do you harness that same energy when things are well that's why you have to change your relationship with fear so i wear a bracelet that said we go

to bed tired we wake up hungry see i tell my brain that it all goes to zero at midnight i wake up every day at zero i start over brain that it all goes to zero at midnight. I wake up every day at zero. I start over. All of our goals in our company is based on daily goals. Really? Daily. Every day. Every day. That's it. Daily. So we have daily goals. We're trying to get to a certain number every single day. I take

big numbers. I break them down into small numbers. I try to get each individual salesperson to a certain unit, right? That they can be successful. And then when they get to that one, I push them to another one. Once they get to a hundred thousand in sales, I'm like, you can get to 150. Once they get to 150, I try to get them to 200,000. And there's a lot of coaching that goes on between me and them, right? But I'm stretching them to get to another frequency. And, and so I think fear can, can activate fear of loss more than anything can activate that drive and where you really find another gear. So, so if you don't have that fear, how do you manufacture it? See, when I was a coach,

fear of losing was so embarrassing because we were really good. And when we got beat, it was a big upset. So it's in the papers. It's back in the days when you read the newspapers. Yeah. That was embarrassing waking up on Saturday morning and my school was upset. It's on the front page of the paper. So I use that embarrassment. There's fear of embarrassment. There's fear of loss. There's fear of rejection. And if you could ever change your relationship with these negative emotions and actually use them to activate your drive, you're going to be in good shape. But I think a good exercise also is really delving into what it means to lose that stuff. I don't recall if it was Epictetus or Seneca. Brad and I were literally just talking about the same thing that would go out and sleep in this just on the hard ground once in a while by himself.

Just remind himself if I lost everything. I think it was Epictetus. Just to go out and say if I lost everything, this is not so bad. I'm still the sun's still going to rise. I'm still OK. I'm not I'm not hurt. So understanding that, you know, even if you did lose everything, it's okay, but it creates, but it creates a motivator not to still, but, but I think the difference being is you still got to be willing to risk when everything's on the line. That's right. And certain people, when things are

on the line like that, they go into a heavy conservation mode. Yes. You know, it's like, where can we cut? Where can we cut? Where can we cut? And in business, I look at it as offensive money and defensive money. Offensive money brings money. Defensive money supports the money that's coming in. I will always cut defense before I cut offense. Yeah. Always.

But I think scared people tend to cut it the other way. I got a good story on this. Yeah, let's have it. So I'm coaching basketball. I'm in a sub-state game, which is the game before the state tournament. I'm up 14 with three minutes to go. I've got a young team. In my subconscious, here's what I'm thinking.

We're not good enough to win this game, right? We're young. What are we doing here? How are we up? I'm thinking this. As I'm coaching the game, there's four or 5,000 people there. It's going crazy. And, and my, and guess what I did?

I went into prevent. Prevent, prevent you from winning. And so prevent is when you, prevent you from winning. That's what it always does. Is when you stall. So I'm looking at my point guard, who's a sophomore. And I'm like, run it, run the clock, spread out into four corners. And she's looking at me like, what's wrong with you?

We're up 14 points. You see what I'm saying? But I was so afraid of losing. Let's go. I was so afraid of losing. And I was young in my career. And we lost the game. They come back and go ahead with 14 seconds to go.

Heartbreaker. The only time they were ahead was in the last 14 seconds. And so I went to, of all places, because we were in this little town, crappy little town in Tennessee. And there was an Applebee's. I went to an Applebee's with my assistant coach and had a very tall, strong drink. And I just sat there and looked at him and said, man, I just cost us that game. That's on me. And I said, I looked at him.

I remember saying this, playing not to lose always guarantees losing. Now, in business, it's the same concept. Just like you just said, there's defensive and offensive. If you knew how many business people wake up and play defense every day versus offense, and how do you get them in an offensive posture? How do you get them, especially over the last two years, I've coached thousands of real estate agents,

thousands of mortgager. I think the other day I calculated, coached like 65 mortgage companies. You know, some of the best I've coached thousands of real estate agents, thousands of mortgager. I think the other day I calculated coach like 65 mortgage companies. You know, some of the best I've coached agents, you know, making four or five hundred thousand a month. I've coached some of the best people in the world. Right. And it's like during the past two, three years to play defense. It's like I got to get you out of thinking like this. Right. We want to get to the ball to the midline in two point three seconds.

We're just going to come at you so hard that it's going to be over. We're going to break your spirit. You know, how do you get that in business? So most people wake up and they, they contract to a place of comfort and, and they don't know how to play offense. You know, you just mentioned you coach mortgage people in times of need right now, man, it's hard in the market. We own a mortgage company and it's, it's difficult. I mean, it's very, this is the most difficult mortgage market I've ever seen. Getting better every day. Thank goodness. But how are you coaching your mortgage? Well, there's two types of people that come to me, people that go, look, I need, we need a coach to stimulate. A good coach is a stimulator. They're going to get you out of that. We don't whine. We don't complain. We don't make excuses.

