Most People Don't... But You Do!

Bart Berkey

They may not be smarter. They may not be luckier. They simply "Do" things "Most People Don't". Bart Berkey was a global executive for The Ritz-Carlton for 16 years. He wrote a weekly blog for Hotel Magazine about Service Excellence. He wrote a book, Most People Don't (And Why You Should) Weekly talks with hospitality legends, CEOs, & leaders about moments that change something. Their early influences, motivation, and non-negotiable habitual actions they self mandate. If you lead a team, run a property, plan the meetings, or carry your culture on your back, this one is for you.

  1. 2 days ago

    #249 The Version of You That Got You Here Cannot Get You There | Josh Zolin, CEO of Windy City Equipment Service

    Josh Zolin was a Hollywood stunt man before he became a CEO. He walked away from the film business, started at the bottom of his father's restaurant equipment company as a field technician on minimum wage, and now runs it as President and CEO of Windy City Equipment. In this conversation with Bart Berkey, Josh explains the thing that made all of it possible. Every level of success he reached required a different version of him to show up, and confronting the old version was the hardest work he has ever done. He talks about why he left the stunt world, and it was not about credit or money. It was that he did not like the person he was becoming in order to succeed. He talks about the ten years he spent in the field, getting up at 4:30 in the morning and working a second job because his father refused to pay him more than minimum wage, and about the line that explains why he stayed: he did not like the work, but he liked who he was when he was working. Then he gets practical. Josh handwrites three notebooks every single day. A wins notebook built on four filters, freedom, presence, impact and love. A universal questions notebook that teaches him how to think. And an excavation notebook, where he writes the hard question, the unfiltered answer, the sentence that starts with "the lie I'm telling myself is," and finally "I am the man who." His claim is simple. Do that for a year and you will not be the same person. He also answers the question the show is named for. Why don't most people do this work? Because they mistake uncertainty for something they need to know, and anxiety comes from two things: what we are uncertain about, and what we feel powerless against. Josh is the author of Blue Is The New White, a case for purpose and real earning in the skilled trades, and the host of Everything They Don't Tell You. Find everything at joshzolin.com. In this episode: The one thing Josh does that Most People Don't Why he left the stunt business, and the moment in the mirror Starting as a technician with no silver spoons and no handouts Why fair and the same are not the same thing in a company culture What it means to give someone your present instead of your attention The three notebooks, and the four parts of every excavation entry Why uncertainty and powerlessness are the recipe for intrusive thoughts Blue Is The New White, and the case for the skilled trades Most People Don't... But YOU Do! is hosted by Bart Berkey, who spent 16 years as a global executive with The Ritz-Carlton and now builds HUMANALITY™, a system for making people feel cared for rather than processed. Listen, subscribe and share: https://www.bartaberkey.com/podcast

  2. 3 Sept

    #248 At All Costs. No Matter What. How Ryan Bartlett Built a $100M Brand on Service. | Ryan Bartlett, Co-Founder of True Classic

    SEASON 4, EP. 248 Guest: Ryan Bartlett | Co-Founder & Chairman, True Classic | Los Angeles, California Web: trueclassictees.com LinkedIn: Ryan Bartlett (30,000+ follow EPISODE SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS Ryan Bartlett flunked out of Michigan State, went broke trying to make it as a poker pro in Vegas, worked nightclub VIP rooms in Orlando and LA, and then spent a year quietly researching the most saturated, commoditized category in fashion before deciding to shoot his shot. That company is True Classic, now one of the fastest-growing D2C apparel brands in the world. But this episode is not really about T-shirts. It is about what happens when a founder with a service heart builds a company around the belief that the customer experience matters more than the money. Ryan and Bart connect over Ritz Carlton-level service, the Humanality framework, and a story that started with two canceled orders, a TikTok live comment, and ended with five brand new True Classic shirts showing up at Bart's door unannounced. Ryan talks about the parents who believed in him through every pivot, the stepbrother who reminded him of a promise he made at 19 in the Bahamas, the co-founder who ran with the culture from day one, and why he tells his customer service team to throw the 30-day return window out the window. Every time. No exceptions. At all costs. What You Will Walk Away With At all costs means exactly that. Ryan's customer service mantra is simple: the customer needs to have a good experience, period. Even if True Classic loses money on the transaction. The word of mouth from one bad experience costs far more than the refund. His team knows this without being told twice. Ritz Carlton service is not a hospitality concept. It is a business model. Ryan built True Classic's culture around the same standard Bart learned at the Ritz. Surprise and delight. Notice, anticipate, over-deliver. CSAT score of 4.97 at all times. These were not aspirational goals. They were the baseline. Parents who believe in you change everything. Ryan credits his parents more than any business school, course, or mentor. They backed every instrument, every idea, every pivot. That unconditional belief became the confidence that let him walk into the most saturated category in fashion and know he was going to crush it. Most people get into businesses they do not love. Ryan's fill-in-the-blank answer is the throughline of his entire story: most people start businesses for the opportunity, not the passion. And when year two or three gets brutal, the opportunity is not enough to keep you going. The love is what keeps you going. It was never about the T-shirt. It was about giving 6 million guys the confidence to leave the house feeling good about themselves. That was always the North Star. The revenue followed the mission, not the other way around. Optimization never stops. Ryan lives in what he calls optimization mode — constantly scanning for things that are a 7 out of 10 and figuring out how to make them a 10. His next chapter is not another product. It is teaching the next generation of D2C founders how to build and scale a brand using what he actually learned from doing it, not from repackaging other people's advice.

