How Coaching Taught Him Life’s Biggest Lessons

Coaching Golf and Returning to the Game 0:00

Golf has been something my wife and I... Women's golf, right? No, no. You're coaching men's and women? We have no women on the team. We have 16 guys. 16 guys. Okay. At the high school? At the high school. The call came in, hey, the coach retired, like, would you consider doing it? So I'm like, August 1st to October 1st, I can do that. I can be outside every day, coach from the golf cart, like, I can do that. We had six kids. signed up, and he's like, it's going to be a small team. Well, 16 guys showed up.

I recruited some... You didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Galovly, and on Out of the System, hosted by Doctor Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding healthcare entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels, and builders who are creating bold, profitable patient center practices and doing it their way. What are you coaching these days? Golf. You're coaching golf. Coaching golf for? So for Chicago Christian. Chicago Christian. Yeah, purple and gold.

So yeah, it's perfect. So I started coaching when I was 16 years old. You remember this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started coaching when I was 16. I was coaching the youth team at our church. And I did that for like 20 years. But then in 1998, I applied to coach freshman basketball at the high school. And I did that for six years, then took time off to coach Bethany, my oldest. I did. I coached basketball. I coached the club team she was on for 10 years. And when she graduated from high school.

My buddy is the varsity coach. He graduated two years ahead of me. He's like, okay, Bethany's graduated, coming back. So then I coached sophomores for six years. And last June, I'm like, I'm done. I'm done with the like grind. Because the parents are the worst. It's not the kids. It's the parents of the giant pain in the ass, right? I have a friend of mine who's won 20 championships. in seventh and eighth grade football in Washington DC. Coach, he's got like 20 guys that have played in the NFL. And he had to stop because the parents fucking drove him nuts.

All right. So there are good parents, but there are parents that drive you absolutely batshit crazy. Here's where I made my decision. So you've lived in Chicago. You know what this is like. It's January 15. It's 20 degrees on the bus and the heat's not working. A yellow school bus on a Tuesday night, we're up in Elgin, got to go all the way back to Payless, right? You know how long that is. That's a long answer. Okay. Heat's not working. There's two athletes. Every other kid went home with their parents, two athletes in the back of the bus.

There's no heat. It's 10 o'clock, 10.30. We pull into school. One of the kids' parents doesn't show up. So I got to wait in the cold with this kid for 15 more minutes. I get home at 1130. I told Earley and I said, I'm done. Like, I don't need this anymore. It was this. I love coaching. You know this about me. I love coaching. I love coaching these kids. That's just in my blood. It got to the point, Matt, where I couldn't recover. I couldn't recover from wins. I couldn't recover from losses. Like, it was hard for me to recover.

I'm like, OK, sucking the life out of me. So I went through basketball camp in June, because basketball's not just a winter sport, all of June. And I told my staff, I'm like, hey, I'm out. So I was retired a whole nine months when the call came, hey, we have an opening to coach golf. Golf has been something my wife and I- Women's golf, right? No, no. You're coaching men's and women? We have no women on the team. We have 16 guys. 16 guys. Okay. At the high school? At the high school. The call came in, hey, the coach retired, like, would you consider doing it?

So I'm like, August 1st to October 1st, I can do that. I can be outside every day, coach from the golf cart, like, I can do that. We had six kids. signed up and he's like, it's going to be a small team. Well, 16 guys showed up. I recruited some basketball players to come in. I'm like, you're not doing anything in the fall. You're playing golf. You're playing golf. You're playing golf. We ended up with 16 guys. So I had a massive squad. It was so much fun. It was re-energizing.

From Marketing to Purpose-Driven Coaching 4:17

I still get to do what I get to do. It's easier than basketball. It's way easier than basketball. It's way different. It's not like you're drawing a place. There's no place to draw. But what you got to do is you got to drive around in a golf cart. You got to have water. You got to have a first aid kit. You have to have extra balls that you're finding when you're going in the golf cart. You throw top flights and, you know, vice into your bag. You're throwing golf balls out to the kids. You got tees in your bag because they lose their tees.

It's totally a babysitting job. However, it's the same thing. You're still motivating them. You're still getting them mentally. You've golfed for all your life. Golf is such a mental game. So these kids don't have the mental skills yet and they certainly don't have the physical skills. So we spend as much time on the physical and the mental skills, but it's the same thing as coaching basketball. It's developing relationships. These guys, they're 15, 16, 17 years old. I love working with that group.

They're fun to be around. I don't feel 55 when I'm with them. 55, huh? Yeah. Well, I'm younger than you. Rub it in. Right. I look younger. There's just something about being around those kids that makes you feel young and makes you feel like this is what I'm supposed to do. So, you know, I mean, you know my wife, Arlene's like, when I got the call, she's like, you got to do it. Yeah, of course. She was like, you just have to do this. So yeah, I retired a whole nine months. Way to go. Yeah. Fantastic.

Yeah. It's like travel the world. Can't stay out. Can't stay out. So the joke was, the joke was, you remember my buddy Justin worked for us, right? Justin's like, so, well, I'll look forward to the facts that says I'm back. Yeah. So he was like, yeah, I told you, I told you so. Yeah, there you go. Well, I'm sitting here with Bob Regnerus. Bob, tell everybody who you are, what you do. I know it's kind of multivariate, aside from being a legendary coach. And for the record, everybody who was watching and listening, Bob and I have known each other almost 20 years.

Yeah, over 20 years. We were in a mastermind together in Bill Glaser. We had a business together. We helped. We went through like crisis of life together. You were 39, I was 41, 42. So Bob and I have had a long friendship and relationship. So I think you're all going to really enjoy this because Bob is one of the most kind-hearted, compassionate, beautiful men that I've ever met in my life. Does this sound beautiful? I'm just thinking more like kind. And we share a kindred spirit of love and disdain for the Chicago White Sox.

Right now, it's disdain. It's disdain. And here we sit at the time of this recording. The Chicago Cubs are in the playoffs. And, like, I'm actually not bothered by it. No, I'm not bothered. I'm happy for the Cub fans. My brother Dan's excited. I bet he is. Yeah. I bet Dan is just thrilled. And he's at my house right now. Anyway, so tell everybody, what do you do? What's kind of your thing if you were to say, this is Bob Rignaris? Yeah, first and foremost, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a coach. I just never take off the coach's hat.

You love coaching people. I love coaching. Yeah, you love getting the most out of people. I love coaching. The very favorite part of running a marketing agency or being a Facebook ads consultant, I've written books, I've speak. I've done all that stuff. The favorite thing is the interaction and relationship with the clients. It's always been that. So these days, I am a full-time coach. And it's really hard to explain coaching to people that don't understand it. It's like, oh, you're a life coach or you're an executive coach.

I help people with their purpose. I help people be in alignment with who they are. The favorite thing that I hear from clients, people that I work with, is like, Bob, thank you for helping me remember who I really am. That's what I do. That is beautiful. That's really what I do, Matt. And it's hard to explain to somebody on the golf course. Like, you're playing with a group of guys and they're like, hey, Bob, what do you do? And if I say, Matt, good to meet you, I help people remember who they are.

They're like, what the hell are you talking about? Well, because most people are completely out of touch with who they are. They're disconnected. Yeah. They're disconnected. So, you know, I talk about purpose, I talk about fulfillment, but in essence, Matt, All my career in marketing, I've been in marketing for, gosh, what, 25 years? Yeah, you've written a couple of books, you've marketed a couple of books. Yeah, I have the highest rated Facebook ad book on Amazon. I wrote it with Perry Marshall, our buddy.

And oh, by the way, when you write a book with Perry Marshall, you actually write the book and Perry writes the forward. Yeah, that's how that works. Yeah, I knew that's how that works. Um, so like, it's just interesting. Like, um, I mean, I, I got in Facebook ads after kind of you, you started working for Perry or maybe moved away. I don't know at the time. No, so I had worked with you and then we ended what we were doing. I remember picked up the phone and I said, I sent Perry an email. I said, Gotta feed my family you got anything and you called me back.