We're going to prospect 35 to 45 touches. We're going to work a selling system. We're going to get you out of that. We don't whine. We don't complain. We don't make excuses. We're going to prospect 35 to 45 touches. We're going to work a selling system. We're going to follow up. Because if you look at the stats, you know, I'm a coach. So everything's probability to me. The average person is going to buy four to seven houses in their lifetime, right? And the statistics say each satisfied client should be worth 5.7 referrals over the lifetime of the consumer.

98% of mortgage people never call a client back once they put them in a home in a meaningful way. And they don't go seven to 15 touches in the follow-up on a lead. So I'm like, this is money to pick up. This is easy money to pick up. So I try to show them, this is how much money you're losing by being lazy. Now, if I can get you prospecting two hours a day, following up seven to 15 touches, engaging in a meaningful way after the sale, I'm going to help you pick up maybe 15 transactions a year, maybe more, right? Now I'll say, how much money will you make on 15? Tell me how much money you're making on each deal. And that's, is that enough for you to not be lazy? It either is or it isn't, right? And someone will still look at me like,

I know I need to do it, coach. And I'm like, you're either going to make the amateur money or you're going to make the pro money. So I've coached it routine. I'm routinely coaching between four and seven, a hundred million to $200 million mortgage people. Okay. Yeah. And, and they're down just like everybody else. And what's the difference? Okay. But what is the difference between those mortgage people? They don't whine. They don't complain. They don't make excuses. I tell them to do something and they do it. That's it. They don't, they, they, they will. I've been coaching these people like seven or eight years. They've heard me say everything I got to say, but they're like, I always get one thing from him. I extract the one thing I go do it. It's like, that is the difference between the big money earners and the small money earners is a small money earners tell you 15 ways it won't

work. Yeah. The big money earners go, you know what he said to do that? I'm going to do it. How much of it, what if you had to put a percentage on it? How much of it is just showing up? You know, who was it that said 90% of it is showing up? Was it Yogi Berra? But it is. Yeah.

It's like, it's like, it's like show up, do what you said you were going to do. Say please and thank you. Right. And play the percentages and you will win a whole lot more. It's like, show up, do what you said you were going to do, say please and thank you, right? And play the percentages and you will win a whole lot more. Are you starting to see in your coaching program, obviously you coach people of all ages, all different age gaps there. I'm starting to see this new wave of agents come in, these Gen Zers, you want to call them, that are going to just absolutely eat the millennials lunch. And I try to talk about this. The reason being is because of labels. I think we've become such a label conscious society. Everybody wants to have a label, an excuse for why I am the way

I am. Oh, I'm bullheaded because I'm Aries or whatever kind of nonsense you want to come up with. And then the whole millennial thing, well, I need to know about how much effort this is going to take. That's millennial in me. I just think labels are so dangerous. How do you get people to break the labels that they've given themselves and change the story that they're telling themselves? That's a great question. Identity. See, the greats have developed an identity of themselves that cannot be broken. I ask myself a lot, where did my identity come from? Well, it came from a single mother who drilled in me. We don't whine. We don't complain. We don't make excuses, right? She,

she formed my identity. You're a winner. You know how to win. You're going to show up and win no matter what the circumstances, this is who you are. Right. Well, how do you instill that in a person at 30 or 20, if they haven't had it? You know, I mean like when Saban recruits players at Alabama, you know, they're, they focus on four things. Do you root for Bama? Tell me, I like, tell me you don't root for him. I like Saban. You can like Saban, but you can't like, I like Saban. I'm a Florida state guy. I just, I can't even get into that. I'll let you finish your thought.

I had a flashback of that college football playoff announcement. Sorry. Well, I'm a big fan of coaches. Get over it. I'm a big fan of coaches and Saban's so consistent. But I did some work with Kevin Elko, who was his psychologist. Yeah. Okay.

And I really like Elko. And I said, okay, how do they build culture at Alabama? He said four words. Identity. We're the best. And they said, okay, what's, how do they build culture at Alabama? He said, four words, identity. We're the best. And they instill that in them from the time they come in. We're the best at what we do. We got the best locker rooms, got the best coaches. You're one of the best players. That's identity. Then they have standards, very high standards, and they don't lower those standards. Then they have language, how they talk and speak like prey drive is a language. It's a language of winning. Then they have accountability where there's no consequence. There's no change of behavior,

which is a big problem with a lot of people, right? If there's no consequence to a person showing up and not doing anything in my company, you have to hit your sales goals in the first 90 days. So we, right now we've got a new, a new, we've got four new people who just started with me. I got a Navy SEAL. One's a Navy frigging Navy SEAL. Dude, there are so many, so many Navy SEALs in my mastermind groups, man. They just, you just achieve at that level. You're going to be good at pretty much anything else you want to do. So here's the deal. I go, man, I know you got it in you, but you got 90 days to prove it to me. So the first month you got to hit these metrics. Month two, you got to hit these metrics. Month three. And if you don't, unfortunately, we're going to have to let you go.