  3. 28 Aug

    #247 He crashed two cars at 16. Built a $3 billion company fixing everyone else's | Matt Ebert, CEO and Founder of Crash Champions

    At 16, Matt Ebert wrecked his car twice. The first one was totaled. The second time, he was too afraid to file an insurance claim, certain it would cost him his coverage and with it his newfound freedom to drive. So he found a man in town who worked a day job and fixed cars at night in his garage, and asked to be taught. He has been in collision repair ever since. Today he is the founder and CEO of Crash Champions, with more than 650 locations, 11,000 employees, 60,000 cars repaired every month, and $3 billion in revenue. He calls that 5 percent of his market and says it is nowhere near enough. In this episode, recorded at PodCrash Studios in Chicago, Bart Berkey asks Matt the question this show is built on: what do you do that most people don't? What follows is the conversation most CEO interviews never reach. Kmart clothes and split kids' meals. A paper route that taught him to collect, hold, pay, and keep the difference. One hundred thousand dollars cash advanced on credit cards for four Subway franchises that never made money, and a return to the body shop floor to cover the bills. A mind that has never once treated quitting as an option. Matt is candid about the parts that do not fit on a highlight reel. Why he is most comfortable at the bottom of the rollercoaster and most nervous at the top. Why he still cannot sleep. What the drive has cost his wife and his kids, and why he measures the quality of his time with them rather than the quantity. And why, at Crash Champions, repairing the car is only the ante. The real work is trust, delivered to people on the worst day of their week, across 650 locations he cannot personally stand in. His answer to the closing question is one word longer than you expect, and it reframes everything before it: most people don't get curious enough. Most people fix what is broken and move on. Matt Ebert built a company around leaving things better than he found them. Key takeaways Think bigger than the room you are in. Matt's answer to "what do you do that most people don't" was immediate: he thinks bigger, and he pushes the people around him to do the same. It was not there at 16. It got built. The wreck was the doorway. Two crashes at 16 and a fear of losing his driving freedom sent him into a neighbor's garage to learn collision repair. The problem he was trying to avoid became the career. He is not naturally good at anything, and that is the advantage. "I can't sing, I can't dance, I don't have athletic ability." What he learned instead was that he can figure almost anything out if he reads about it, asks about it, and practices it. Better is the whole business. Landscaping, construction, collision repair, all of it is transformation. "I want people to think their life has been better for having me involved in it." Bart's frame for it: easy to be, but better to become. Learn more at mattebert.com and crashchampion.com Listen to PodCrash with Matt Ebert wherever you get your podcasts Follow Matt: LinkedIn, Instagram @mattebertcc, X @MattEbertCC, Facebook @MattEbertCC

  4. 20 Aug

    #246 You Don't Have to Carry It Anymore: Tia Crystal on Healing the Inner Child, Mental Health, and Feeling Safe Again | Guest: Tia Crystal, Author & Founder of Be Wellness Mind