He's like well well well for those of you don't know Perry Marshall is the He is one of the top authors on paid ads Google AdWords Facebook all of it. He's brilliant. He's good personal friend of ours great friend a great friend and Yeah, then I started selling for Perry and yeah, that's how I made money until I started the ED clinics Yeah, so oh yeah, and then you started doing stuff with Perry and I've been doing stuff with Perry since about 2012. I show up at roundtable meetings and Perry just keeps inviting me.

I was in roundtable. One of the people that you and I hired became one of my great friends, a business partner, Brandon Boyd. Brandon and I have been working together since 2016. We still own a video marketing agency. We do long form video for consultants, service businesses, things like that. So I still do all that. And it's like, I've forgotten more about marketing than most people know. I'll just say that, right? I've just been in it so long. But it doesn't light me up. What lights me up is helping people.

The part that I love about storytelling, about marketing, is I get to know who the person really is, and we show the best side of them. We tell a story about them. And when somebody sees a video where we've captured their story, they light up. And when that story connects with the audience, that's my favorite thing in the world. And so when I do that one-on-one with a client now, I focus a lot on coaching. My mom passed away in 2023. And that was like a moment. My mom passed a month before I was speaking at Perry's AI event.

So I had an agreement to speak at Perry's event. It was May of 2023. It was an AI conference. And Perry wanted me to talk about storytelling. My mom passed and late April, I said, Perry, I am not talking about storytelling. I said, I'm going to talk about what really matters. And he's like, go for it. I talked about connection. I talked about humanity. I talked about all these things. And I had this line. this line of people, Matt, that were coming up, they were crying. They were like, somebody finally understands what I'm talking about.

You gave me words to things that I have been trying to tell my partner, to tell my spouse. They were in tears. I'm like, okay, that was a catalyst for me. And at the very same event, I got reconnected with a guy, his name is Christian, who trains coaches. And you and I, you and I both were coached and were very good friends with Rob Berkley. Passed away a number of years ago, way too soon. But really one of the sadder days of my life. It was. When I found out that he had stomach cancer and then like, and he was gone within a year?

With, in less than a year. Less than a year. Yeah, I mean he did what he could. Yeah, it was, for those of you that haven't listened, so Rob Berkley was our Yoda. Not only did he look like him a little bit, but like in our mastermind group, he was Yoda. And he would say the least amount of words and get the most maximum impact. He was an amazing man. When I started working with him back in 2005 or 2006, he said to me, like, Bob, you're going to make a great coach someday. I was a coach. What he meant was, you're going to coach professionals.

And I wasn't quite ready at that time. But I really heard him after my mom passed. It was kind of like this seminal moment where it's like, it's time for me. So at that event, I connected with somebody that I had lost touch with for five years who He has accreditation for coaches. I'm like, I'm in. I went through that process. I got accredited. I dove deep. And as you know, you've gone through this over the past year. You've gone through this the last 20 years. But it's like, I've gone through personal...

I never stopped. ... guttural, personal guttural, just like days with a journal and nothing but the silence of the room, the buzz of the lights. It was very important to me to do that because I believe that my purpose is to excite people around the cause. And what I believe is important is that people reconnect with who they are. They get in alignment with who they are. They do, I don't want to say it this way, they're to be who they're supposed to be. Why do they have such a hard time being who they're supposed to be?

Let's unpack that a little bit because I think that's really important, like people... It's conditioning. Well, yeah, because you don't... I'm going to speak from my own journey, right? Like, that's one of the things is like, you just don't realize, I think, how many little instances, not major, little cuts, death of a thousand cuts, by a thousand cuts, how little slashes, little cuts create scar tissue so that you tighten your range of motion and you don't explore. From the very moment we're born, we are pushed towards this idea of fitting in.

It's a proven path. This is how you do it. This is how you do it. And it's of no fault to the people that are in charge, your parents, your school, your churches, whatever. This is what they've been taught, and they're just passing on what they know. Because what humanity wants is to be safe. And safe means same. So that's why parents want their kids to live a life as good or better than they, right? Every parent is working for their kids to give their kids a better life than they've had. You notice that?

Has there been a generation that's like, well, I want my kids to have a little bit less than I did. No, my mom, yeah. I mean, right? Yeah. I think parents do the best they can, but here's what happens. They are born into trauma, their parents were born into trauma, their parents were born into trauma, and that trauma is passed from generation to generation to generation. And so I call them spells. Okay. I had a coaching call two weeks ago with a woman who's 78 years old. You may know her. I'm not going to say her name.

She founded the entire industry, wrote the book, the book on this industry. Now this industry is a billion dollar industry. She was on that call saying, I haven't really done anything in my life. And I'm like, are you kidding? Christine and I were just talking about this on the way down here. This is sad, 78 years old, full of life still. Okay. She's like, she was in tears and she's a religious person. She's like, I just feel like I've let God down. And so part of what I have to do in these calls is remind, remind her in this case, like, no, this is, this is what you've done.

And what happens, Matt, is we need to go back and trace. Where did this story start? Yeah. So have you read it didn't start with you? No, you got to read it didn't start with you because it talks about this. Okay, and then the other one I'm gonna send that electric. Have you read body keeps a score? Yes. Okay, cool. Okay. It's all stored. Yeah, it's all stored. Okay. So we start doing we start doing work where Anything that shows up in your life, you manifest. What you see in your life happening isn't fate.

It's happening to you because that is what you believe. It's what you've been conditioned to follow. It's what you've been conditioned to follow. So we start doing the work and we start tracing the story back. Where did this story start? Where did this story start? Where did this story start? When we get to a place where she is sitting in a living room with her mom, she came home and she was very excited about the school project she did.

Trauma, Conditioning, and the Stories We Carry 17:00

She comes home. She's 12 years old. Mom, mom, mom, look. This is the report. She got an A plus on it. And the mom goes, I'll call her Betty. Betty, you're getting a little bit too big for your britches. Oh my God. Okay? You're getting a little bit too big for your britches. Okay? Story one. Story two. They pass out an IQ test. This girl, Betty, takes the IQ test, thinks she does really good. And she says, I went into my room and I was praying. I hope I'm one of the top three in the class. I hope I'm one of the top three.

She says her mom goes to meet with the teacher. The teacher and mom have a meeting and the teacher lets the mom know that Betty was number one in the class. The mom goes, please don't tell her that because she'll get complacent. She came home, mom came home and said, well, you didn't score very well, so you need to move. She found this out years after, like mom on the deathbed type of thing. in her trauma was like, I need to protect my little girl so she doesn't do pig fur britches. So every time she has an opportunity.

Don't you wonder what mom's trauma was that created that? Exactly, exactly. Because that's what this is. That was mom's trauma playing out, okay? So what we had to do is take her through this place, I call it a forgiveness exercise, and it's really simple. I want to do a story shift. The story was, Betty, you're getting too big for your britches. What we did was I had her do this very simple thing. I said, thank you, Mom, for giving me. And she listed out. That interaction with Mom gave her drive, gave her passion, steered her to say, Mom, I'm going to prove you wrong.

it gave her grit, it gave her determination. And so these things that she was holding in and she was, you know, like so mad at mom for all these years, she just let it out, just like it poured out of her. She thanked her mother, whose past, but thanked her for giving her these things. And she realized like, oh my goodness, that was the catalyst. That was the catalyst that led me to do this. And I'm actually not too big for my britches. And so she forgave her mom and she said the very next day, she goes, that was the best day of my life.

A one-hour call, Matt, how could you not be addicted to that? I mean, I know you work with doctors who are healers, right? Like, I'm a healer, you're a healer, right? So for me, my healing modality is freeing people from spells that were given to them in childhood. Like, that's far more fulfilling to me than a Facebook ad campaign that generates a million dollars. Way more fulfilling. Right? So many people are walking around with this, but the heart of this is this. I get to work with people and I remind them, like, no, you aren't too big for your britches.

I mean, it's just one story. There's just so many stories. But the fact of the matter is, I remind people who they're here to be. and help them embrace that, and they move forward with this new confidence. It's like carrying a bag of rocks, and all of a sudden the rocks just, they fall off. And for the first time, they like to feel free. So, you asked a question probably 20 minutes ago, what do I do? That's what I do. Well, and it's a, it's a beautiful thing. I, I believe that we talk a lot about, I share a lot about my journey over the last year and getting involved in the use of psychedelics and working with Mike Zeller.