And there is no wavering on this. No matter how much I like you. The standard is the standard. The standard is the standard. And that's it, man. And if you do that, you take the emotion out of it. I look for people who are alert, curious, and responsive. Those are the main things I'm looking for in a person. So of those four things that you just mentioned, which one does the coach impact the most?

The coach helps a person build identity, build standards. Because what I try to do is get, let's take the mortgage company. I try to get the, because I got a new mortgage company I'm coaching and I'm trying to develop standards. We have 35 to 45 touches a day of high value activity. We prospect a minimum of two hours. We follow up seven to 15 touches. These are things they're not doing. And it's like, let's start there. Let's build identity. So I teach the habits of the top 1% of performers and I show them those habits and I go, okay, we're going to, we're going to instill these habits into you. So when you say the top 1%, are you talking about mortgage? You're talking about everybody? We're talking about performers. You're talking about

Kobe. Is that what we're talking about? I'm talking about there's 1% of firefighters. There's 1% of police officers. There's 1% of teachers. So I'm not talking about the 1% of money earners, although there could be a direct correlation. And I think what the top 1% made, what, 557 last year. So that's, and just a few years ago was 357. So it's gone up.

But if you look at the top five habits of the top 1%, remarkable boldness, intrinsic motivation, grit and resilience, connection, and ability to lock in and see something through to its conclusion. Those are the top five habits of the top 1% of performers. Yeah, that's funny you say that. One of my proudest accomplishments is not even really an accomplishment, which is Dr. Liza Siegel, who was the psychologist. She was the onboard psychologist for The Apprentice when we were filming that. She did every single season they ever did. And then she wrote a book called Sweet Success. And she had called me to ask me if she could put me in the book for something. And I said, sure, what? She goes, of every candidate we ever had, every season we ever had every season,

18 candidates a season, you tested higher for resilience than anybody else ever did. And I was like, Oh man, I'll take that. I mean, that's a, that's, that's the blue ribbon. I want to forget that fourth place in the, in the three-legged race in fifth grade, I'm taking that award to the grave. That's the one I want. So yeah, I was super happy with that. So my question now is all of those things you mentioned that create high achievers. I'm a big believer in right person, right seat. We run our businesses with EOS and a lot of that also is personality traits. So I like, love the disc test because I can pretty much peg people on disc however it is. How important do you think it is to long-term success for you to be doing something you're built

for as far as personality trait, or can you overcome your shortcomings within your personality for a particular job? I think, well, you know, I'm certified in the disc, but I've gone through Colby. I think Colby is really good, the Colby Index, because it shows you where you will perform in your natural state, where you're where you will perform in your natural state. Yeah. Where you're most inclined to perform. Yeah. At your highest level.

So, I think when you put a person out of their position for long cycles of time, it will erode their performance. Yeah. And trying to say, well, you're good with people, so we're going to put you in sales. You know, when I look at people, I'm like, well, she's not a natural salesperson. You know, yes, she can do $100,000 a month or or 200,000 a month. And that is 2.4 million a year in my business. And that's a good unit, right? Per person. But over a cycle of time, she really wants to do this. And how do we do that for her? How do we put her in that situation? Because I was coached by Sullivan through strategic coach and everything's built around your unique ability.

You find that, and then you find the problem that you are uniquely qualified to solve, right? And then that's right seat, right bus, you know, all those type things. Well, I think one of my biggest mistakes in business over the years is I have promoted people that do well at this job to another job they weren't built for, and then they fail. And then you're like, how did that happen? Because they were so good here and then there. And then you really start to become a student of those things. And you realize, oh, well, that's exactly why it happened because they weren't suited for that job. Well, and I think if you want to be honest, I've done that multiple times in my career,

because I'm not very, I'm a great coach. I'm a lousy manager. I don't even know if I'm that great of a boss. Like one guy came and worked for me. We'll take a survey of the home office later. Well, one guy said to me, he said, man, I love you as my coach. I hate you as my boss. And, but it's like, I'm not a good boss. I'm a great coach. And so the older I get, the more I really just do three things in my company, right? I create, I deliver and I promote.

