 What is up, everybody? We are live with Coach Michael Berg. What is up, buddy? Man, I'm at the Greatness Factory today, Ricky. You know all about it. I'm at the Greatness Factory. I love it, man. So, where is that exactly? Yeah, Murphursboro, Tennessee. It's about 25 minutes outside of Nashville. I had a vision of a training facility called the Greatness Factory where we manufacture greatness. I tell people we don't call it the complacency factory. We don't call it the lazy factory or the complaining factory. We call it the greatness factory. So, it's just a cool, modern space that I created. We do our trainings here. My team works from here. It's kind of our hub, hub of energy. So, you literally have like an assembly line creating greatness. That's the plan, man. I believe we can manufacture greatness. I love it. I love it. I love our confidence. Yes. I love it, bro. So, let me just dive right in here because I was, I've been watching you on Instagram. That's kind of where I, you know, picked up and you're an absolute animal. Okay. Let me just put that out there. Thank you. A lot like myself. So, I saw that you were a championship basketball coach though and I was interested. I didn't see exactly where that was, what team, what, tell me, tell me, I'm interested in that. Yeah. I started coaching very early in life. As early as 15, junior pro, 18. I was an elementary basketball coach at 19. I was an assistant at the second largest high school in Tennessee called Riverdale High School. About 21, I've become the head coach and it took me about 10 years, Ricky, to build just a powerhouse program. That program would win seven of 10 state championships. And so, around that time, that's where I spent a decade of my life just building a powerhouse. I started writing books on how we were doing it. That's what led me out to speak coach training league corporate America. Okay. So, you had, you found success there and you started writing books and then that kind of led to, like when you started writing the books, you didn't say, I'm going to be this powerhouse speaker and I'm going to be this life coach, right? You just wanted to express how you were succeeding and you thought that would help people. Yeah. So many people were asking me like, what are you doing with those kids? Like how they would watch my team's play and they may have incredible chemistry and trust and buy in and leadership. And so I said, I don't have time to explain everything I'm doing. So why don't I just write a book about it? So I started writing these books really to just explain what I was doing and I had no intention, Ricky, of coaching adults had no intention of building a speaking and coaching business. I really wanted to go on and be the next Geno Ariama. I wanted to be the next major division one college basketball coach. That was my life path. But I had so much fun coaching adults and coaching people and we were getting such results that I said, you know, 31, I retired from athletic coaching to do nothing but build businesses. Right. So were you at that time, were you making enough off that business to leave and in or did you kind of take the leap of faith that you weren't you really know how it was going to work out? Well, I'd like to tell you that I took a complete leap of faith, but I'd be lying. I spoke in West Tennessee once for 1500 bucks to a health care company. The CEO came to me and said, we'd like for you to be our coach. And I said, well, what does that look like? And she said, we're going to pay you 144,000 bucks. And we want you to coach our people for the next year. I was I was thinking about retiring at Riverdale at that time. The 144,000 gave me a gave me enough motivation to retire. But here's the funny part. Three months into the contract, they hit a financial problem and they boarded my contract. So then I had no money, no customers, no nothing. And then I truly had to learn a selling system. I had to learn how to follow up, how to extract referrals. I really had to learn how to become a person of interest that attracts a lot of opportunity to me. So just like every entrepreneur that you're out there, every real estate agent, you know, nothing happens until something is sold. You know, an object arrest stays arrest unless acted on by an outside force. So I had to become a force. So okay, let me get this straight. You started coaching, then you wrote some books because of that. And then that led to this opportunity to make six figure that went away all of a sudden. And then you learn how to sell. Yeah. So you were you did it reverse. Yeah, I really like, like I'm a natural communicator because the people I've studied and like I have a big engine. And so a lot of people are attracted to that engine because they think I'm a guy who can get them to a higher frequency. And so I was coaching and writing books and speaking. But I didn't really, I didn't have a good explanation of service when I first started. I didn't have a pure selling system. I didn't have a great seven touch follow up. I didn't know how to extract referrals. Like those are things that came as a result of having to figure this out, man, how do I build a business? How do I make it work? How do I scale it up? That happened as a result of the last 11 years. Right. So, so once you got to that point, and you're like, Oh crap, I need money. I have this incredible book. I know all this stuff. I've accomplished all these things. But how do I sell it? Yes. So take me through the process. Like how do you learn how to sell after you're already past the point of needing to know how to sell? Well, and most people do not know how to sell. And then here's what I find out with most people, Ricky, is, is they, they're very, they have confusion. Confusion is a problem that appears to have no solution. The purpose of any business is to create a customer. Okay. So many people do all kinds of things during the day that have absolutely nothing to do with creating a new customer. So they participate in all kinds of low value activities. They don't have a dominant focus, which is a single tangible outcome to push toward. They don't have a selling system or lead generation system. So they don't have enough leads. They just don't know how to sell. Okay. Selling is really presenting an idea to another person. That's all it is. Money changes hands when problems are solved. The bigger the problem, the more money people pay to solve that problem. So selling is initiating. It is presenting ideas to people. It is, it is initiating a conversation about something. It is following up seven to 15 touches. It's overcoming objection. It's getting a person excited to buy something like