And we've been blessed enough to send about 20 of our doctors to go work with him. And the thing is that, you know, like Tony Robbins will talk about limiting beliefs. Yeah. Okay. So make a list of your limiting beliefs. The problem is, is nobody knows what their limiting beliefs are because the limiting beliefs actually create bullshit limiting beliefs so that you'll chase that path because they don't want to be discovered and they don't want to be... They're hidden. They're so hidden. It's like looking underneath the sarcophagus of Chernobyl.

Nobody wants to do it. Nobody really wants to know. So these hidden beliefs, these limiting beliefs that we have are actually I actually think of them as like physical entities, right? Like they actually have a life and they're like, we don't want to be discovered because if you discover us, you're going to discover how bad we are and then you're going to expel us and then we're going to have nowhere to go. So they create all this other bullshit things and they send us down these other paths, right?

They get us bent out of shape about the white socks. They get us bent out of shape about a political party or this didn't go right at work or the traffic or whatever. Anything to prevent us from focusing in on them because once they, they're afraid that once we discovered them, we're going to expel them. The reality is, is what you just did is you create thankfulness around them, or not necessarily. Would you say it's thankfulness? It is thankfulness. Literally, the exercise is thank you. The word forgiving, it's like you think, how can I ever forgive?

Well, if you just change the polarity, it's really just a polarity shift from negative to positive. It's like this. Thank you. You just break the word down. Thank you for giving me. Why am I a coach? Well, I'll tell you why I'm a coach. Because when I was in seventh grade, I was five foot nothing. I weighed less than like a bag of sugar, right? Nope. I went out for the basketball team. Loved basketball. I wanted to be on the basketball team. Well, guess what? Everybody that age was much more athletic than me, much bigger than me.

Coach said, you know, you're cut. This is the day, Matt, where coaches don't talk to you. They just put your name on a list. Here's the list, who made the team, who didn't, okay? So I had no feedback. I go out like my heart is set on that. I am cut, all right? Next year I'd go out, I'm cut, okay? Why did I become a coach? Because at that young age, I realized, oh, the coach is the one that decides who plays and who doesn't play. I'm going to be the coach. Now, I've carried that trauma. for decades, right?

Resenting that coach that cut me. But the coach is really doing, the coach is doing nothing. Doing his job. Doing his job. Yeah. Fielding a team of 12 guys. He had to, he could only have 12 guys on the team. I didn't make the cut. And you know I've made cuts over my years as a coach. I've made them differently, but still I've had to cut kids and break their dreams. But the fact of the matter is, I realized at the young age, oh, the coach is the one that makes the decisions. The coach is in charge.

I'm going to be a coach. Now, would have I become a coach if I had made the team? Probably. Probably. Yeah, because it's just your natural thing. It's a natural thing. People always just gravitate towards it. But I was so in love with sports. I loved the game of basketball. And I just played it. I just played it over and over. I played Nerf basketball myself. We played at the park. Like, I probably would have ended up at it. But the fact of the matter is that was a triggering factor that led me to there.

But I had to go through the exercise of forgiving that coach. and thanking him for like, thank you for giving me the grit and determination to follow this career path because this has been a career path for me now for 40 years. I've gotten to do something amazing 40 years. It's not about winning championships for you, is it? No, and I mean really because I never you know, I've known you for 20 years I've never heard you once say or post we won a championship. We won the conference. We beat our rival I've never ever ever seen you post anything about yeah, I ever talk about that It's really about the development of the kids and the people isn't it at the core?

It is now I love competing. I love I love winning. I know I had a moment. So everybody has their rival in high school, right? We have a rival. It's called Ileana Christian. I coach a Christian. Ileana Christian? Ileana Christian. I thought you said Ileana. I'm like, you want to go home? Right? No. So, I had a team that was not as good as them, but we went on to their home court and we upset them one year. And the stating was packed. Like there was 5,000 people there. And my team hit a shot at the buzzer to win this game.

And the kid who hit it was a freshman. Like I let out this guttural scream that my buddy who coaches varsity is like to this day He's like is one of his favorite memories cuz like I'm not really that guy. You're not that emotional Bob is the same every fucking day Bob's never I've never seen Bob up me I'm all over the joint No, I care. I mean, when you see me, I'm passionate about it. But no, I am not an exos guy. I'm serviceable in that area. It doesn't interest me. What interests me is getting the best out of these kids and drawing the stuff out.

I want to see this kid, I want to see him develop his skills, but I want to see him develop as a person. I want to see My favorite people are people that have grown in the program and become captains who are still friends like they've become friends of mine, kids who have coached 20 years ago. I've gotten to coach against several of them. It's like the most satisfying thing in the world. I've gotten my ass kicked by former players and it was the best loss. I was so happy after those losses because that's Adam, that's Chris, that's Bill.

They beat me. But I'm like, I'm coaching against guys that I got to coach and they were captains. So relationships are just big for me. Is it safe to say you enjoy coaching the misfits underdogs that don't have any talent more than the teams that have talent? You mean the Rudy's? Yeah. Or is it just about getting the most out of somebody? I enjoy the kids that have to work the hardest to get what they got. So when I see somebody who is generally a hard worker and they eke out as much out of their Misfit body untalented body and and have and have success.

I do find the most satisfaction in that for sure All right, so let's let's talk about this That and we will talk about my test results here in just a little bit because you have a program Yep, you take people through some. Yeah program. Yeah, yeah But before we dive into that What happens when you see people? who are out of alignment with how God created them. And I'm putting, you know, at the end of the day, let's say the creator, right? Like I tell every single one of my doctors, the moment that sperm crossed into that egg, you are a fucking miracle.

You have to realize, no one's a mistake, everyone's a miracle. Right now, society really, I think, in a lot of ways is here to make sure that you don't live and take you out of alignment. So society, quote unquote, when I'm saying society, just kind of like the whole energetic thing can control you in a certain way, right? But how important is alignment when you're working with someone to them being in their highest fulfillment? The alignment of how they're designed, their personality, their heart desires, all of that.

So it comes down, first of all, It comes down to awareness. And here's what I think. I think you can live out of alignment for only so long before it catches up to you. How does it catch up to people? Crisis. Drama. We are not here by accident. I know that we are here on missions. Think of it like a school. I think of life as like a simulation. I don't think it's a simulator, but I think it's a simulation. I think Earth is a type of school. I think it's a place to have experiences. I think the human experience is probably one of the most amazing things in the universe.

I've come to believe in reincarnation. I know for a fact this is like, I'm on 750 or something like that right now. I know that I've recycled this through, okay? I don't want to go on that tangent, but here's the thing. Oh, I do. But anyway, we can go there. We can go there. But I believe very much like a director or a writer has a plan for like a script. I don't believe life happens according to a script. I believe life happens according to a plan. And so I believe we come here with this idea of like, I want to experience this.

And then we go into this simulation where everybody has all these intentions and they all interact. And it's all probability based. And we don't know what's going to happen because your choices affect my choices, affect these choices. It's just this most amazing algorithm. But what happens when you're out of alignment, meaning if you had something you wanted to experience and you're not experiencing it, I believe that life starts to tap you on the shoulder. pushes you on the shoulder, punches you in the shoulder, whacks you in the shoulder, knocks you over the head until you wake up.

Comfort to me is one of the worst things that can happen to people, is for people to reach a level of comfort. My daughter, Megan, gave me a book at Thanksgiving called Comfort Crisis. Hmm, and it's a story about this guy goes up into the Yukon and hunting elk or something like that. Basically, you should read it It's fantastic great. So now you've got three books that I got to read. Yeah Well, you're gonna come here to do work. Yeah, you did. It's one of the things you love about me. Um, so You're gonna give me all kinds of shit.

I'm not worried about it The point of the book is and I tell all my doctors to read it is that comfort? is actually prevents you from going into the place of really discovering who you are. Yes. Right? Yeah. And everything, this phone, the bottled water. Distraction. Everything is a complete and total fucking distraction. Right. And it's designed to make us comfortable. Yeah. So that we don't, we become numb to what is knocking on us. So talk about that. Well, I mean, we're going to throw around the word purpose here today, but the fact of the matter is, Why experience life if you're not evolving?