And that's really it. And when you pull me into anything else, it's a low value of my time. Do you find that, let's talk about that because that's such an interesting thing, because that's where a lot of people struggle. And like, and like my good friend, Kent Clothier, I think you probably know Kent, his big mantra in life is moving from the hustler to the CEO. And getting to a place where you can let go of those things. And I'm talking about, you don't have to have a major, massive company like we do. I'm talking about, you can just have an assistant. And how do you get to a place where you can start letting go of those little mundane things

that you're just so used to having your fingers on? How do you do it? Well, I don't know that I'm very good at it. I'm rehabilitating on this. Now I'm, I'm hiring more people and letting them do it now that I'm clear. Right. And that's why I think the visionary, the integrator and, you know, the EOS system is so powerful. And, and, and I do think that that's really how you really grow something is really figure that out. And I think it's taken me a number of years to do that because as a, as a head coach, I had my finger on everything. Yeah. And I think a lot of the great head coaches

in sports do, right? Yeah. They take a say, but he, he knows what's going on on the offense and what's going on on the defense. And, and, and, you know, Hugh Freeze is a friend of mine at Auburn. And, uh, you know, the first thing he said in some of those losses is, man, I didn't have my finger on that. He's like the offensive coordinator did that. Or I don't understand why that guy was in the game at the end of the game. He's coming. You look at some of the players they got, he's coming. But I'm thinking, man, you don't want the wrong guy in there in the last 30 seconds of the game who can't catch a punt. You know what I'm saying? Like, like think about all the things that you go through. It's like, man, I didn't, I let, you know, I didn't have my finger on that, but to grow something and scale something, as you know, you, you gotta get that. You gotta

get really good at that. You gotta do that. You know, talking about making bad decisions, maybe you need to coach Mario Cristobal down in Miami. Cause I've never seen anybody manage the last month, one minute of a football game worse than that guy. Well, it's amazing how, how much money these guys make and how how poor sometimes this decision making they make under pressure and they do need coaching whether it be a psychologist or someone coaching them through why they make these we had this football coach at Tennessee named Butch Jones okay and he would get up over all these teams in the SEC and then I could I'm like here he goes he's going to move into prevent and we're going to lose. And that happened over and over. And I'm like, dude, get somebody to help you because

it's clear somewhere in your subconscious mind, you don't believe y'all can win. And the players can feel it. They can sense it. No, let's talk about that. Because when I coach my people and we were doing, I call it goal setting, even though we're not allowed to use the G word around here, we don't do goals. We do objectives because I think in my opinion, the word goal, and I blame football coaches for this is, is, is become a bad word because I believe it, the beginning of the season, when that NFL coach goes to that podium at that first press conference after a preseason is getting ready to start. And they say, coach, what are your goals for

this season? He's like, well, the goal is to make the playoffs, win Superbowl. But he already that coach knows damn well well his quarterback's terrible. He doesn't have anybody. His best player is about to hold out for more money. And he knows he's screwed from day one. But yet he still spouts from that podium. This is the goal. How do you think that goal is an overused word?

Do you think there's a better word? You know, how do you make sure the people you coach are actually committed and not just interested in what they're doing? Well, I like dominant aspirations. I like dream numbers and optimistic numbers. Okay. So I have a dream number for the company. I have an optimistic number. Optimistic number is the minimum. That's the have to. That's right. That's the floor number. That's right. And we should be embarrassed if we don't hit that. Yeah. That's the, we're coming in at midnight on the last day of the quarter if this number's not getting hit. And that's why I like daily goals. See, everybody focuses on quarterly. Well, what that does to me is set you up to be lazy. Well,

if I don't get it today, I'll get it tomorrow. Well, I'm going to do this. I like every day we're trying to get to a number and it's a dog fight. We go to zero, right? It all goes to zero. And then by the end of the day, do we hit the number or not hit the numbers? I get the report every day for my team. Did we hit the number or not hit the number? So I get the report every day from my team. Did we hit the number or not hit the number? What did each person do in relationship to their personal numbers? So my team, by 7 p.m. on Sunday night, you have to turn in your strategies that you're going to use to hit your targets. Okay. We meet at 9 a.m. every day.

Then we do a check-in at 1230. We do a check-in at 430. And there's a lot of. That's a high level of accountability. There's a lot of accountability. And it's a lot of- That's a high level of accountability. There's a lot of accountability. And it's a lot of peer-to-peer accountability, a lot of challenging, a lot of friendly competition. Love that.

Yeah. And I don't see a lot of people do that. So, and there's a lot of celebrating. Hey man, I just closed a big deal. Congratulations. It forces them to be competitive, number one, but it also activates the prey drive because you got embarrassment, you got competition,

you got fear of loss. You got all the prey drive activators in there. Well, I was watching, I don't remember where it was, man. We, we, you see so much stuff on the internet, but I saw something the other day that I saw it and I thought about it and I said, I probably agree with that. And somebody saying you should invest more energy in your top performers and then less energy in your, in your bottom performers.