that's selling. And a lot of people just have no formal strategy or structure whatsoever. You work in the real estate world. There's most real estate agents have no idea what a high value activity is versus a low value activity. They spend their time doing a lot of things that have nothing to do with generating a new customer. That's the biggest problem in the industry right there. Agents are spending all their time on stuff other than the main priority activity, which to me is just talking to people where there's door to door in person on the phone, communication with as many people that you have never talked to before. And you have to find that balance between new clients and old clients. So what I was wanting to know is, is the point that you decided, oh, I need to sell to the point that you actually figured all that out. Was that a year? Was that six months? Was it two years? Take me through that moment. I started to 10x my revenue, probably within three years. And I did sign some big contracts that helped significantly. A lot of times I sign a contract with a company that may be a six-figure contract where a company is bringing me in to really get their people to a much higher level. And so that may be a 20 million and above company. But then I also had this individual coaching program where we're coaching 400 to 700 people a month called Monster Producer. And so I didn't have that Monster Producer in place the first three years. I was only doing corporate coaching. I was only doing speaking. And then individuals began to come to me and say, how can we, how can we be coached by you? And so I developed a program called Monster Producer. That program now is a 6,000, 25,000, 40,000, 60,000, 100,000. Okay. So that's the levels that I have currently. So for me, it was really year three when I started to get a significant bump, Ricky. And I was in a coaching program called Strategic Coach. They were coaching me in structures. They were coaching me on how to be an entrepreneur. They were coaching me on how to take a lower level resource to a higher level of productivity. They were kind of coaching me on how to grow this thing. Okay. And I was just coachable doing exactly what they told me to do. And then so then by year six, we started to really catch the momentum. And I firmly believe in 10,000 hours of practice, typically at the 10-year mark is when you have a significant breakthrough. And I experienced significant growth 10 years into my business. Yeah, for sure. Now, me too. Me too. I lost everything, came back, and it was about a decade really before I really started to understand how it works, like how the game really works. Because, man, and another problem is everybody wants everything right now. And they see me selling 100 properties a year and they say, how do you do it? But they don't realize the 15, 16, 17 years of grinding to build my database to a point where I have those clients that are coming back to me, sending me referrals, so on and so forth. I mean, it's everybody wants everything now, but they're unwilling to recognize the work that goes behind it. I think another problem, and I was wanting you to touch on this because I read this in your bio about how you build confidence into people. And I think that's a big problem with all sales people really in general, but real estate agents a lot because a lot of it is cold calling and doing the things. And I think another big one that people don't talk about is overwhelming yourself with business. I'm a big guy on let's overwhelm ourselves with business for a second to figure out how much we can handle. And then once we know how much we can handle, we can scale back and stay right where the perfect point of production is so that long term we can really see our true full potential. And I think people are scared to talk to people that don't know, and they're also scared to overwhelm their self with business to find out how much they can actually handle. So so in your bio, you talked about that you have a have a way have a system to instill confidence into people. Yeah, and I wonder if this is a book that I wrote on confidence called swag. And it's about how to build maintain and protect your greatest asset in your confidence. There's very little out there on on treating confidence as an asset. You know, confidence is either the great enabler or the great disabled, right? And so when you break confidence down, you ask what is it? Well, it's the memory of success. It is is an internal knowing that you can create or manifest what you see in your mind. It is the distribution of a unique ability to solve a problem in the world, where you get feedback from solving that problem, where you build confidence, right? So I'm actually a big believer that you can build it, you can maintain it, you can protect it, you can get it back once you lose it. But think about how you build confidence. You've already said how you built it 16 or 17 years, you probably had your confidence hit when you took a hit at 23 years old or 25 years old when you went bankrupt, right? Like that, that that help you rebuild your confidence. And that conflict was necessary for your expansion. Like, we got to see things that happen to us is they're not happening to us, they're happening for us. Things that happen in our life did not happen to us, they're happening for us. And so I look at confidence like this, a person who has confidence will take risks, they'll pursue new opportunity, they'll place themselves in uncomfortable environments. An insecure person always contracts and retreats to a place of comfort. So remember this, when we're low on confidence, we always go back to old habits in new ways. We go back to old habits. So what do we do when we're low on confidence? Oh, we go back to all the people we know. We only want to talk to the people we know. We only want to talk to people who won't reject us. We only want to do that. The people I spend time with, man, they're incredibly confident. They're incredibly, they're not arrogant. They're just incredibly confident. Like you, what you know, confidence is the memory of success. So doing 100 transactions a year breeds confidence, you know, going and building it to coach and 10,000 people builds confidence, man. And the more confidence you have, you can distribute that confidence to other people. Right, right. So you're saying to build confidence, you need to go towards the things that make you uncomfortable. Yeah, but that's not the only thing. You do need to go toward things that make you uncomfortable. Think about this. Confidence happens as a result of consistent, ongoing, systematic practice. Confidence happens because of