Just look around, just observe what the planet is doing. It is evolving. It's not devolving, it's evolving, it's growing. The universe is expanding, all right? So God's source creator, the reason we exist is we're all aspects of the divine and we are here to reflect back to source, whatever source wants to learn. It is constantly expanding. It's constantly growing. So it's counter to your nature to get in a place where you just sit and you're comfortable. Now, I believe people still have that choice.

There's nothing wrong with comfort. There's nothing wrong with comfort. I mean, I've applied first class and stayed in nice hotels. I mean, there's some comfort there. OK. Well, I didn't get like a black car to get me here today. So, you know. We're just starting the podcast. I'll have you back. OK, I'll fly you to Arizona and we'll play golf. When you talk about free will and choices, we have the divine sovereign right to make the choice to be comfortable. But I believe that we have, you know, we're an aspect of our higher self and our higher self Like, why play a game if you're not going to advance in the game?

And to advance you have to evolve. Well, then you're just a non-player character. You're just here to exist and then... Like, it doesn't make sense to me. It's not logical. Like, if you go explore us and you just think about it logically, it's like, that doesn't make sense. So, I believe that we have a plan and then life will push us forward. I think this life is designed to help us grow. And so, yeah, maybe when we get to the point where we've achieved our plan, then maybe it's comfortable. Like, you know, my dad's in his late 70s.

He's still exploring what it means to live. Like, Sister Jean. Has his golf game gotten any better? Well, no, he hadn't been able to golf for 20 years. Okay. But like, I was just joking. Sister Jean, I don't know if you know Sister Jean from Loyola, passed away yesterday, 106. She wrote a book three years ago called What I Learned in My

Alignment, Comfort, and Life's Push Toward Growth 34:00

First 100 Years, right? Like, even somebody that gets into the advanced stage who has the mindset of like, I'm here to experience things, I'm here to grow. Like, there are things for you to do, there are things for you to become. And so this idea of alignment, if we're not living according to our design, okay, now I know you do a lot with human design. I've gone through it, I haven't gone deep into it. purpose factor guy. I'm an Enneagram guy. I use human design to help understand numerology, astrology.

There are algorithms all around us. And there's hints all around us. There's hints all around us. Remember when we were heavily involved in the church and people were like, astrology is about the devil. No, God leaves clues everywhere, dude. There are so many clues. I know, we ignore most of them, don't we? We ignore most of them. But the idea is this, this alignment thing. If we have a design, if we're designed a certain way to have this certain experience, and we are off of that path, we are going to find increasing amount of discomfort in our life.

We're going to have friction. We're going to have traumas. We're going to have things that like appear that push us back on the path. And it's a loving thing because it's like, no, you're here to do this. Now, again, like if we don't get to where we want to get to, there's another life on the back end of this. Yeah. Okay. But the idea here is like, I'm not saying that getting cancer or experiencing the loss of a loved one, these traumatic things, are life trying to get your attention. I don't have that kind of knowledge.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But the idea is you will feel less satisfied, less fulfilled. when you are living out of alignment, when you are involved in things that aren't who you truly are, you are not going to feel fulfilled, you're going to feel this discomfort. And at that point is where you start to question like, okay, why is it? You just start to ask that awareness, what might be happening? What do you think is happening here? I mean, you could just sit down with a journal. I mean, you've done the mushroom journeys.

I mean, I journal every morning, sometimes two, three times a day. Right. What psychedelics do is it gets you out of your mind and it gets to a space where your ego and everything is shut down. It opens. It opens the world and you get to see and experience things. Right. Okay. You can do this through meditation. There's all kinds of ways to do this, but you experience a greater sense of yourself And it overwhelms you. Like, I'm sure those experiences were overwhelming for you. Oh, Dan was just at my house.

He's at my house right now in Arizona, and we took him through one on Monday, and his journey impacted me. Like, in a very deep way, right? Because my brother Dan is number three of the six, I'm number six, and we've both been kind of on this journey, and his revelation of things that he experienced. Has awoken a couple things in me like I was on the plane yesterday flying up here crying. Hmm Because it just cracked open an emotion and you know, like, yeah Well, you guys did you ever meet Lorraine?

You met you've obviously hung out with Dan. You never met my mom. Did you? I think I probably kept you from her No No, I have no yeah, you never met Lorraine. No, so yeah, like you just didn't like you didn't feel emotions in our house like that was yeah, you know, but anyway, the point is is that the beauty of the medicine is we like to call it is is it, you're right, it gets rid of the ego so that you don't be like, well, I don't want to go down that path. Like sometimes it just takes you on a journey, literally a journey.

You're like, okay, I guess we're going down this path. We're going to examine this thing that I've buried for 47 years. It kind of untethers you. I mean, you do need people around you to make sure you stay tethered, right? You want to do it. You want to do it in a way that's controlled, but... You want to have somebody guiding. You need a sober guide. You need a guide. Your ego is not a bad thing, by the way. No. Your ego's job is to keep you grounded to the planet. It's the thing that, like, makes you human.

So people that say, I'm going to fight my ego, I'm battling my ego, that's not really what you're supposed to do. The more you battle your ego, the more it's going to fight back. Actually, you want to work with your ego. And make sure like I'm not gonna recommend another book. Have you read ever listen to Zealand? What's the book Zealand the Russian like a seal in Michigan? Because of reality trans surfing okay, this is what he talks about he talks about this that the more you Want something the more or even more you if you are like if you have a massive goal, and you're going after it his belief is that The harder you try for something, the more energies come against you so you don't get it.

Yes. Right? 100%. Yeah. All right. So talk about that. I mean, not from Zeeland State, but like just kind of... No, this is it. This is the divine paradox that I've experienced personally and I see it all around me. The more you want something, the more voracious you want something, the more resistance you get against it. Isn't that amazing? I have this client who I'm just really inspired by. He's a golfer like me. We share a lot of the same things. He has this ability to turn off ambition, not in a bad way, in a way where he's disconnected from the outcome.

Like NATO, not attached outcome. Yeah. And good things fall in his lap. He has this ability where one employee will leave and then six hours later another one will show up. And they're better. And they're better, right? And he's had enough of this experience in his lifetime where he's like, it's just become normal. So here's what I've come to understand. There are people that are strong enough to set a goal and drive towards it. There's plenty of examples. You and I know people there's Jordan. Yeah, they're just, they just have extremely voracious wills.

Okay. But what I've come to understand is that. What you want to focus in on is intention and you want to focus in on a feeling. You want to focus in on a general destination. You want to be very clear about the what and the why. The thing you must let go of is the how because what a goal does is a goal puts you in a position of defining the how and that actually circumvents what the universe is designed to do. What I love working with people is getting uber clear on their what. What is it that you want?

What is the feeling you're after? So let's say, so Matt, you and I know people that like, I want to make a million dollars. Great. Why? What's the money for? You can't just say, I want to make a million dollars without knowing what is it that that money's for and why do you want it. The more clear you can get on those things. And then without you saying, OK, well, I guess because I'm in a business and I guess I'm an entrepreneur, I need to come up with an idea to generate that million dollars. If you have a legitimate reason for needing the million dollars, really, there's probably two or three levels we go to.

It's like, what are you really after? Most people, it's after freedom. They want money to buy time freedom, right? But here's what happens is if you set a goal and say, I'm going to make a million dollars, and you believe the vehicle to do that is through your business, I find it really difficult for people to meet that. What really needs to happen is if you have a genuine reason why you have the what defined, you leave the how to the universe. And that's when you can, here's how I explained it.

I explained this from stage this way. Love this. A goal. A goal is like I'm driving towards a goal. An intention where you let go of the how is you actually are floating and you get gravitationally pulled towards the center. And the center and the way you receive what you intended is far more magnificent and amazing than anything you could ever imagine. I'm still learning this lesson. Yeah, I am too. Because I've always been like driving towards goals. I think it's the hardest thing as a leader.