The reason being is because if you spend time trying to bring the bottom performers up, what will happen is there probably some of them will make it. Some of them won't. But if you, if you, if your bottom performers see you showering attention on the top performers, they'll feel themselves standing in the shadow and they'll want to get in the sun. Yes. Thoughts on that. I agree with it. I used, as a basketball coach, and I use these analogies in sports because we built a freaking powerhouse, you know, that won seven out of nine championships.

And it's like, when I get into the business world, I don't see these same principles. I coach, I would tell my team as the head coach, I'm going to coach the top seven players. Okay. That's where they're going to get all of my attention. Everybody else is getting coached by. That's right. By Bill. By Coach Kurt By Coach Kurt. Coach Kurt. By Coach Bert.

Well, yeah, Coach. And so I would say if you want to be in the top seven, I'll show you exactly how to get in there. But, but I'm only spending time on those top seven. Yeah. That's my focus now, you know, so they would work hard to get in that top seven rotation. And I think that was a good way of doing it. It's like, Hey, there's, there's, you're trying to get to something, but, but I'll tell you how to do it. I'll say, this is what's keeping you out of the top seven. You don't show up. You're not as consistent. You don't do this. You can't make shots when you're open, you know, go to work on that. And we'll, we'll see. We'll talk about it. I'll take it one further. My, my buddy, Jeff Ross,

buddy, he was a guy that was my boss a long, long time ago, back when I was still an employee, which has been a really long time. But another lifetime ago, when I was an employee, my boss, Jeff Ross, was a lineman at the University of Florida. That's how he went through college. And he said, the worst thing you can hear in a film room study where your coach is, he goes, you know, somebody on the line would come up and you miss a block. And that coach would just raise you from one end to the other about missing the block. Your technique was bad. This is why you screwed up the play.

Next week, you come back and the same guy missed the same block the same way. Raise him one more time. And then the third week, they'd come back and you'd see a guy. You would see him missing on the film. And everybody would look at the coach and wait for him to just blaze the guy. And they would just dead silence. He says that silence was so much worse than they asked you and you got from the coach. And it had more of an impact on people because it felt like this dude's quitting on me. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And

I think there's a lot of there. If I quit talking to you, then you're in trouble. As long as I'm coaching you, as long as I'm engaging with you, that means I'm right. I believe in you. But if I quit talking to you, then you're in a doghouse. See, it's interesting you said that because I think it's so important that you've got to believe in the people you're coaching. And the only way that you can do that is what people don't understand. Like I'm having a meeting tomorrow. By the time this comes out, we will be there with all of our escrow staff, all the escrow service or title company. And, you know, the market's a little slow. If they worked for a bit, I mean, the truth be told, if they worked for a big corporate title company, a lot of them probably would have been laid off. That's right. But my thought is, listen, as long as you're willing to invest in yourself,

I'll make, I'm willing to invest in you. So for me, I think I've got to see people willing to take that investment in themselves before I'm willing to give them the name of my time. Well, that goes back to really the three things, alert, curious, responsive. If I let a person go, it's because they're not showing those three things. And curious is as much as, hey, I want to learn. You know, like I have people now on my team, the two that I brought with me here to Vegas, you know, they would say, man, I'll pay my own way if I can go with you. Yeah. Can I be around you? Can I listen to your sales calls? Coach, can I sit in on your coaching session? See, that's curious, right? So if they have a bad day in sales, I go, you know what, they're learning. They're getting better. But if they're not those things, it's easy to fire people when they don't perform and they're not

those three things. And I think that's one of the things that people do. And like I said, we're talking to Brad the other day and we're talking about, I'm very quick to invite people out of the opportunity. If they're not going to get it, they're not investing themselves. I'm very quick to be like, look, this isn't for you. And Brad's like, yeah, I tend to hang on to people and I want to pet him and coddle him and squeeze him and peek in on him every now and again, hope it works. And he said that. If you're somebody that is out there, and a lot of these people that listen to us are trying to level up, trying to get to that next step. How do you put yourself in a situation where the higher ups, your coach, your boss, whatever it is, mentors you more and takes more of an interest in what you're doing? What are things you can do? Well, I think you show a lot of initiative.

People ask me, how did you get the head coaching job at 22 when there were more experienced assistants? And I was smart enough to know that behind every great number one's a great number two. So if I could become an invaluable asset to my boss, I would be a must have versus a nice to have. So there's a difference. A head coach is yelling. We need to do this. We need to do this. We need to do this. Cause that's what head coaches do.

They bark a lot. Other assistant coaches would go, yeah, that's right, coach. That's right, coach. I would sit there and take notes. Then I go back to him and I'd say,

sir, I noticed you said we need to block out better with your permission. I'd like to bring players in on Saturday morning, work on this. Hey coach, I noticed you said you don't like this with your permission, man. I'd like to take this.