repetition. In the old days, as a basketball coach, my player shot 500 shots a day after they'd practiced five and a half hours. You know why? Because that builds muscle memory. Because when you get in big games, thinking is a liability. Like you don't need to have to think about everything. It needs to be instinctual. It needs to be automatic. It needs to be that you make decisions quick. Okay, so confidence is a result of ongoing, systematic, consistent practice, long obedience in the same direction, building and recalibrating, but not contracting. So what would you tell an agent or any salesperson that's scared to make cold calls? Here's what I would tell them. They're just people. At the end of the day, there is no such thing as rejection. Some people are interested in what you have and some people are not. So what? Keep on moving. That's what I tell them. For every 30 people you talk to, only 4.8 of those people will be remotely interested in what you have. So we got to go, I tell people, you got to kiss a lot of duds to find the studs. Okay. We got to go through a lot of people to find the good ones. If you knew how many people I have to go through in a week, how many speaking engagements I have, how many podcasts I have to do, how many YouTube things I got to do, how many Instagram posts. Why? Just to find people who are open and inviting to my message. Like it's a ridiculous amount of people. If I was a real estate agent, it's the same concept. I got to talk to a lot of people. Like you said, I got to interact with a lot of people because I don't know what your problem is, Ricky, until I talk to you. See, I don't know if you like your house. Don't like it. Don't like the master bedroom. Do like it. Don't like where your kids go to school. Don't like your crazy neighbor. Like I don't know what your problem is I can solve until you and I have interaction with each other, which is why I need so much frequency with you. My real estate agent calls me every day, by the way. He takes me to breakfast every Saturday morning. You know, he's been negotiating a 2.65 million dollar deal for me right now. He's probably made a lot of money off of me in his lifetime. So I'm a high priority to him. But here's the deal. He don't just do it with me. He does it with 24 to 25 other people. He's talking to us every day. Notice that frequency. We don't talk about real estate every conversation. We talk about life, success, kids, failure, marriage. We talk about all kinds of things. Every now and then we talk about real estate, but his frequency is so high with me. I can't in good conscience use anybody else but him. Right. Right. So he takes 24 people to breakfast every Saturday. No, I'm the only one he takes the breakfast. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I would be taking you to breakfast too, bro. I'm the number one breakfast guy on Saturday. So whenever I'm talking to an agent, I get, I get a lot about the cold calls, you know, like, you know, I can't get, I just can't seem to hit the dial button or pick the phone up or whatever. And my thing is, is just like you said, I got two things. One, I need to know why you want to be successful. And if this is the reason you want to be successful to provide for your family or whatever the case may be, then the fact that you won't continue and push through that little bit of uncomfortableness shows me that you have a little bit of selfishness to you. And this is a selfish act not to do something that you know is going to make you successful. That's my first thing. The second thing is, is your job is to filter through all the, all the people, all the population, your area. You have to filter them down to the people who love you and want to work with you forever. Just like you said, and it's a numbers game, you got to talk to all of them to figure out what their problems are and to get to the root, to see if there's a relationship and to see if there's something that you can help them with moving forward. So yeah, absolutely. So think about it this way. You're at A, that's where your current situation is in life. You're trying to get to B. B is some dominant focus you're trying to drive. Your desire to stay the same is either, is either greater than your desire to move there or your desire to move there is greater than your desire to stay the same. You can't have it both ways. When you pick up one in the stick, you pick up the other end. So when you think about this, what I'm thinking about for that cold calling is simple. When you're talking to people, there's choices and there's feelings. Every big time person in the world does not listen to their feelings. Nobody wants to pick up the phone and cold call people. But like you said, you got to make a choice. And my choice every day is to not listen to my feelings. It's to go out there and say, I'm a big time person. I'm a person of interest. People are counting on me to show up. My positive energy is going to be greater than any negative energy I face today. So I don't have a choice to listen to my feelings. It doesn't matter how I feel when people are wanting me to speak at a big event with 10,000 people. It doesn't matter if I feel good or not. They're out there waiting on me, right? So I got to fight through that. And I think a lot of agents get called up in their feelings and don't feel like prospecting today. I don't feel I'd rather go to the lake. I don't feel like calling people back. I don't want to talk to my past customers. Listen, here's a stat for you need to remember. Every transaction you do should be worth 5.7 referrals in the real estate world. That's almost six commissions off every deal you do. If you're, it sounds like to me, you're working your database, you're extracting those six referrals, but very few agents are. Why laziness? They don't call people back once they put them in a home. 98% of agents never call a customer back once they put them in a home. Yeah, that's interesting. And it's true. And that's cool because every time you say something, I'm like, man, that's kind of like what I say. Because what I say is, is every relationship you create with the prospect is worth 10 to 20 deals to you over the life of your career through repeat business referrals and referrals of referrals. You know, that's one that people don't think about. They get a referral and then they refer somebody to you while it came from the original prospect and the job that you did for them, you know, they referred, then you did a good job. They referred. And now every prospect could even be, if you think about it like that worth a hundred deals to you, you know, I think something else interesting and I wanted to