The Determined Society with Shawn French
Insights from Coach Michael Burt on Pursuing Greatness and Activating Your Prey Drive
Wed, 05 Mar 2025
In this compelling episode of The Determined Society, coach Michael Burt shares his journey from a celebrated basketball coach to a successful entrepreneur and author. Learn how to activate your 'prey drive,' harness discipline, and achieve long-term success. We delve into the importance of 'long obedience in the same direction,' overcoming opportunity confusion, and the keys to becoming a 'Person of Interest.' Whether you're striving to elevate your career or personal life, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiring stories. Don't miss it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why does Michael Burt say he can't retire?
A lot of people will ask me questions like, why do you do so much? Where you're at right now, this is massive. You've grown so much. I was like, yeah, but I've done it. Like, if I don't pursue more, I die inside. I'm a spiritual guy too, you know, but I can't find anywhere in the Bible where it says retire.
A dog has a prey drive, and that's the animal's ability to stalk, capture, and kill prey. Humans have this drive. I went to a guy who had like world-class hunting dogs. And I said, tell me when the dog is most motivated. He said, when he knows he gets to go hunting.
Yes.
Not when he captures it. The retirement was made up by the government. And they're not very good at making up concepts. Clearly. The word retire means to be taken out of use. That's what it means.
This one's luck. I let the pain inspire me. I put my all in everything I'm doing. Up until it's done, I'm me for the entirety. I put in overtime. I be working. Just know I'm a gopher, man, because I earned it. They watching. I know it's time. I confirmed it. The whole society determined. The time has come.
What's going on, everyone? We're back with another episode of The Determined Society. Today I have with me an amazing guest, Coach Michael Burt. He's well-known in the coaching industry. He's just an overall amazing entrepreneur, great dude.
In fact, back in the day, he won so many state championships as a basketball coach, and we're going to get to that today, but really a great man, founder of the Greatness Factory, and best-selling author of multiple books. So I can't say enough about Michael Burt, but without further ado, man, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Honored to be here, man. Proud of you and your work ethic. And just tell me about your cadence and your rhythm and just like you chose a naming point. You stuck with it. And that's why I say long obedience in the same direction. I love that. You said that out there. I'm like, dang. That's actually a book title.
Eugene Peterson was a pastor that wrote a book called Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
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Chapter 2: How does Coach Burt define 'prey drive' in humans?
When people come across that, the first inclination is, like you said, it's just like, maybe he's more talented than me. Or, man, that happened overnight. It didn't, right? Everything that you have going on today, I can look at you, right? Because I'm new in the space. I'm, what, four years in? I'm like, when you sit out there, and I know the number.
I'm not going to say the number because Michael told me. He ratted you out, bro. He ratted you out. Yeah. That amount of success, financially and impact-wise, is not going to happen in four years. It's not going to happen in five. It may not even happen in ten. And I think the fact is that everybody wants that short aim. They want that easy target.
And if you ain't willing to do something, suck at it for a very long time, and not be recognized, then you probably shouldn't do it.
Well, the world... Typically rewards skill. So I always like to say, and I wrote about this in a book called Eight Figure Skills Stuck in Six Figure Vehicles. Okay. And it was because I saw so many people that were level 10 people stuck in level four opportunities. Okay. That was me. I had a big engine.
I was relatively skilled at building competitive intelligence in people, activating the prey drive in people. Right. And but I was in this vehicle where I could only make fifty thousand dollars a year or sixty thousand, no matter how many games I won, no matter how hard I worked. OK, so I was a level 10 dude stuck in a level four vehicle. Nothing wrong with the vehicle.
Wasn't like there was a problem with the vehicle. But I started going at it. I'm looking for a bigger table. I'm looking for a seat at a bigger table. First, it was just speaking. I'm going to get out and speak because I'm a coach and I can coach people. And that led to big companies saying, well, you coach our people. And that led to this.
And then I generated enough profit in the coaching business that I started buying real estate. And I started going, what if I could coach at the real estate that I own? So I bought a big lodge in Tennessee. I built an $8 million building in downtown Nashville called the Greatness Factory. And I call that intentional congruence. So I love coaching. I love activating the prey driving people.
I love building competitive intelligence and teams. I also love cool real estate. How do I combine it? And so we started taking the money from the coaching business and buying real estate. And that's really what jumped our net worth up. But it's because we're kind of feeding. Everything feeds everything. There's an intentional congruence to that. I love it, man.
You know, it's funny, funny story here. Like I heard of the greatness factory and I don't mean this as a dig. Like I knew the greatest factory years ago before I knew who you were. Yeah. That's great job. Yeah. It's painting baby. That's painting, man. It's amazing. It's funny. I don't know how long you were here for my part of the sales training.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of 'long obedience in the same direction'?
Taking action, making the call, and then we moved. That's right. And it wasn't easy, especially for Tim and Michael. And they've done such a great job. Absolutely. Wow. The reception you and I just had out here in our sales talk, it was just on a Friday?
Yeah. Yeah. And it's like you don't always say you don't need more money. You need more people. Yep. The people have the money. Yep. So, you know, when people say, can you come do this or can you come do that? Yeah, man, I can do that. What else would I do? I mean, what what's the alternative? I sit at the hotel and I call people versus getting from 100 people. Right.
And what's going to happen because of that is who knows what's going to happen? You don't know. Who knows? Yeah. But but so I always have all these sayings when I wrote Flip the Switch. It's like, well, how do you think when in doubt? I take an action when I don't know what to do. I do something.
Something.
Right. I go to bed tired and I wake up hungry. It all goes to zero midnight. See, these are the right. We go where we feel celebrated, not tolerated. Yeah. It's like just move. And that's why the word motivate means to move. So if you're out there, it's like so many people. You mentioned stagnation earlier. And stagnation is the opposite of expansion.
Right.
Inertia. So if you feel stagnated and you're watching this and there's periods of our life, we all stagnate. You first have to have a realization that I have stagnated. I am getting incremental results and I'm sick of incremental results. I'm getting 7% year over year. I'm growing, but it's not at a rapid pace. I'm not experiencing a quantum leap. I'm working hard.
So the realization is I've stagnated. Yeah. Energy is dynamic, static, or entropic. Three states of energy, right? When I bought that plane, Reggie Jackson's pilot was my pilot. That's cool. And he flew a great baseball player, Reggie Jackson, around him. I said, tell me about the cockpit. He said, man, what you would like, coach, is there's something up there called the attitude indicator.
And the attitude indicator tells you is the plane ascending, plateaued, or descending. And that attitude indicator, you always want it. You never want it going down. Never. So the attitude indicator, and I thought, now, that's a great analogy. In life, people are ascending. They have stagnated. Or they're descending. And the attitude indicator tells me, right?
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