And before long, I just started doing it. Robert Green, laws of power. Don't outshine the master. Never outshine the master. I see a lot of people break their rules. But, but so when he retired, he's like, man, the dude who's been running circles around everybody is this little dude. That's what you do. You take high levels of initiative. You solve big problems. You don't wait until told. That's how you move up the ladder. You know, it's funny, a million years ago, again, another life when I was employed the same place, I was a, I was a training general manager at a restaurant chain, moved up pretty quick.

But when I was a training GM there, I knew if an MIT manager in training, I knew if he was going to make it or not by one test, which is I would go into the kitchen when they were training in the back and I would grab the mop and I would start mopping something up. And if they came and grabbed the mop for me, I knew they were going to make it. Or if they stood there and watched me mop, I knew they weren't. That's right. Grab the mop. I watch and see if people take trash out of my lodge. So I do events at this big lodge I have in Tennessee. And if an employee won't take the trash out, then it tells me something about them. You know, the things I, one of the things, it's funny you say that one of my favorite things I see my employees do is when they're my employees that just work here, right? When they're walking to the, to the front doors of this place, if they see something in the

parking lot, if they stop and pick it up off that. And I always walk out, I'm like, man, thank you so much for doing that. Cause it shows they care about the business enough to do that. Well, and if you go into a bathroom and there's, and there's a, you know, paper towels all over the floor that somebody else created, you know, you clean it up. That's right. You clean it up. You clean it up. I mean, there's two types of people on this planet. There's people that take the shopping carts back and people that don't. I think we all know the more successful of the two. Right. Who's going to leave the shop at Carnot, though, which is terrible. Well, let's talk a little bit about your Monster Producer, which is a thing we haven't talked about yet today. Let's talk about that.

All right. So actually what I've done with Monster Producer, Monster Producer is a coaching program I started, I think, about 10 years ago. I am now transitioning that to a concept called competitive intelligence. Okay. And the reason I did that is that I felt like from the time I started that program to now, I've just grown so significantly. How? Everything. Just my thought patterns, how I play offense, how I run a business. And Monster Producer was a lot about revenue, growth, business.

And I kind of felt locked in to every session I coached on had to be about that. But there's all these other mindsets that I had about, about, uh, we go to bed tired, we wake up hungry and all goes to zero at midnight, really, you know, like a new intelligence. And I said, man, new, new situations require new intelligence. So I'm, you know, I'm trademarking the concept of competitive intelligence and I'm like, okay, this is a 12 new rules of winning. So I'm transitioning that monster producer to, to this program, um, to teach people really the thought patterns of how to win in life versus just revenue and business. Got it. Let me ask you this, because this is an interesting question because you said you've changed a lot, right? So now you got the 11 year old and any other kids? Two more. Two more. How old are they? I've got a three and a one. Three and a one. Good Lord. You're a busy man. So would you say that having those kids has changed you

and how you coach? Probably. Because I'm going to tell you something I noticed right here. There's something that I noticed that actually hurt my business. And that was this, because with the kids, I really try to focus on the effort, not the outcome. My kids are both straight. They're great kids are both straight A students. Like I said, one of them has Ivy league aspirations. And when it, when they come home with the straight A's, it's always like, wow, man, the effort it took you to pull that off.

I was super proud of the effort, super proud of the effort. But because I know I don't want to tie their self-worth to something as trivial as grades on a scorecard. I just don't want to tie their self-worth to that. But I do want to tie it to the effort. But here's the rub of that. I found myself bringing that concept into the culture of my office where we are not about it. We're about winning. Yeah. We, we win here and that's what we do. And I found myself, I mean, I felt like in some of the things I was

doing, I was handing out that seventh place, I guess it's a chartreuse ribbon. I don't know what color it is for seventh place, but I was handing out that seventh place ribbon for a second. I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I literally had a team meeting a couple of weeks ago. I was like, look, no more, no more effort. This is about winning, win or don't. So how do you, okay. You got to coach your high top performers different than you would approach your kids. I'm guessing. Yes. That was a long question. I know it was, it was a story. Well, just, you had me thinking about that with my kids. I grew up and my mother just stressed straight A's to me. It was like a big disappointment in our family when I didn't have, you know, be on the principal's list. I very seldom look at my daughter's grades. Who's 11. You know, I don't, it's not that, I mean, like if she has something

and I look at her attitude grades a lot more than I look at her grades. She has A's and B's, you know, but if she's below something, I'll say, no, that's not our standard. In our house, we don't do that. Right. Because it's got to be an effort thing. And then she'll turn it around. I've also noticed a direct correlation between the teacher she had and the grades. Yeah, 100%.