get your thoughts on this. And that is I, the way that I coach in my philosophy is, is I don't care if this person in front of me wants to buy or sell something or not. I want to find out if they do. However, I'm not trying to force them into anything. I'm not trying to handle objections. I'm trying to literally listen to them. I want to know what, what might be best for them is an appointment is a listing is to go see property is to get pre-proved. However, that might not be. And I think a lot of training out there for real estate agents is training agents and putting them all in a box. This is what you say to every prospect. This is how you follow up with every prospect and every situation is different. So how can that be? And so I'm a real big on whether if this person doesn't want to buy or sell right now, I want the relationship with them because they will buy or sell at some point in the future. But so many, so many coaches are trying to just, you know, high pressure, high pressure, high pressure. Well, I spent time, you know, with Dr. Kevin Elko this past weekend who is Nick Saban's psychologist at the University of Alabama. And he said, when they lose, they lose for one reason, they lose connection. So they're big on connection to each other, they're big on units, they're big on, so this transfers to the, to the, to the selling process. Okay. When you have that connection with that buyer or that seller, even though they may not do it today, they have a connection to you, they're going to come back to you because you've worked hard to build that connection when we lose connection is when we lose deals. And when we feel like we're being pressure sold, or we're being pushed to do something, you're exactly right. Here's the deal. They're coming to you because they have a problem. That problem may be they don't like their current deal. They want a new deal, whatever. The timing of that problem, we don't know when the time is going to be right for them. That's why most sales happen between 7 and 15 touches, 80% of the time. So I'm big on connection. How do I connect with people? How do I text and video and follow up and solve a problem? They're connecting to a power source and that word power means a means or source for supplying energy. A real estate agent is a means or source for supplying energy. Now, what kind of energy are you supplying to people every day? Negative, short-sighted, worried, emotional. Listen, you can't help me control my emotions if you're emotional. And that's the purpose of a lot of real estate agent. Like I'm paying you to stay calm so I can get emotional. You're dealing with somebody's money and their memories, guys. And when you deal with people's money and their memories, they're going to get emotional. Your job is to stay calm, to negotiate, to regulate emotion, to market like crazy. That's your job. That's why you're making the big money. I love it, man. That's me, man. I'm really calm and cool and collected. I don't care if the deal goes through. I'm just trying to do my best to help it go through. But at the end of the day, it's out of my hands. It's going to happen or it's not. This buyer wants to buy. This seller wants to sell. It's going to happen or isn't going to happen. Yeah. Listen, that's a great place to be because if you were representing me, I wouldn't feel that pressure. Like, I don't feel pressure to do this big deal with my real estate agent. He actually come to me and said, look, if you can lease it and it's a better deal with the option to purchase in the future, I'm okay with that. Like, he's willing to forego a big commission for what's best for me, which is why he would be my agent forever. It's not about one deal. It's about the 30 or 40 deals we're going to do. It's about the millions of dollars of real estate we're going to buy together. That's what it's about. And too many people, you mentioned the word earlier, and I wrote it down. And this wanted fast economy. Listen, I call that cotton candy. People want cotton candy. It tastes good for a second, but it goes away real fast, right? And we live in such a cotton candy society. I want to make phone calls today and sell a bunch of houses tomorrow. They don't understand. We always reap what we sow more than we sowed it for longer than it was sown. I can't tell you when the harvest is coming in, Ricky. All I can tell you is I'm going to work that system, baby. I'm going to chop that wood every day, right? That's what I'm going to do. And then at some point, I'm going to wake up and have a huge day. So this guy I'm coaching right now, I got him to, he did 22 deals this month, which is the most deals he's ever done. And in some years, he's never made more than 80,000. He made 88,000 this month. That's a real estate agent that I'm coaching. Okay. And my point is, if you work the system, it's going to pay off. It may take us a little bit of time, but when it pays off, you're going to make more money than you've ever made. You're going to be doing things you've never done before. Okay. That's the concept. Long obedience in the same direction. It's got like the compound effect, right? Yes. It is the compound effect. I can't tell you when it's going to happen. I just know, just remember most studies say hours of practice to master something. And I believe that the only way to speed that up is by who's coaching you. You know, if I was a real estate agent today and I said, look, how do I get to 100 deals? I'd say call Ricky because Ricky's got to 100 deals instead of taking 20 years to figure this out. Let's figure it out in two or three years, right? Like that's a person needs a coach in their life because they're going to accelerate. Yeah. Yeah. So you did, you did 41 speaking engagements in a day, right? I did. Yes. And there was like a world record or something like that? Well, the reason we did that is because it's based on a premise. If you want to cheapen anything, just make it common. That week is rare. It's valuable. So we're sitting around the office and I'm like, how do I get more attention for our brand? What can we do that's unique? How do we separate ourselves from everybody else? And the guy on my team back in those days said, why don't you break the world record for most speaking engagements? And I said, well, what is the world record? He said, well, there was a dude that spoke for 16 straight hours. And I said, okay, what can we do? And he said, why don't we do 40 speaking engagements in a day? And I said, book it. Let's go. So we went to businesses and one market. We spoke to those businesses. We set up for me to come in and speak to those businesses. And I went from business to business to