    Episode Summary Some people you meet feel less like new acquaintances and more like a reunion. That's how Bart Berkey describes meeting Tia Crystal — an internationally recognized artist, author, wellness advocate, clinical hypnotherapist, and founder of Be Wellness Mind — whose work has been shown at the United Nations in Geneva. In this warm, wide-ranging conversation, Tia opens up about growing up with severe dyslexia and the self-worth struggles it fed, a message she received at age ten that she wouldn't understand her purpose until forty, and how she became "the living embodiment" of what she now teaches. Key Takeaways You are the success today. Whatever happened before, you go back to old patterns as the empowered adult you already are — not as the wounded child.Safety is the foundation of everything. "If you feel safe inside you, you can do anything." Real change starts by helping your younger self feel safe.Strong is muscle; power is knowing. Strength is effort; power is the quiet certainty of who you already are.Become the observer. ~60,000 thoughts a day, ~90% repetitive, ~80% negative. See a negative thought as a "gremlin" outside you — name the feeling, and it loosens its grip.Stop rereading chapter one. Most people replay the same story to the end, then start it over. It's time to give yourself permission to write a new one.Make peace with worry. You may never delete it — but you can breathe, put your arms around yourself, and lessen its grip instead of numbing it away. Quotable Moments (pull-quotes for the newsletter / social) "Strong is muscle. Power is knowing." "You are the success today, regardless of what happened to you before." "It's time to write a new story. What do you give yourself permission to write?" "The more you run from something, the more it runs after you." "You are the microcosm of the macrocosm. The only way to change the world is to change your little corner of it." Quotable Moments (pull-quotes for the newsletter / social) "Strong is muscle. Power is knowing." "You are the success today, regardless of what happened to you before." "It's time to write a new story. What do you give yourself permission to write?" "The more you run from something, the more it runs after you." "You are the microcosm of the macrocosm. The only way to change the world is to change your little corner of it." Episode Details: Show: Most People Don't… But You Do!Season 4, Episode 246Host: Bart BerkeyGuest: Tia Crystal, Artist, Author, Wellness Advocate, Clinical Hypnotherapist & Founder of Be Wellness MindBook: The Paintbrush (Amazon & Audible)Also: Creator of the animated children's mindfulness series E Me UniConnect: tiacrystal.com · bewellnessmind.com · bewellnesstravel.com

  5. 14 Aug

    #245 The Answer Is Always Yes: How Kaye Gitibin built Go Rentals into hospitality on wheels. | Guest: Kaye Gitibin, CEO & Founder of Go Rentals

    Guest: Kaye Gitibin, CEO and Founder of Go RentalsCompany: Go Rentals (elite mobility rental serving private aviation, 300+ locations, the only rental company recognized by the Forbes Travel Guide)Host: Bart BerkeyEpisode details: Season 4, Ep. 245 Thirty years ago, Kaye Gitibin and his brother Habbas started with seven vans and an idea nobody else in the industry was chasing: what if renting a car felt like checking into a five-star hotel? They called it hospitality on wheels. Today, Go Rentals serves private aviation and luxury travelers across more than 300 locations nationwide, it is the only elite car rental company recognized by the Forbes Travel Guide, and it has never spent a single dollar on advertising. Every bit of growth has come from relationships and referrals. In this conversation with host Bart Berkey, Kaye traces his servant heart back to his mother, who rolled out the red carpet for every guest and cooked what the guest wanted rather than what was convenient. He explains why the answer to every legal and ethical guest request is "yes" (yes, his team once bought a Van Cleef bracelet and sourced an orange G-Wagon on request), why he hires for a "hospitality bone" instead of a resume, and how AI can enhance service by anticipating a guest's needs but can never replace the human touch. Kaye and Bart, a 16-year Ritz-Carlton veteran, connect over a shared belief: in an uncertain, increasingly automated world, the companies that win are the ones that make people feel genuinely cared for. It is a masterclass in noticing, anticipating, and over-delivering, and in taking a client from impressed to obsessed. Key Takeaways Service is the product, not the car. Go Rentals hand-picks its vehicles and keeps every car under 15,000 miles, but Kaye is blunt: guests come for the experience, not the vehicle. A $2,000 hotel room and a $125 room both have a bed. The differentiator is always the service around the thing.The answer is always yes. If a request is legal and ethical, the answer at Go Rentals is yes. That single rule turned a surprise Van Cleef bracelet and an orange G-Wagon into legendary surprise-and-delight moments and lifelong fans.You cannot insert a servant heart, so hire for it. Kaye hires for hospitality instinct over experience. Half the interview is how a candidate treats the receptionist and carries themselves in the lobby. Skills can be trained; a servant heart cannot.Notice, anticipate, over-deliver. Remembering a guest likes red M&Ms, warming the seats before arrival, tracking the plane so the car is already waiting. Small anticipations create outsized loyalty. Their slogan: if the guest has to wait for us, the car is complimentary.Relationships beat advertising. In 30 years, Go Rentals has spent nothing on marketing. Growth has come entirely from referrals and from becoming part of guests' lifestyles, not just their travel day. Learn more about Kaye Gitibin at gorentals.com and follow Go Rentals on LinkedIn.