Okay. Just like my daughter played soccer early on in life. She had a former college soccer coach, but he wouldn't spend any time with the grades. Yeah, 100%. Okay. Just like my daughter played soccer early on in life. She had a former college soccer coach, but he wouldn't spend any time with the kids and she hated it. So she'd come home and say, I don't want to play soccer. She had a basketball coach who was engaging. High standards, speak to her, look her in the eye, Ella Grace, you can do this. She'd come home and say, daddy, can we practice basketball? See the difference? Built a love. That's right. So I see in her grades, like math's a bad subject for her. And then the next year it's a great subject for her. Yeah. How did that happen? Teacher. The teacher. So, so it's like, so when you're sitting there

and I was a teacher and I know how some people graded, it's like good kid, good kid, A, A, bad kid, C. I had the craziest, I got the craziest grade story for you ever so uh there's a private school here called bishop gorman um my son would there my daughter will go there um and they had they're notorious for their honors geometry being very hard so we went my son started out with honors geometry we go and he's like every day i mean we got tutors we got everything because he's struggling and he's a very bright kid and it was tutors we got everything because he's struggling and he's a very bright kid and it was like okay we got to get it we got to get a meeting so we go up there and get a meeting with the counselor and the head of the math department and what's

the head of the math department says well this is on his geometry it's not really geometry it's geometry oh and we're like yep what what what does that mean and he goes well you know some of the, cause he had an MIT tutor, my son did. And it was just like, this isn't even solvable. Right. Like this is no solution for this. And they're like, well, we just want to see the effort. He's like, a few kids will get an A, a lot of kids will get Bs, a few kids will get Cs, nobody gets a D or an F. And we're like, dude, we're playing for keeps right now. And as I said, what's the difference and how the colleges look at the honors and the, and the advanced. And we're like, dude, we're playing for keeps right now. And as I said, what's the difference and how the colleges look at the honors and the, and the advanced. And they said,

oh, it's just for us. They don't know. I'm like, get him out of his class right now. And it was, it was amazing. It was, it was the craziest thing I've ever seen, but you're so right that the teacher in all aspects from performance to sales, to. That's right. Have such an impact. That's right. On people, which is why, you know, self-taught people in any department of life probably struggle as well. Right. So if you're somebody out there just self-teaching yourself with YouTube,

how to be successful. Right. It's like for sale by owner on your house. That's not a good idea. Yeah. Well, I see a lot of people that say, you're my coach. You know, I've traveled around the country

and they say, oh man, I watch you every day on YouTube and Facebook. And I'm like, man, that's not coaching you. Like, like that's exposure to me, but that's a big difference between being coached by me and watching me on YouTube every day. What's it like to be coached by you? I think I'm intense and positive. Okay. Early in my coaching career, I was intense and negative. Really? So why the change? I wouldn't win any championships. That's a good point. I figured out that I'm a guy who, there's coaches out there who really talk down

to you, negative to you, you know, tell you you're sorry if you don't do this. What I have found is that I can be really intense with a person, set very high expectations for them and be positive, kind of like a Pete Carroll, right? 24% of the players in the NFL said if they could play for any coach, they'd play for Pete Carroll. Yeah. Now, why is that? He looks positive, right? Is he, does he have low standards? They asked the players and they said, no, he's got incredible standards. He's one of the, has some high standards of any person they've ever played for, but he's intense and he's positive, right? So I just think adults, not everybody, because some adults respond to Rick Ruby in the mortgage business,

right? Some adults respond to, so I'm not saying I'm for everybody, but I think the people I do coach, I do know how to get more out of them based on my unique past. Speaking of NFL coaches, I'm curious what you think about this. What do you think about Mike McDaniel at Miami? Interesting. I love that guy. Interesting. Oh my gosh, I love that guy. I'm just now starting to like dig a little bit deeper. I want to to watch the series but he obviously brings a whole new it's deal to the nfl it's like nothing i've ever seen and the players are responding in such an incredible way to him it's it's crazy i think the best thing i saw him do which was which was well hey if you did you see the damn marino clip the other day yes yes. Yes. Which was amazing. If you didn't see it, Google it. I won't go exactly what he did, but my favorite was the text message chain between him and

Peyton Manning. Yeah. Where Peyton Manning, he texted him and said, hey, coach, would you mind if I got five minutes before you before Monday Night Football? And the response was, yeah, dude, you're effing Peyton Manning. He's like, you're the head coach of the Dolphins, but you're still like a 12-year-old super fan, which was amazing. I love that. He brings what's called Vujade to the equation. You know, deja vu is where you've seen it before. Vujade is a fresh twist on an old way of thinking.

Okay. And, and that's, and that's a, and I think that's refreshing when somebody brings a new way to look at an old thing, that is a refreshing thing for people. Do you find yourself changing your delivery of your information for a newer generation or updating how you do things? When I first- How often do you revisit? A lot. A lot?