business to business. I did these speaking engagements. And at the very end of the day, I'm like, let's do one more. Let's get 41 in. But here's what I learned, Ricky. We could have done 80. If we would have did a better job planning, I got halfway through the day and I'm like, we could have done 80 of these, man. 40 was nothing, right? We went from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. And what we wanted to do is say, this is something that can be done. If you just think a little bit bigger, almost everything's possible, man. If you just think a little bit bigger. Oh, that's one reason when I set goals and when I'm coaching my agents, you know, let's set the goal. Let's let this goal motivate us, right? Yeah. Let's not become attached to it so much. Let's not focus on the results. Let's put the work in. Let's be more focused on our daily actions. And it's like, I don't wake up January 1st and say, I'm going to sell 100 deals this year. You know, I work as hard as I can and then 100 deals is what comes out the other side. If I did 50 this year, I would be just as happy because I know I put the work in, you know, that's what happened from the work that I put in. You know, so it absolutely, you can't be tied to the result because you can also limit yourself. You can also limit yourself. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's process. You work focus on the process. You focus on every day. Listen, most agents, I try to get agents prospecting a minimum of two hours a day on nothing but new money. And I'd say, how many of you think you need to prospect two hours a day on nothing but new money? But here's my rule. We cannot do anything that occurred during the past during that two hours. That means if you sold a contract last week, there's something going on, we can't deal with it. We can't work on schedule. We can't do this. It's only new money two hours a day every day that you're at the office. And every agent in America tells me, I'm in. I got to do it. How many of you think actually go do that? And that's the thing too I like to do because I like to try to set up a situation where it's realistic as well. So my thing is a three by three. That's my deal. I want you to do three hours, three days a week. Monday through Wednesday, if you have to show property Tuesday, you miss it. You can make up one of those days on Thursday or Friday, but you're getting nine hours in a week of prospecting, new prospecting, new money. And yeah, I mean, two hours a day, if you did two hours a day, if you literally did an hour and did it every single day, you would succeed at the highest levels. It might take a couple years to get there, but it's the consistency of it. Did you ever read the Slide Edge? No, I've heard of it, but I've not read it. You need to. That's my favorite book of all time, Jeff Olson. It's real similar to the Compound Effect. However, the way he articulates it is amazing. You really need to get into that because it sounds like that book is right on the same level with what you're saying, man. That's what you need to do for sure. How was it 10-8? So when did you speak at 10-X? I spoke at 10-X too in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay last year. It was a game-changing experience for me. It opened me up to an international market. We signed up more customers in an hour than I'd signed up sometimes in a year. But more than anything, it validated me in a way. Once you say you've spoken at 10-X to 10,000 people, there's not many stages you can't get on. And so somebody asked me the other day how much money I had made because of 10-X. And I said maybe a million more dollars. I mean, it's a significant amount of money. And I'm still getting requests from people that saw me at 10-X. And I'm still getting people that want me to do things as a result of 10-X. So it was truly a multiplier for me. And more than anything, Ricky, just to be honest with you, I needed to validate my own self to myself that I was good as good as those other people. No different than speaking a few weeks ago at an event where some of the top real estate people were there. Tom Ferry was there. And some of those top people, I needed to speak on those stages for people to go, that dude's good, right? Like, he's as good as they are, if not better than those. And I'm not saying it from an arrogant standpoint. I'm saying it from, I've been doing this my whole life. I needed some bigger stages to validate and prove that I can do it on a national and international level. And I felt like, for me personally, 10-X was that. How many speaking gigs have you done in your career? I mean, I'm speaking between 100 and 200 times a year right now. And it's everything from small groups to big groups. I mean, in my career, I mean, I've spoken a lot. That's my number one strategy, to be honest with you. I'm a coach. So I love live audiences. And it doesn't matter to me if it's 15 people or 5,000 people. Like, I love groups of people. So if you say, what's your number one strategy coach to build something big, to get new customers? I tell you, just put me on stage in front of people. Just give me speaking at as many things as you can. And we'll generate a bunch of business, a bunch of leads, a bunch of new opportunity. That's my number one strategy. Yeah, yeah. You know, are you a big Gary Vee fan? I like Gary Vee, yes. Yeah, he pretty much inspired me to go free with my coaching program. Since then has been incredible growth and, you know, the money from the books and the speaking and affiliates has been astronomical. I mean, growing like crazy ever since I flipped that switch. And it's like I had to let go, you know. I wanted to hold back, you know, the phone scripts and this little strategy, this little strategy. I wanted to hold all that back so they'd have something to pay for and went and it took a lot. And when I just finally just said, you know what, I just got to just let it go and have faith and everything changed for me, you know. And so, man, I just got back from Brazil. I was the keynote at R4 for Remax in Brazil. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was a thousand Remax agents. It was the biggest stage I've been on so far. And it was just incredible, man. It was just incredible, told my story and everything. I've been all over the country this year already speaking. And I got about 10 more on the books coming up. So was 10X your biggest stage so far? It has been my biggest stage, yeah. And, you know, I speak at different conferences at different levels, but 10X was the biggest, most intense audience that I've spoken from because those people are rabid, man. I mean, they're hungry, right? Yeah, yeah. That's great. Guard on people, man. I mean, they're crazy and in a good way, crazy. But I was speaking, you know, I signed a national contract with Remax last year. I did 30. I want to say I signed on to do 35 events for Remax in a two-year period. And I did 30 of those last year. But those were local sales rallies. What we should do is you and I should go on a Remax tour together and finish that puppy off. I think I've got five or six engagements left with them. Let me know. I'll go and I'll be anywhere at any time. Yeah, absolutely. But I love this because I'm a Remax guy. So I know it just adds to the fuel. No, no, I'm going to go back to them and tell them that you and I should do this together because I've still got five or six left on my deal. And they're trying to find the right ones for me to speak at. Oh, perfect, man. I'm totally down for that. Another person I was wondering if you knew, you know Caleb Maddox? I did. I saw this little cat. Yeah, yeah. Have you met him? I have not met him. No. Yeah. You know, he just did the Apex for Kids program and it's a self-development program for kids. He's a kid, you know, saying he's 17 years old. Oh, yeah. And he's incredible, man. And I went down to St. Petersburg and hung out with him for a little while. But I saw that you have a program for kids. I do. You know, I took 10 years off from working with kids because I started working with adults. But my heart, my conscious kept telling me, don't waste those 10 years of working with kids, man. You got to do something for kids. You got it. So what I did is I went back and I built an online interactive academy that tackles confidence, bounce back, how to sell everything I taught that decade plus what I learned the next decade. And we put it into an online interactive academy for kids. So we're now selling that to individuals, parents are buying it for their kids. So they can watch it in short segments. Also school systems are buying it. My daughter's school uses it for sixth to ninth graders. A lot of the public schools in our county are using it. All the alternative schools where kids are having behavior problems are using it. So now I'm now out there speaking at big kids conferences or innovative school conferences to leaders, superintendents, directors of schools, curriculum directors. We're trying to sell this product and push it out to the market. So that's a big thing that's very close to my heart called the greatness factor for kids. Is it videos of you talking? It's videos of me breaking concepts down with a workbook. But what we're going to do is bring in kids. And I'm able to use my daughter who's six years old and start breaking it down for age specific. So this content is specific for six to eight year olds, this year over this. We also do events at the greatness factory and on confidence, emotional toughness, success readiness. So we're about to roll out a three part series in the summer where parents can bring their kids to me and let me work with them on confidence, emotional toughness, success readiness. Things that I feel like are getting missed in the school system because they're teaching so much to the test. They were really neglecting the emotional intelligence piece. And that's the part they need the most. My daughter needs emotional regulation. She needs to know how to handle when she doesn't get away. She needs to know how to play nice with other people because she's an only child. So, you know, when I Google, this is a funny story. The other day my daughter got emotional on the weekend playing with the other kids in the subdivision and she came home and said the other kids were being mean to her. And that we needed to go talk to those other kids, right? And I'm like, well, sweetheart, what did you do to contribute to this, right? Because I know you did something to contribute. She's like, no, daddy, I didn't do anything. It was those other kids. And so I go upstairs in my office and I Google, coaching for kids, middle Tennessee, emotional toughness. And guess who came up, Ricky? Oh, Coach Burke was number one. You buddy, you. The whole page was Coach Michael Burke, Coach Michael Burke. And I told my wife, I'm like, oh my God, I'm supposedly the number one expert. I need help with my daughter. Okay, I need somebody to help coach her. So it was just this comical experience. But I immediately knew there's a real opportunity here. Like if I'm the number one guy, there's a real opportunity because that's telling me nobody else is doing it, man. Nobody else is out there because I didn't pay for any of those ads. That was just organic Google growth just by putting out the stuff that I put out. Yeah, that's why I talked to Caleb and that's why he did it. Because that was a huge need. I think you guys might have put together, you know, somewhere along the same time or something. But there was no self development for specifically for children, you know. And it is literally the reason why he is where he is. When he was, I don't know how old he was, you know, five, six, seven, something like that. One of his friends, you know, had some money and he said, how'd you get that? He said, well, I'll do chores around the house. He went back to his dad and he said, dad, I want to do some chores. I want to get money. His dad, listen to this. His dad said, no, what I want you to do is read these self development books. And for every book that you read and write a report on, I'll give you $20. I love it. And that put him to where, like by like nine, he had a million views on YouTube or something. And then he's written nine books, you know, already 17 years old. And now he's, you know, doing deals with Dean Graziani and Tony Robbins. This is crazy, man. So that's literally what helped him was the self development as a child. And so he put together this program so that, man, out of everything that you're doing and everything that I've seen, I think that's the most impressive to me that you're doing is the program for the kids because that's going to help, you know, the generation coming up. I mean, these children are going to be 25, 35, 45 and 10, 15, 20 years. And they're going to be the future of our, you know, of our country, of our world. So I commend you for that, man. I can't say enough about how cool I think that is. I'm trying to build things that don't go to zero. And when you think about that, it's a lot of stuff we do goes to zero. Means you got to sell it. Then at some point you got to sell it again. Then you got to sell it again. What I'm trying to do at this point in my life are build things that perpetuate and they keep going and they keep helping people. You know, if you