  6. 6 Aug

    #244 They Said Surgery Was the Only Option. He Built a Company to Prove Them Wrong | Seth Berge, Regenerative Revival

    Seth Berge spent his 30s being comfortable. Good at making money, better than his friend group, never quite pushing past good enough. Then he hit 40, got around the right rooms, and asked himself a question that changed everything: if other people built something great, why not me? Seth is the founder of two regenerative medicine companies: Regenerative Revival, a concierge in-home stem cell therapy service operating in all 50 states, and Precision Biologics, the distribution and contract manufacturing company behind it. He spent eight and a half years giving over 2,000 dinner seminars educating people about regenerative medicine, built a team of 25, and is now scaling both companies after years of finally deciding to go all in. Bart and Seth go deep on what it actually takes to stop half-assing entrepreneurship, what stem cell therapy is and where it actually comes from, why your 43-year-old stem cells are not as good as a newborn's, and how Seth's entire business model is built around three things most people in his industry skip: education, access, and affordability. Bart uses his own neck surgery and ongoing pain management as a real-time case study, and Seth walks him through exactly what a treatment would look like, what it costs, and why the recovery time is almost nothing compared to surgery. This episode is equal parts mindset conversation and health education, and it delivers on both. What You Will Walk Away With Most people don't go for it. That is the whole problem. Seth spent a decade being comfortable before he realized comfortable was a choice, not a ceiling. The only thing separating him from the entrepreneurs he admired was discipline and experience. One of those he could buy with mentorship. The other he had to earn by showing up. Get in rooms where you are not the smartest person. Seth credits this shift more than any strategy. Paying for coaches, attending David Meltzer events, surrounding himself with people who had done more than him. David Meltzer's line landed hard: be interested, not interesting. Business is a sport. Play it like one. Seth is an ex-athlete who played every sport to win. When he finally brought that same intensity to entrepreneurship, everything changed. He now has 25 people relying on his company. That weight is heavy and motivating at the same time. Your body already knows how to heal. It just needs the right tools. Regenerative medicine is not magic. Stem cells and exosomes from umbilical cord tissue after a C-section birth give the body the youngest, most active healing agents available, ones your own body stopped producing at full capacity decades ago. The science is real, the FDA guidelines are strict, and the results for soft tissue repair are documented. Education, access, and affordability are the three things the industry skips. Most people have heard of stem cell therapy but have no idea what it is, where to get it, or what it costs. Seth built Regenerative Revival around solving all three. Concierge in-home service. All 50 states. Packages starting at $5,000, significantly less than most clinics because Seth controls the manufacturing. The goal is to fix the root cause, not manage the symptom. Cortisone injections mask pain. Surgery replaces parts. Regenerative therapy, at its best, repairs the actual tissue defect so the problem does not come back. One treatment. No brick-and-mortar overhead. A nurse practitioner comes to your home in two to three weeks. Guest: Seth Berge | Founder, Regenerative Revival & Precision Biologics | Minneapolis, MinnesotaWeb: regenerativerevival.com or gutstemcells.comLinkedIn: Seth Berge Learn more about Seth Berge and Regenerative Revival at regenerativerevival.com or gutstemcells.com and connect with Seth Berge on LinkedIn. Most People Don't. But You DO!

  7. 6 Aug

    #243 Stop Waiting for the Right Room. Stacey Lauren Built One | Stacey Lauren, Founder of Do The Thing Collab Network