The hardest thing for me as a leader, right? I've always had the vision for as long as I can remember. And when I say as long as I can remember, probably four years old. And this is before there was a Tony Robbins and people were filling stadiums. I have always had the vision that I was going to fill stadiums and positively impact lives. I've had it my whole life. I can't think of a period in my life that I haven't had it. Now, there were periods of my life where I suppressed it. Okay. Right. But when I go back and I do my reflection and I do the journeys and I do all of this, I've always had this.

This has been in me from day one. Now, I didn't know that it was going to be in the context of what this is today. Right. Like, and I've always loved being in front of an audience. Right. From the time I was six or seven years old in a rolling green country club on family night on Tuesday night of standing up and singing Saturday night by the Bay City Rollers to the complain the accordion. Right. Nice. That was, you know, that was a dark period of my life. Or a life period. But then, you know, and then my mom's saying, you know, don't do that too much.

My mom would always tell me to shut up, sit down and don't make a spectacle of yourself. Right. What do I do for a living? I stand up, I talk loud and make a spectacle of myself. Right. Anyway. Thank you, Lorraine. Thank you, Lorraine. We're gonna be dealing we're gonna be swinging by Barrington and dealing with a few more things today So anyway, the the but the thing is is like today I know at 57. I'm just getting started Yeah, like that's the Mike a lot of my friends. They're they're like I only got three four years before I retire I'm just getting started because I know that vision.

When I talk about leading the exodus of 100,000 doctors, I don't sit and think about the plan every single day. What I do is I think about that vision of filling stadiums around the world and having 15 and 20,000 people in stadiums, in the healthcare field, of returning them to being their healers and knowing that that's going to spread out. I know it's going to go beyond that, right? But I don't I used to obsess about how to do it. Yeah, I don't obsess about how to do it anymore Bob I just am like that's what it is.

And this is the hardest thing for me as a leader because we set goals for the quarter I don't give a fuck if we hit him or not But it's really but you have to from a business standpoint, right? Right. So how do you balance that? Because you have to you've got to hit numbers. You got to hit revenue numbers to make it work or not make it work to continue. Open up your phone and pull up that report. So Matt's pulling up, I have an assessment. It's not my assessment. I offer it. It's kind of like DISC or Strengths Finder.

It's called Purpose Factor. No, I want you to read. Read your Purpose Factor statement. It's on page two. It's in black up top. My purpose factor is to inspire excitement around a cause to serve those in need. Okay. That's it. Okay. Now, here's the thing. Most people believe, like, my purpose. You remember the movie with Billy Crystal? One thing? City Slickers. City Slickers. Okay. You remember Curly. Curly's like, the secret of life is one thing. Curly was wrong. Because the secret of life isn't doing one thing.

Most people think like, oh, I have to figure out the one thing that I'm here to do. And that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of fucking pressure. Okay. Like most people think like, oh, I became a lawyer. Like I did the one thing that I'm here to do. What I want to share with people and what I'm excited about is purpose is something that's more expansive. So your purpose is generating excitement around a cause. And serve those in need. And serve those in need. So purpose is the best of what you have to give to others.

Okay. Okay. So to the people listening and to you, Matt, you are currently, like this podcast, The Maverick system is your current platform for generating that excitement around something that matters. But you've done this multiple times in your career. You did this in real estate. You absolutely did. You did this with your ED clinics. You did this when you were working for sales. Your job Right? Your purpose. You have been living this your entire life. When you were on stage as a seven-year-old at the country club, singing, doing comedy, whatever you were doing, okay?

You were living your purpose. You were practicing your purpose. I'd rather fill a stadium as a rock and roll star and travel the world than win a Masters. Okay. I think one of the coolest things in the world would be to write hit songs and travel around the world like Bon Jovi or whomever and fill stadiums at the age of 70 and have people sing my songs back to me. Right. Now here's the thing, whether or not you ever fill a stadium, You have filled stadiums. Yes. And you've also had stadiums that weren't filled.

I've done both. I remember. We've done both, Bob. I remember. And our current president was the reason for one of them. Yes, it was. Okay. But the fact of the matter is, like, that vision Okay, stadiums, it could be a physical stadium. Yep. But you are always going to gather people around a cause that matters. Absolutely. Okay. And so, look, Maverick is your current cause, but like 10 years from now, there could be another cause. And I'm all in on that. You are always going to be all in. I love the arc of the story.

Exactly. Because, you know, like right now, with the changes that I've made in my life, You know, there's a lot of things that are going on in personal life. Like my kids and I are estranged right now. I don't hide it. Like we don't talk. And there's a lot of people are like, oh, that's just got to be so awful. And what do we got to do to get all that back? And I go, this is just a chapter of the story. And they look at me like a lot of people that come from the Christian faith, like, oh, no, that's the worst thing in the world.

You know, a father's got to be involved. How do you know that? How do we know that that's not just part of the story arc? There's a lot more chapters to be written in my life. It is a complex play. Our lives are a complex play. They're a complex play and you are playing a role for your children and your children are playing a role for you. Your ex-wife is playing a role for you. Pick which ex-wife. Okay. All right. But the idea here is, We're all characters in each other's story, and we're all here to support each other's story, okay?

The fact of the matter is, when it gets down to it, your purpose is always going to be doing that, okay? So, winning the Masters isn't on your list of things you want to do. You want to do that, and that's the thing that's going to bring you fulfillment. Knowing that information, it actually creates this wonderful opportunity for you to be like I know where I need to put myself. Because when you hear about something that matters to you, you can decide, I want to get on board with that. Because I'm excited about this.

And you also have the messenger skill set. You've developed this strength over time of how to communicate. You have communicated by standing in front with a microphone. You have communicated by writing books. You've communicated by writing newsletters, emails. You've gotten in front of small groups. We have a podcast. Like, you are going to find any way you can to rally people around a cause. That's just what you're going to do. So this today is deeply fulfilling to you, not just because one of your buddies is sitting here, but like, anytime you get to sit down and communicate and talk about this thing that matters for you, it's going to bring you deep fulfillment.

And so, you know, before we started recording, you talked about a lot of the doctors that you have.

Purpose, Self-Discovery, and Leading from the Center 51:00

and what medical school does to them. It completely sucks them dry. It sucks them dry, but that's an example of another system, right? The system has decided that this is the right way for people to practice medicine. And it's a shame because people get into becoming a doctor because they're healers. We talked about this, right? And what's the first thing that medical school does? is it removes their desire to be healers. Right. Dr. Ariana Demers, one of my clients, very good friend, posted events with her.

She said they groom them. It's grooming. They slowly groom them to become cogs in the machine. And I give her credit every time I talk about it. It's the best analogy I've ever heard. Yeah. Well, think about our education system. What are we doing? We're grooming them to become cogs in the machine. Education is simply the There are, this is a blanket statement. And I realize that there are schools that genuinely want their kids to grow and learn and be learners. School does not teach people to learn.

It teaches them to memorize and regurgitate facts. They are also being groomed. And we send our kids to school because we were groomed. That's what we've learned. We learned that's what's normal, right? You know, it's why religious traditions are passed down. And we learned that Catholics and Muslims don't get along. And, you know, Eastern Orthodox doesn't get along. What is Seinfeld? Latvian Orthodox? Like, they don't get along. Mark this at 37 minutes left, we got a Seinfeld reference. Right. Well, you know, that's going to happen.

You've got to go harder to the lure of the animals. Well, you're taught that. Their spells, their algorithm is like, brother, it's even more pronounced here. Christine and I are driving around. I'm like, so my mom would say, this is the neighborhood of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're going to Gibson's last night for steak, right? I'm like, you got to take you to Gibson's. Yeah. I went to Oakbrook. I'm like, we're driving through the neighborhoods. I'm like. Not that there's a lot of neighborhoods out in Oakbrook, but the point is, is it?

Chicago is a very defined neighborhood. Yeah, it's like, no, no, that street, that's, I mean, my mom would say, no, that's the- Well, anytime you cross- That's the Polish part of town, she'd use a derogatory. You cross a track or you go under a bridge, that's how Chicago is. Now, there's comfort in that because you're around your people, but like, it also becomes like a little bit of a detriment, but you're absolutely right. People are gathering because like that's... We lived in, we're recording in Pilsen.

