Unlock Your Prey Drive
As a former championship basketball coach and now motivational speaker, Micheal Burt has helped thousands of professionals discover a hidden power he calls the “prey drive.”

All animals have instinctual behaviors that help them live and thrive in their environments. Lions and other big cats have a fantastic ability to camouflage themselves and stalk their prey, allowing them to go undetected until just the right moment. Raptors like eagles and hawks have incredible eyesight and speed to home in on their fast-moving targets, and wolves utilize a pack mentality to improve their odds of tracking and hunting their next meal.
Humans, like other animals, have instinctual behaviors, too—we just don’t often put them to good use. Coach Micheal Burt has spent decades in both the sports and business worlds helping people discover innate abilities that can help them stimulate action and drive success. Here you’ll learn how Coach Burt defines what he calls the “prey drive,” how he helps people unleash it from within, and how they use it to advance their businesses.
The origins of prey drive
Burt began his coaching career as a women’s basketball coach, winning his first championship game that same year. “I became a deep disciple of Stephen Covey and his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Burt says. “I used his methodology to develop my own coaching style that targeted my players’ hearts and spirits, not just their bodies and minds.”
Over the next few years, a lot of people began to take notice of Burt’s ability to foster success for his team, and they wanted to know how he did it. He eventually retired from athletics at just thirty-one and started his Monster Producer coaching program to help sales-based businesses and professionals grow exponentially.
The key to all this growth? The prey drive, which Burt defines as “an instinct to see something with the eyes or in the mind and have the persistence and intensity to pursue it.” In the case of business, he explains that the prey in prey drive can be a goal you envision for yourself, something you need to prove, or internal or external competition. But no matter what your prey is, this instinct isn’t necessarily something that you can turn on once and let run—it must first be activated in one of five key ways.

The five activators
Prey drive may be instinctive, but for most people it lies dormant waiting to be unlocked. Without the activation process, you won’t have the energy necessary to sustain success, regardless of how you run your business.
There are a few different factors that can help with tapping into your prey drive, and it might take some trial and error to discover which of these works best for you.
Competition
The most obvious activator of prey drive, competition is the fuel that lights a fire in most predators. The fight for survival is a very powerful instinct and one of the most common ways individuals, especially entrepreneurs and business leaders, can activate their drive to pursue success.
Fear of loss
Like competition, losing out on an opportunity, be it financial or status related, is another crucial motivator that can activate one’s prey drive. “I enjoy the way of life I have, I’ve worked hard for twenty-eight years to build it, and I want to do everything I can to keep it,” Burt says. “So, what do I do to protect that? I wake up and sell, follow up, create, and manifest because I don’t want to lose it.” This fear of losing your way of life or a sense of comfort you’ve grown accustomed to can be an incredibly influential force in kicking your prey drive into full gear.
Exposure
If people can’t see you, they don’t know you exist and you’ll miss out on valuable opportunities. No matter what industry you’re in, you need to position yourself in front of other highly motivated individuals, such as people in positions of power. Make sure you are consistently putting yourself out there, be it through attending networking events, marketing yourself and your business, or educating yourself on the opportunities available to you.
Environment
It’s no secret that your environment and the people you surround yourself with can have a huge impact on your morale and motivation. As an organizational leader or entrepreneur, it’s critical to foster an environment that is highly energized and emphasizes progress and growth, not stagnation.
Embarrassment
The final activator of prey drive is the feeling of how others might perceive you if you don’t succeed, but, as Burt notes, it’s not always that simple. “I use embarrassment a little differently than other people do,” he says. “I want you to look at where you are in comparison to what you’re capable of. You might find that you’re playing so small.” No one wants to be perceived as mediocre by their competition or the people who mean the most to them. So this type of embarrassment often comes from within and the feeling that you’re not living up to your full potential.

The value of follow-up
Prey drive is not a “set it and forget it” mentality; once it’s activated, it must be activated again and again to stay turned on. “High performers know how to activate their own prey drive,” Burt says. “When I wake up in the morning and my prey drive isn’t activated, there are certain things I do to flip the switch. It could be what I watch, who I listen to, or how I exercise.” For those who aren’t as well versed in the activation process, Burt’s coaching methods are aimed at helping individuals find what motivates them and tap into that motivation consistently every single day.
To keep your prey drive active, you must exemplify persistence and intensity—the other two critical components of Burt’s method. In his book Million Dollar Follow Up, Burt discusses the fact that humans are easily excited by nature. The problem comes from a lack of follow-through once that initial excitement wears off and the subsequent feelings of guilt about not following through. It’s a vicious cycle that Burt often sees while coaching.
Whether in sports or business, the motivation a coach can provide is a key to winning. “Most people lack the ability to be persistent and see their goal through to its logical conclusion without the help of another person,” he says. Burt’s programs—Monster Growth Online Academy, Monster Producer, Coaching Accelerator, and Executive Coaching—are designed to create structure, foster accountability, and drive performance, all through the activation of prey drive.
For more information, visit coachburt.com.
TAKE ACTION: Find what prey drive activator resonates with you. Challenge yourself to tap into that motivation every day to help you achieve the goals you’ve set for your business.