study Rockefeller and JP Morgan and Vanderbilt and all those guys, they built things that are still perpetuating to this day. And Nashville is Vanderbilt University. You see what I'm saying? They still continue to go. So I'm big at this point in my life. How do I build something that doesn't go to zero? How do I build something that doesn't stop? How do I build something that keeps going bigger than me? It's why these greatness factories are important. We're looking at building more of these or licensing these around the country. Those are big deals that hopefully don't go to zero. So you're going to franchise the greatness factory? The concept is we're about to open a new one. We're working on this big space that I'm working on right now that would have a gym, meditation spot, training facility, podcast studios, offices, permanent offices for rent, shared office space. And it's one hub. So imagine in your market, this is where everybody goes. This is where all the action is. It's like a country club for your business. It's where all the action is happening. That's the concept of the greatness factory. If we can get this one going, then I think we can license it or franchise it in other markets. So that's what you have there. You have a podcast room and a video room and a meditation room. I built this one out while I was building the other one. So this was supposed to be a temporary space. I built it out so cool. I don't want to leave it now. But this was supposed to be a temporary space that we were going to stay for a period of time. We're going to build a new greatness factory and it's going to have all of those things in it. Okay. Since then, we were looking at a building. Instead of building it, we have a building that we think could be the perfect fit for it in a better location. So we're trying to negotiate that deal to put it over there. I would turn this into the Michael Burt Institute of Confidence, Emotional Toughness, and Success Readiness for Kids. Oh, I like that. Yes. I'm all about the kids. Yeah. And that'd be a feeder system to the greatness factor for kids is this would be a very specific place. You bring kids for confidence, emotional toughness, and success readiness. And eventually, the greatness factor for kids will be a brick and mortar school. It'll be a real school that you can send your kids to. Man, that is incredible. Okay. So I'm going to ask you a couple of cliche questions here just because I'm curious. Favorite book? Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Change my whole life at 18 years old. It ain't even close compared to the impact that book had on me. I read it at 18 and it changed my whole life. Yeah. Did you read Ten X-Roll? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Cardone and I have been friends for a number of years. I've spoken. I spoke at the very first. Most people don't know this. The original Ten X event, Riviera Maya, Mexico, there was a whopping 75 people there. Nice. That was in 2012, I think. Wow. Interesting. So yeah, Ten X-Roll, that was when I was down and out and I read it. You know, and I was, I mean, I was already a motivated person. You know, I didn't need motivation, but it definitely put me on another level though, you know? There's no way you can hang around Cardone. I was just with him last week, two weeks ago in Miami. I spent two hours with him in his office. And we talked about this concept of going to zero. There's no way you can spend time with a guy like him and I think way bigger. You always feel like, I tell him, I'm like, are you trying to depress me? Because every time I'm with you, I feel like I'm playing so small, man. Yeah. Yeah. He's just a, he's just a big thinker, like literally. He has thought himself into these situations. You know, he kind of does it reverse. He's like, how can I get to the end? And then I'll figure out how to, how to get it, how to make it happen. Yeah, absolutely. Um, what's, what's the most, what's your, what's your, what, what are you most proud of? Like out of all your accomplishments here, what are you most proud of? What's your most, you know, thing that you're most proud of? I'm very proud of building a championship program at Riverdale, of winning the first championship in the school's history, of building a dynasty there, went on to win seven of the next, you know, 10 championships. I think that was a big moment for me. I'm proud of helping a number of people we help. And I'm, you know, I'm kind of proud of the, the dad and husband that I, that I've become, you know, and that's something I got to work at every day, man. If I'm not where I want to be, but thank God, I'm not where I used to be. And I think we're doing good work in the world. I really think we're doing good, authentic work. We're not just trying to sell people things. We're really trying to transform people's lives. And so I'm proud of the team that we're building, the, the partnerships we're building. So there's a lot of things to be grateful for at this point. Oh man, that's, that's incredible. Your book is the newest one person of interest. Is that your latest one? It's called inside the mind of a monster. Okay. This is the newest one that's out. And this is basically for years people were asking me, like, tell me about your mindset. Tell me, like, how do you attack a day? Tell me, how do you spend your weekends? Tell me, how do you get so much done? So finally I just said, man, what you really want to do is go inside my brain and let me just go, let me just tell you. So I'm going to show you how I attack a day, how I map it out, how I do it. It's got my sales systems in there, my follow-up systems. It's got my whole mindset, like, like I tell my staff, read this and I'm like, this, you want to know how I think? This is it, man. This goes inside my mind. And the cool thing is my wife has a new book out called living with a monster. And that's about how you live with an obsessed person. And she's got, she's got such a big concept that, that concept is a tremendous. So here's her book. This is her book that's out right now, living with a monster. Okay. And that's out? Yeah. This one is out too. Oh, perfect. Both of these in my website. And she's doing her own events. She's doing her own conferences. She's doing her own podcast. So she's really hit a new stride in her life. And I'm very proud of what she's doing. But, but though, so the beauty of those two books is one shows you how to be the monster or think one shows you how to live with the monster. So it's a pretty good. I love it, dude. I love it, man. Cause I've got a wife that lives with a monster myself. I know. What is your website, by the way? Go to