People live in Pilsen because they've always lived in Pilsen. Right. Right. You know, I grew up in Payless and I guess I live in Payless. Right. I love it. You love Payless. I love it. All right. But I made the choice. Right. But the idea is this, it's... But you don't, but here's the difference though. There are people in Payless that don't leave Payless ever. Like you travel, you and Arlene go out, you go play golf in Florida or Arizona or whatever, right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what we're talking about here is this idea again, it's alignment, right?

And when we become disconnected, you now understand your purpose, and you can see that, oh, we tend to give ourselves less grace than we give others. I have known to kind of beat up myself a little bit for like changing careers so often. But I don't think it is changing careers. Society does. I look into the evolution of Bob Regnerus. Exactly. Exactly. But it looks like Bob can't make up his mind, right? On the outside, right? So part of me is thinking like, when are you going to get your shit together type of thing.

But for me, like, I progress through things really quickly. My friend Brandon calls it like you're in a container until it becomes a cage and then you escape Okay, so this is a big teaching thing that i'm on right now and that is increasing the size of your container So if you if you have a you go to you go to home depot or the nursery store, whatever then you buy a flat of pansies, right? They're in that small little plastic. Yeah, you take them out and you put them into a bigger container Yes, when they put them into a bigger container, they grow bigger.

However, they can only grow to the size of the container. So if you want those plants to grow even bigger, you have to put them in a bigger container. Now, eventually what happens is that you put them in a big enough container that you wind up with thrillers, spillers, and fillers. So thrillers are your salespeople, spillers are your operations people, and fillers are the people like, well, they fucking do the job, so just keep them around. But still, the bigger the container, the plant can only grow to the size of the container.

The job of the leader, of the founder, is to continually provide and grow a bigger container for themselves, which creates a bigger container for their staff to grow. And I believe that understanding purpose, and then I'll shut up, and understanding your fulfillment factor, now reading this, is what is required in order for you to create the safety of a bigger container. Leaders can be so confiding. A leader who is insecure about who she or he is. Well, what they are doing visually, what you described, is they are shrinking their container on purpose because they're scared.

They have no idea who they are. Creating a root bound. They're creating a root bound, right? And it's all about them. Like, you may have this most amazing staff in the world. They may be like ready. They're like, oh, they're hungry to grow. They want to see good things happen for them. They want to see good things happen for you. But the fact of the matter is, is the fears and insecurities, limiting beliefs, everything that's happening below the surface of that leader is being contained by that small container.

And they are not willing to put themselves in a place where they can grow that container. That was me up until last year. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, because people are like, what happened? Because I made a massive shift. I was married and I decided I left my second marriage. You know, that hasn't gone very well from the standpoint of with my kids and people around me. But what had happened is in October of 23, I noticed the same patterns repeating and we had grown Mavericks to a specific level.

We'd gotten to a certain revenue number that you can as a personality. And it was about me. And I began on October 23 saying something isn't right. I started traveling around. I thought maybe I was losing my creative juices. Like, am I supposed to live in a different place other than Charlotte, right? Which was true because Charlotte had become a container. I can only grow to a specific size because it's not an entrepreneurial town. It's a banking town. It's a number two banking center in the United States.

It's a great place. Great place to raise kids. But my time, it was time for a bigger pot. And the thing is, is that I couldn't put my finger on it until December of last year. And then throughout this year, it's like, fuck, for me to do this thing that I've always known I wanted to do, I knew I had to change. I didn't understand what was holding me back from making the change. And that, it was the fear of leaving the container. Yeah. So what was the catalyst? The catalyst for me in October 23, I just felt that there was something wrong.

I noticed patterns repeating. Yeah. I realized I got invited to go to a mastermind at the end of October this last year. So it hasn't even been a year for my friend Atiba. And I'd been on the road. I'd been to Vegas 16 times last year. I'm sorry. All for events. And I'm like, the last fucking thing I want to do is spend another weekend in Vegas. I went and I met Mike Zeller and we did the journey. And I realized during the journey, Everything that I was doing was not allowing me to grow. The things that I thought I was doing, I thought was allowing me to grow.

And so that created a whole catalyst. And one of the things that really was a major catalyst is I'm in Punta Mida in Mexico on vacation with Christine. I wake up from it. I'm playing golf that day. Okay. Beautiful Nicholas course. Play golf with this random guy we're talking. And I tell the same story that I've told a thousand times. About my dad dying I was 13 years old sitting next to him when he died and You know my story and be like, oh, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It's I don't miss story Well, right you've heard me tell it a thousand fuck.

Yeah fucking bullshit, right and I realized the first time ever and he goes wow That must have been really hard. My standard answer was always it is what it is. God gives gifts in strange ways first time ever that I said to him when I paused and I said Thank you, you're right. It was a fucking pain in the ass and it's still a fucking pain in the ass today. It was on the 16th hole of Mutamitab. I went back, I woke up from a nap by the pool at the St. Regis and I was immediately transported back to the room on Penny Road, the green room where my father died sitting next to me watching the baseball game.

And I realized for 40 plus years, 44 years, I had never ever grieved my father's life. And I grieved it that day. Wow. In a hotel room at the St. Regis, And I cried like I've never cried before. And I never realized at that point how much that had been. I knew at that point when my dad died, Maddie Boy, the 13-year-old kid had taken charge. And it was at that point that I finally grieved my father's death after 44 years. And I still get emotional today. I know today's gonna be very hard. We're gonna go out to Penny Road.

We're gonna go to the grave and all of that. And I never knew I never knew how that was holding me back. I never knew the pain that that had caused everybody. I never knew how I had hurt our friendship or my friendship with Brandon or Perry or anybody, not because I intentionally did it, but because of that and never having an environment to really process that. That to me, when I see my doctors be able to process their trauma and their pain and they come out and the greatest compliment for me is when they go do that work and they don't need me anymore.

It's the greatest thing in the world because I realized then that they have finally tapped into source, that they have finally let go of their old container, put themselves in a big enough container that they can then grow to the level of what they're called to be. And that is just the most beautiful thing in the world for me. I get more joy out of that than I do anything else. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. And, you know, I've always had this sense that that story has held you back. Oh, it's totally held me back.

And I think at that moment, you realize like, oh my goodness, dad's not around. I got a man up, you know, maybe mom. Maybe mom didn't let you grieve. I mean, who knows? Oh, there's no grieving that went on. My mom, from the age I was 13, I was on my own. Okay. I never grieved it. Even at my father's wake, I was getting to people to laugh. Okay. Because... I gotta be, I can't show that a weakness. I gotta be strong. So kind of like you used humor and kind of these other things as a distraction. Humor, performance, and fix.

Right. It was always about performance, it was always about, and then my ability to make people feel better. Yeah, fix. And sometimes it was making people feel better at a bar. Come on, let's go singing, come on, let's go to this bar, come on, let's go on a road trip, right? Right. Being the guy that's like, oh, you're having a bad day, come on, let's cheer your ass up, let's go. Okay. Right? Well, that's really powerful. And you know, it's interesting the fact that you have, I mean, you probably have told this story a thousand times.

Like you're not stretching the truth because I've heard you tell it maybe 25 times. At least. Because most people you meet, you would tell that story. Isn't that interesting? Yes. That you would choose that story. I choose that story. I used to. I don't do it anymore. Right. I use it as a, if I tell the story now, I use it as an illustration of how a seemingly casual, nonchalant thing of coping can put in really deep roots that prevent you from becoming the person that you were created to be. So you wind up out of alignment.

So that story, because I'm a very emotional person. I'm an incredibly emotional person. And I think it's nonchalant to say, well, I grew up in a house that you weren't allowed to cry in. I don't think that really explains it. I think what it is is that there was a culture that goes back multiple generations in my family of loss and how you heal and how you deal with grief that was passed down and was given to me. I didn't, right? And so what happens is that from the doctor's perspective or from any human, let's just say any human's perspective, We have no understanding, A, how we're designed, B, how seemingly dramatic or casual events clip our wings over and over again.

Yeah. Well, that awareness, it's interesting how awareness hits you. Like, it's interesting to me that it was a question that you've answered multiple times. Like, we can't really understand why that day, that golfer asking the question in the right way or his response triggered that for you. And never saw, the guy was at the same resort, staying in the same kind of quadrant, never saw the guy the rest of the day. And he was there at the exact same time, we were like, oh, we'll see each other at the pool.