    When Stacey Lauren was eight years old, a girl who was deaf came to her house and fell in love with her Smurf collection. Stacey gave it away. All of it. Every last Smurf. Her mom was stunned. Stacey did not think twice. That instinct, giving without being asked, never left her. It drove 20 years of running a staffing company with 1,260 combined employees. It drove the identity crisis she fell into when she exited. And it drove the question she could not stop asking: why do so many people know what they want to do and still not do it? The answer she found was not about motivation or mindset. It was about rooms. The right rooms, full of people chasing the same goal, change everything. Not your friends. Not your family. People who are doing the thing alongside you. That discovery became a podcast, a methodology, a movement, and now the Do The Thing Collab Network, a platform connecting people around shared goals, community engagement, and fundraising that ties it all together. Bart and Stacey talk through her Comfort Circles framework live, using Bart's real-life event that evening in Washington DC as the case study. They unpack why most communities think people are connecting when they are not, why vulnerability in a Senate building hallway can outlast the meeting that sparked it, and why the person who needs your message does not care about your shower cap. This episode is for anyone who has been doing the thing alone and wondering why it feels so hard. What You Will Walk Away With You need people with the same goal, not just people who love you. Friends and family will cheer for you. But the people who are doing the same hard thing you are doing right now are the ones who will keep you from quitting. Stacey calls it Like Gold. Find your rooms. Horse mode is not failure. It is the first step. The Comfort Circles framework begins with the horse: non-verbal, not yet engaging, camera off or hanging near the bathroom at the networking event. Knowing you are in horse mode means you stay in the room. That is the whole win. Most communities are connecting at the surface. That is the problem. Showing up to events, doing the activities, checking the boxes does not mean people are actually connecting. Real engagement requires a shared goal inside the community, not just shared attendance. Stop doing it for other people. Stacey went live for 80 episodes with her camera off because she was scared of how she looked. The shift happened when she realized the person who needs your message does not care what you look like. Get your voice out. That is the whole job. Education by contribution is the secret to community. When people share their ideas out loud in a room, not just receive information, the room transforms. Stacey calls it the E in her I'm Game framework. Bart saw it live in a Senate hallway when 99 out of 100 people stayed after the panel ended because someone was finally being real. Doing the thing and having your voice in it are two different things. Stacey always did the thing: sold books door to door, co-founded a company at 25, scaled it for two decades. But she did it without her voice for most of it, doing what she thought others needed instead of what she was actually built for. That gap is where most people live. Closing it is the work. Learn more about Stacey Lauren and Do The Thing Collab Network at dothethingcollaboration.com. Connect with Stacey Lauren on LinkedIn and find the Do The Thing podcast on all major podcast platforms. Most People Don't. But You DO!

  8. 30 Jul

    #242 Reinvent Yourself Before Life Forces You To | Guest: Craig Siegel, Founder of CLS

    Episode Description For 13 years, Craig Siegel measured his life in external wins, the number in the bank account, the apartment in New York City, the next goal. And none of it made him feel like enough. In this episode, the Wall Street Journal bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and founder of CLS (Cultivate Lasting Symphony) tells Bart Berkey how a "dark night of the soul" and a global pandemic forced the pause that changed everything, and why he now trusts "invisible progress" over the visible kind. Craig and Bart who found his own forced pause through a heart attack, dig into a truth most people avoid: we wait until life pauses us instead of pausing on purpose. Craig shares the exact practices that rebuilt his life from the inside out: starting the day with "the most important meeting of your day," flipping the script from consume to create, reframing challenging days as the greatest opportunities for growth, and reinventing yourself before life forces you to. It's a fast, quote-packed conversation about trading the exhausting chase for alignment, where success becomes an expression of who you are instead of something you're constantly chasing. Key Takeaways Peace creates success — not the reverse. Craig spent years believing success would create peace. The breakthrough was realizing it's the other way around.Trust invisible progress. Track the internal metrics — Am I calmer? more generous? less reactive? more present? Focus on the roots and the fruits follow.Chasing external wins is a losing game. Like a drug, it's a high, then a "bye." It never fills you, because it doesn't measure fulfillment.Most people don't pause voluntarily. They wait until life pauses them — a heart attack, a pandemic, a rock bottom. Don't wait for the crash to reevaluate.Start with the most important meeting of your day. A 10-minute morning check-in sets the tone so you lead the day proactively instead of reacting to everyone else's noise.Before you consume, create. Reaching for the phone first thing asks "World, tell me who I need to be today." Flip it: create before you consume, reflect before you react.Challenging days are the opportunity. Reframed through Kabbalah, the hardest days are where the soul grows, ascends, and transforms.Reinvent before life forces you to. Reinvention isn't becoming someone else — it's becoming more of who you really are. The world needs more aligned people, not more successful ones.

About

They may not be smarter. They may not be luckier. They simply "Do" things "Most People Don't". Bart Berkey was a global executive for The Ritz-Carlton for 16 years. He wrote a weekly blog for Hotel Magazine about Service Excellence. He wrote a book, Most People Don't (And Why You Should) Weekly talks with hospitality legends, CEOs, & leaders about moments that change something. Their early influences, motivation, and non-negotiable habitual actions they self mandate. If you lead a team, run a property, plan the meetings, or carry your culture on your back, this one is for you.

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