coachbert.com. B-U-R-T is in tigercoachbert.com. Okay. Everything is there. Coachbert.com. Your basketball team, did they continue to win after you left? They have won, yes. They have continued to win. They did not win it this year. They've got some, they had a new coach come in. They didn't make it to the championship this year. But for the next seven or eight years after I left, they continue to dominate. Yeah. And they're one of the top five teams in Tennessee. They're typically one of the number one teams, typically in the top five in the United States. And before that, they never won a championship. Thirty years of bad basketball, Ricky. Thirty years of bad news bears, man. Thirty years that just couldn't win, couldn't figure it out. And like I said, that's why it took me 10 years. Took me 10 years to get that thing going. So in year three, after year three, I never won less than 25 games, I think, something like that. And then we finally won a championship in my ninth or 10th year. So when you come in to a basketball team like that, you can't, you're not recruiting, right? No, I had to take players. You have to take what you have. And you have to work around a philosophy, basically. And everybody has to be on board. And they have to operate as a team. I mean, how do you get a team? You cannot pick the players and bring them to a level of championship. Well, that's really where the concept of the greatness factor came from, is when mom and dads would drop their daughters off to me at 14, they all said the same thing. My daughter's got a lot of potential. She just needs something. What she needs was structure, confidence, discipline, accountability, bounce back. And I said, thank you for dropping your daughter off at the greatness factor, because we manufacture greatness. And in four years, I could take those kids, Ricky, and I could turn them into machines, man. And in four years, we just pumped those players out because we had a system of greatness. And I've tried to replicate that with my coaching business now. So you had a system of this is when we practice. This is when you do this. This is when you study. This is here. This is here. Did you have nutrition? We had it all. We had a full-time strength conditioning coach, nutrition. We had a life after basketball program, success academies, leadership camps. Like we did it right, man. Many colleges would come watch how we did it to say, we need to do it like you're doing it because it was such a machine. I just treated it as if I was coaching an NBA, man. You got to make the big time where you are. Every day, man, you feel like I have a million subscribers. I'm on the 10x stage. Every time I speak to 15 people, I mean, yeah. Exactly. And here's the deal. You are. You know, you're going to be on those places. You go there first in your mind before you go there in your body. So before I won a championship ring, I had this big championship ring where as a reminder, and I used to go to coaches that had championship ring and say, man, can I just put that on and wear it, see what it feels like? Because one of these days, I'm going to have one of those, man. And one of these days, I'm going to do this. And one of these days, I'm going to have my own jet. One of these days, I'm going to have my own deal. And I began to just kind of just go there in my mind before I went there in my body. Let me ask you something. As you're thinking about what you want to do, okay, you want to do this. You want the ring. You want this. You want that. Is that what drives your happiness? Was there a moment where you were not where you wanted to be and you were frustrated, slash unhappy? Because you weren't where you wanted to be? I think most people that try to get to the level I want to go to, they stay in a constant state of gratitude and frustration. Listen, I'm incredibly grateful for where I am today. I am happy. I have a lot of joy. You know, what bothers me is I know in comparison to my potential, what I'm capable of. That's where the frustration comes in. The gap between where I am versus where I think I could be. And I think that's a good thing. That's a good thing. It fuels you, motivates you, gets you excited, gets you up in the morning, keeps the engine burning. Frustration can be used as fuel. It doesn't have to be a negative thing. It can be used as fuel. Big time people use fear as fuel and they use frustration as fuel. I like it. I like it. So where can everybody find you? Where do you want them to follow you? What do you want them to do? All right. I want them, I'm big on Instagram right now. They can follow me at Michael Burt. I do spell it E-A-L-M-I-C-H-E-A-L which is a little bit different. YouTube, I put out thousands of videos on YouTube. Obviously, I think people need to build an affinity with me and see who I am, see if they believe in me, see if we line up philosophically on our message. But I coach 700 to 1,000 people a month through my monster producer program and they get me. They're not getting somebody else. They didn't sign up for me at an event and then they get my cousin. I'm the one coaching all these people and the way I've done it is through video. I teach it live. We simulcast it all over the world. We do a Monday accountability session. That's with me. So although I've grown significantly, I design this program for every person. I'm their coach. Nobody else is their coach. I'm their coach. So that's a unique thing in comparison to most coaching programs. I do the same thing. There is no other person as zero to diamond but Ricky Caruth. Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to do some more things with you, man. And I think this remix thing could be some potential because I got, like I said, five or six things left with them. And so plus me and Dr. Elcor are going to come through Alabama. Are you here in Alabama? Yeah. Okay, so Dr. Elcor working on this work because he's very popular in Alabama because of his relationship with Savin. So we're looking at certain cities. We're going to come in and do a one or two day deal. So maybe we can partner with you and maybe the day before you and I do something. We'll work it out. But I do think you've lived a remarkable life. You're a young guy but you've accomplished some big things. So I'm also proud of you, man. Thank you so much, man. And yeah, I would be honored to do something with you. And if we did the remix thing, it would be big because I've kind of built a brand with the remix agent. So it would draw a crowd. So cool, man. I love it. A little big thanks coming from me and you, bro. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed this. Absolutely, man. Talk to you soon.