Never saw him again. And I looked for him. Never. You can say what you want. We can say what we want. We've had those conversations many nights. Yes, we have. So I think that's the greatest gift. Number one, I really believe people are drawn into the healing profession. Let's just say they be, I don't want to use that term. Oh, I will. Because I asked the doctors, when did you know you want to be a doctor? It's like 11 or 12. Okay. They have a healing heart. They have a healing heart, but it's usually, you're usually drawn in because of a wounding in childhood that pushes you into that profession.

But I do believe that people are healers. They're born like it's innate. I do believe like they have a healing heart. I believe is part of a design that there's a traumatic event that sets the seed. I really do. All right. Talk about that. Again, I don't see life as particularly random. I think all kinds of probabilities happen, but I do believe there are milestones that are planned that push you in the direction that you need to go. And so, like, this story you just told me, like, is a milestone down the road from the story of dad, you know, dying in the easy chair, okay?

Like, those are connecting points. And the fact is, is that that moment where dad passed drove you in the direction that you started to go. Yes. You could have, like, you would have had a career in golf. Maybe. No, I don't think I would have. No? No, I wouldn't have. Because, and I'll tell you why. So here's the dirty little secret that I haven't announced. I haven't played golf since July. Okay. I don't know if I'll ever play golf again. And here's why. So I was unmercifully bullied as a kid growing up at Rolling Green Country Club.

Now when I say country club, it's a blue collar country club, right? It's not like, I'm warning people like, oh you had a tough life, you grew up in a country. It wasn't like, it was just a golf course that happened. Okay. And the other kids wouldn't play golf with me. And so I would go out on the golf course and I would play by myself and I would create an environment where I was imagining being great. Okay. So when my dad died, we were living out on the Penny Roadhouse and my mom was gone closing his law office.

And I created a, we had two and a half acres fenced in and I created a nine hole golf course using my wedge and I would kill my summer days hitting golf shots, taking big ass divots around the yard with my wedge up over the chimney, cutting it over this, da da da da. And golf for me became an escape. Okay. And so if my dad had lived, we never would have left Penny Road. And I probably would have done something. Because when we moved to Lake Barrington Shores, it's like, well, this is my escape. My mom was never there.

I started working in the bathroom. I learned how to gamble, right? And I got a lot of value because I could fix a lot of things. I knew how to shine shoes. I knew how to wash a car. And I knew how to grab clubs. And I could out-hustle everybody. And I could perform. So for me, I've come to this realization. Like, I'm literally at this point where I tried to go swing a golf club the other day before I went on this trip.

Grief, Healing, and Reclaiming Identity 1:08:00

It felt dead to me. We're staying at a golf course. out at Edgewater, and I'm looking out the window, I'm like, I know, isn't that weird? You know how much I love the game. It's not weird. And I wouldn't put it past you that you would rediscover that golf is something that you can enjoy. I would. Yeah, I know. It's something you have to do. Right. But you got to give yourself grace. But again, you've been given the gift of- And here's the funny thing is, I'll just say this. My last couple of runs, like I shot 81 up Muirfield.

I played the last four or five holes, like one or two under. Like, I've been playing great golf. That's amazing. I know. I played Monroe, shot three under on the back nine. Like, I've been playing fucking great golf. And I'm like, eh, all these years. Anyway, go ahead. But the gift of awareness. Like, I've mentioned that a few times. Life has a way of getting your attention, because there was an attention you've had for yourself. And everybody listening, I believe there's intentions that they have for themselves.

And life has a way of pushing you in the direction that you need to go. Because again, the purpose here is to evolve. The purpose is here to grow and have experiences. You're not here to do anything. You know, the story I told, you know this story, you may not have remembered it, but after the business that we had collapsed, I had nothing to do. And I would go out walking. And this was in 2009, probably? No, because I filed my bankruptcy in 10, so it was like 12. Well, it doesn't matter. So I walked around the neighborhood and I heard an audible voice.

Okay, take it for what you will. But I heard, Bob, I don't love you for what you do, I love you for who you are. You remember that? Yeah, I remember you telling me that. Okay. So that moment, like, first of all, like, my knees buckled, right? Never heard a voice before. The Protestant faith doesn't account for... Especially your Dutch Protestant faith. Dutch Protestant does not account for... I mean, I got to pick up half the bill. Yeah. So I have been processing that for 20 some years now, right?

Where have you gotten? Well, it's led me to this work, which is we're not here to do anything, we're here to be. Okay. It doesn't matter what you do. Like, Matt, it doesn't matter that you have Mavericks. I would tend to agree, yeah. It could be anything. You are being somebody for yourself and for your doctors. Your purpose is to create excitement around a cause that you deeply believe in. And so, you are currently pouring your passion into healing the hurt that doctors have, who have been ripped away from their heart, which is, I want to be a healer, to that you're a transactional employee that needs to process paperwork and move patients in at three and seven minute intervals.

when their desire is to sit with a patient for an hour and really heal them. You feel that, and so you have become excited about that, and your desire is to share that this doesn't have to be that way. You were there to create awareness. You were here simply to create awareness. You were here to be a catalyst for your doctors to say, You mean I can actually do medicine. I could be a healer. You're not a doctor as a profession. A healer is a being. It's calling. It's a calling. Yeah. You are here to heal.

I'm here to heal. I feel that I'm here to heal, right? I'm here to, one of my passions, my pull passion that comes from Purpose Factory Report is a hurt healer. When you and I got together, you were hurting. I was hurting really bad. Right? And I was pulled towards you to help you. And I'm forever thankful, by the way. Right. If I've never told you thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for being in my life and thank you for that. But you were a catalyst that pushed me outside of a lot of comfort zones.

You did. Thank you. We went to these conferences that completely blew- Wild ass conferences. Wild ass conferences, right? Which were exhilarating and scary and kind of funny in some ways, right? But it introduced me to something completely new, which then I went back to my current community and started talking about the experiences I was having. And that made them be like, whoa, that got me out of there. Like, oh god, I'm trying to envision you going back to your church and talking about the shit that we experienced.

Right. Oh my god. Sanitizing it, by the way. Sanitizing it. I tried to explain it to my first wife, Sarah, and she's like, stop that shit. I tried to give people, generally, like a Wayne Jacobson book, a Darren Hufford book, right? We got to interview, you and I had a podcast. What's the irony here? Remember this? Once a week we would get live and do this thing. It was a live podcast. And you mentioned Arizona. It was 3 a.m. You and I got up at 3 a.m. Out on the balconies in our separate rooms. Yeah.

So anyway, we interviewed the author of The Shack, William Paul Young. Yeah. Amazing wasn't it great, but that book that book was like people were like What is this like God's got grace what what do you mean? Oh, they hated that book Yeah, like it it turned people on it. I'm like, yeah, but again like pretty true But again, this is the whole thing like your dad played a part for you Your mom played a part for you, right? Your exes have played a part for you. But you're also playing a part for everybody else.

You played a part for me. I played a part for you. This is how amazing this whole life experience is. Humanity is people playing parts for each other to help us in our evolution. So again, what we're doing here is you're developing a platform to share this message to doctors. You can do medicine differently. You can actually be the person that you really in your heart want to be. And I think it's vitally important that you're sharing these things. Until you get in touch with what's really inside and you clear off the bullshit and you get past the trauma, there are things that will open them up to being more magnificent healers.

Because again, I believe people get into healing because they want and need healing themselves. I agree. Like, the first person that I had to coach, the first person I had to heal was myself. And that healing never stops of self. I don't think so. I mean, if you would have told me a year ago that I would be where I am today, doing what I'm doing, I feel more alive and aligned with how I'm designed and who I am today than I did yesterday or the day before. Yeah. You used to apologize for who you were.

I know. I don't fucking apologize anymore at all. Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm sorry. That's just the way I am. You would do that a lot. I know. Because of conditioning or, you know. Well, it's mom saying, get off the stage, Matty. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and you're embarrassing me, Matty. Get down. I would go on the stage, and I loved it. And I would go on the road, and I loved it. And Sarah was my first, was very supportive, but I felt guilty. for not being there on weekends for my kids. Today, what I've realized is I'm supposed to live out of a suitcase.