Am I getting results? Is it working? Is it me? Is it them? Is it, because I've coached in almost every scenario you can think of. I spent four years in the prison system of Tennessee rehabilitating maximum security offenders.

Wow. I'm talking about going into maximum security prisons, trying to turn people's life around. So, so it was interesting because they gave me 300 offenders, 300, you know, like correctional officers. And then I was coaching them for four years and doing a study to see if what I did work to keep them out of prison. So once you've done that, then you're coaching executives. And so I'm always looking at is the method I'm using, getting the results, right? I could talk to a player in a certain way and she wouldn't perform. Like I'm hard on her. I'm really pushing her. I'm maybe negative. And then I could change the tone and say, man, you're one of the best players I've ever coached. You're going to be Miss Basketball. I love coaching you. It's an

honor to coach you. And she'd go out and score 35 points. And so I changed the delivery sometimes based on who I'm coaching to get the result that I'm trying to get. So it's almost like, I mean, you have to kind of A-B split test your approach with people, I guess is a good way to look at it. Or to just ask yourself, because to me in sales, whether I'm coaching mortgage or real estate or insurance or there's really two big problems. It's either attitudinal, like they got a bad attitude toward it, or it's skill. They don't have the skills to do it because you can see some people come and make the calls, put the work in. They don't have the skills, right? Yep.

Or somebody, people just have a bad attitude toward it. So how do you change that? Or do you not? Do you just eliminate it, move on? I think you give them 90 days and you try to coach them. It's one thing to let people go before they've been coached. Yeah, I agree. It's another thing to give them the coaching and they don't improve. And they are, and they're not alert. They're not curious. They're, we see, we're back to the concept. Yeah. Like at the end of 90 days, this, these mortgage

companies are going to look at me and say, did you move the numbers or not? That's all we're paying you for. Right. Yeah. Well, but there's a lot of extraneous variables I can't control. Is somebody in their face every day holding them accountable? Is there a consequence when they don't do what I'm teaching them to do? They don't work for me.

Yeah. My people either do it or they go somewhere else and work. So, okay. So you're being paid by the mortgage company. But here's certain scenarios in this, in this scenario, in the big contract, in the big contract. Right. Okay. So my question is, and this is one of the things that I wrestle with here because, you know, we have a very large company, um, here with agents, we have 600 of them and we'll do things on occasion and sometimes you don't get buy-in and it's stuff that should be bought in. But I think that the problem becomes it's cause some of it's, it's free. That's right.

We're not charging you because I think people value what's there. So how do you, how do you go into a situation where the mortgage company, you're not coaching them, you're coaching, you're coaching the LOs. They're not paying you. Right. How do you capture their attention? Really hard. The term is called psychological demand. When you, when you commit to something and pay for it, you are now committed to it at a higher level you're not interested you're committed so it's really when you pay you pay attention when you don't pay you don't pay attention yeah okay and that happens with me when people give me things people say hey you can have this i don't take it as serious

so in these situations where the mortgage company pays for it um it's it's really like if they're not going to buy in and do the work, we'd be better off just not doing it, right? Or they split it. They pay 50%. The LO pays 50%. And I guarantee your success ratio is better there. That's right. Because if they don't have financial buy-in, they're not going to have emotional and mental buy-in. Listen, I've had mortgage contracts that are $750,000 for me to coach their people

because they're trying to move from $2 billion to $ 5 billion. Right. And if I help them do it, that's a small amount to me. Yeah. But, but my point is, if the leader doesn't buy in, if the, if the person holding them accountable, doesn't make sure that they're doing this. Right. Cause if, cause if we do a coaching call, meet you and I, and you say, Oh yeah, man, I'm doing, I'm doing my 35 to 45. I'm using your planning system. I'm using your selling system. And then you don't go do it. See, everybody wants accountability. It's like this somewhere along the way in the coaching profession, somebody led us to believe that a coaching call in a week was accountability. Well, they could lie. Number one, number two, what are they doing? The other 167 hours of the week with you're not there. So, so I'm like the only lasting form of discipline is

self-discipline. Well, it's like, it's like accountability. It's like abs. Everybody knows how to get abs, but you don't want to do what you got to do to get them. Exactly. Everybody knows that. So yeah, I agree. Well, coach, man, I appreciate you so much coming in, man. It has been a joy to sit here and talk with you. If they want to find you and coach you and learn more what it's like to work with the man, how do they do that? Uh, coachbert.com coachbert.com. That's easy as it gets. That's B U R T coachbert.com. Well, my friend, I appreciate you coming. Anytime you want to come see me in Newport, I will try to come see you at the first of June and watercolor. All right, man. Cool. Well guys, tune in again next week. We'll have somebody else. I don't know who yet, but it's going to be good.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review. Give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you for you hopefully you'll be here for us but anyway in the meantime we will see you

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