I'm supposed to be on the road every single weekend. That's what I do. That is how I am made. And I came to this conclusion, we have a, back in Charlotte had a friend, her dad was the manager for Kiss and Aerosmith. She goes, my dad was home maybe 14 days a year. And I go, well, how was that? She goes, that's what he was called to do. And that always stuck with me. There are some people that are just called to be on the road. That's who they are. And I think when you get in alignment with how you're made, You know, when you look at doctors, the divorce rate is two and a half times higher, the suicide rate's almost three X higher than the rest of society.

It's because the model, the industry, has been taken over from people that they now want to build empires. Venture capitalists, Wall Street money, they want to build empires. Doctors are about building legacies. Legacies are vastly different than building empires. Because when you build a legacy, you're not worried about your quarterly returns. Your legacy is about impact. Empire is about chasing. Legacy is about receiving. Well, I think when you're younger, you think the way to leave a legacy is to build an empire.

That's the only way we know. It's kind of like the way we think things are made. But I think all of us are trying to leave a legacy. We're trying to leave an imprint. But a lot of times, I think people think the legacy is an empire. It's the size of the bank account, things of those nature. Yeah. And in the end, they realize it's not. Right. I mean, some of the most poignant things are said on deathbeds, right? And people don't, they're not celebrating the fact that they left a buttload of money to their family.

No, my mom was pretty happy she left a buttload. Did she? I can tell you that. That's how she got her fulfillment. Well, you know, we could argue that all day long. But the fact of matter is, what we're talking about is, I do believe that people sense that there's this whole idea of purpose that things are bigger than them, and that really the greatest fulfillment we have is using our purpose for the service of others. I think when we get past all the other stuff, we do realize that we are here for the service of others.

That in itself will change your life because it gets the focus off of you. But realizing, like, I just love that you are, I mean, we've pursued this separately, but we end up in the same place where it's like, I need to be a voracious student of who I am. Yeah. Isn't that the truth? I just need to go deep and I just need to understand myself at the deepest part of who I am. Because the greater, I don't know if I've told you this story, but so like six months after my mom died, Perry had me come to one of his live events.

And I'm sitting here with a note, but just like that, I start drawing this circle. And then I draw this bigger circle. And I hear this word fit around. I'm like, what is that? So I just write the word fit around and like sit there and look at it. And at lunch, Perry's like, hey, Bob, he's like, anything you want to talk about? He said, give me like a half hour after lunch. I'm like, I showed him, I'm like, well, I want to talk about this. I don't know what it is, but I'll see what it is. Perry's like, okay.

So I go up to the whiteboard, I draw a little circle, I draw a big circle. And I wrote the words fit around. And I just started to get a conscious stream of whatever. And I said, Most of your life you are taught to fit in and you go around as this puzzle piece and you try to fit in. Where do I fit in perfectly? Where do I fit in? And you never quite feel comfortable. What we are actually designed to do is to stay centered. Self-centered is a positive word, not a negative word. Center yourself and then create life around you.

You being centered needs you know who you are. You're in your power. You realize you're connected to source. You are going to be of greater service to people by being self-centered and knowing who you are and creating the world around you. And if everybody did that, We would be in such greater service to each other. When you are self-centered, you're confident. You're aware. You know who you are. And when you know who you are, your anxiety level is down because you're not freaking out. And you start to recognize, this person needs me.

This person needs me. You're just automatically drawn because that's the way you're designed. We are designed to not be isolated. But everybody says, don't be self-centered. they'll be egotistical, right? We've turned it into negative. So I went on this half-hour rant and what was interesting, Matt, was the entire room was people that were in transition. It was just one of those things. One of those Perry events and everybody was, yeah. And so when Perry goes at the end of the day, like, what was your biggest thing?

It was, Bob's fit around, Bob's fit around, Bob's fit around. And people were crying. And I'm like, okay. So, you know, I had made that choice in 2023, like I'm going to start diving deep into coaching and helping people. Like that was just really, that was me taking a risk by going like, you know, I get this idea, I write it down, I draw it. And it was great that people recognize it. But what that did for me is I had fulfillment because I'm a messenger. And so I get great fulfillment of people getting a concept that I have brought to them.

That closed the loop for me and made me realize like, okay, this stuff that I'm hearing is actually valid and I'm going to start sharing it more boldly. So yeah, I mean, there's certain avenues and certain venues that I want to talk about this stuff that you and I are talking about.

Purpose Factor, Coaching Breakthroughs, and Closing Reflections 1:22:00

But the more I do that, the more I'm authentically aligned. And I'm still working on that. One of the big revelations that has come to me is I have heard and seen and been told, we need your voice in the spirit, right? Like not physically, like I've had that come to me numerous times. And I realized that I have muted my gift for a long time apologizing for the way I am. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I go into these medical conferences now and like, you know, the medical conference is like, and here we have a picture of a cell.

All the lights are turned on. And as you can see in the research, I'll tell you like, when the cell splits, like you sit in the back of the room, you're like, and this is like 10 hours a day. I come in, I'm like, let's go. I'm like, turn the lights on. I got 29 minutes. This is going to be the fastest 29 minutes of your life, and I'm going to change your fucking lives. And I start, and I swear, and people are like, what the hell just happened? Snap them out. It's like, in the past, it would have been like, well, I don't want to rock the boat.

And I'm like, I'm going to rock the boat, I'm going to tip over the tables, and I'm going to get some people off. Well, that's conviction. I tell people, conviction is clarity and confidence. When, like, I believe in this stuff, you believe in this stuff. Absolutely. Right? I have clarity on it. I have confidence in it. That's why I'm really excited to share purpose with people. Like, I'm no longer floundering. Like, this is important. It matters. It's going to change your life. And if I have to, like, persuade you, if I have to knock you over the head, I'm going to get you thinking about your purpose and fulfillment.

Like, it matters to me. I'm convicted of it. You're convicted of this. Absolutely. This matters to you. Absolutely. And you have enough track record and enough people that have gone through this whose lives have been significantly changed. Yes. They've become healers again. They're working less. They're not suicidal. Their relationships improve. Like, they have learned, like, I don't have to do what everybody else tells me I have to do. Classes come to me at events and they come up to me and give me a hug and say, thank you.

Yeah. Like, for what? Forgiving me my husband or wife back. Yeah. Thank you. Yes you like That's the greatest thing in the world. Yeah, I love it Yeah, I mean to me Matt the the greatest thing I could hear at the end of a coaching call Like I said is Bob. Thank you for reminding me who I am Like if that's all I do the rest of my life I'd be happy because I'm connecting people to who they are connecting them back to the source their higher self That's who they are. That's what I love to do. How do people get in touch with you Bob?

Oh my goodness. That's the best way. Let's send them to sparksession.net. Spark, S-P-A-R-K, session, S-E-S-S-I-O-N? Yes. .net. .net, sparksession.net. You could search for me, bobrigneros.com is the same place. He's got a million books. Yeah, I'm evolving. I'm constantly adding to that site. But sparksession.net is really easy to remember. I do these things where I work with people for an hour. And we do things like pull weeds. Like I mentioned Betty at the top of the call. In one hour, we identified that the reason she wasn't willing to accept the fact that she was a badass starter of an industry is because her mom at 12 years old said, you're too big for your britches, Betty.

In one hour, we took that weed. We didn't just cut off at the surface. We went down underneath, pulled that fucking thing out, and threw it out. And she had the best day of her life the day after. 78 years old. That's why I do what I do. Beautiful. Thank you, Bob. Thank you. I've never told you, thank you for being my friend. And thank you for being there from one of the darkest periods of my life. Thank you for creating a safe harbor for me to continue to explore. Thank you for everything that you've done for me and my family.

I consider it an honor to be your friend. I appreciate that. I accept it. And thank you for the tickets to go to the Mark Burley Perfect Game. I still think about that. April of 2007. It was so fucking cold when you picked me up and you go, here's a jacket and I froze my ass off and we watched him bitch. Yeah, with my good friends, Dan and Greg, I can't believe what we got to experience. One of the great things in my life. All right, brother. Love you. You'll come back? Love you too. Yeah. Okay.

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