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Final Thoughts with Master Storyteller, Greg Reid

- [Scott] We have got an amazing guest today who is going to wrap things up for us. His name is Greg Reid and for all of you that don't know Greg Reid, he is the founder of Secret Knock, ranked by Forbes the number one conference for entrepreneurs in the United States. He spent the last 10 years traveling around the world along with the Napoleon Hill Foundation interviewing the best of the best. The top entrepreneurs, innovators, athletes, entertainers from around the world, and breaking down their secret to success. He's going to wrap things up for us. It's going to be incredibly inspirational. Let's give a big round of applause for Greg Reid. - [Male] Bring it on, Greg. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it and I thank you. Get in. - [Greg] Thank you very much. - Have a good one. - Hi, everyone. So, yeah, my name is Greg and I've got the greatest gig on the planet. I get to travel the world to meet the most powerful and influential people and tell their story in book and film. When the first...

people I had an opportunity to go face to face with was a gentleman named John Schwarz who invented something called Super String Theory. If you ever watched "The Big Bang Theory," Sheldon's always working on it. But this one gentleman came up with a discovery and I sat him down one day and he gave me the greatest inspiration I've ever had in my life. I asked him, I say, "What do successful people do different than other people?" And he looked at me and said, "That's easy." He said, "Successful people seek counsel where failures listen to opinion." I said, "Well, what's the difference?" He goes, "Opinion is based on ignorance, lack of knowledge, inexperience, like maybe a family friend who's never done what you're about to venture upon. Counsel is based on wisdom, knowledge, mentorship. People who've paved the way." If you go to a family friend and say, "Hey, I'm going to write a book." They might talk you out of it because they've never done it themselves. They're giving you their opinion. If you go to Mark Victor Hansen who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul, sold a hundred million copies and say, "Mark, I want to write a book." He'll say, "Great. Before you get started, here's what you need to know," and give you counsel based on wisdom, knowledge, mentorship. John Schwarz said, "If we would spend our activity only seeking counsel and ignoring people's opinion, that's the day your life would change." And no story illustrates that better than the first chapter of Think and Grow Rich, "Three Feet From Gold." "Three Feet From Gold." There was a gold miner named R.U. Darby who goes out West and starts digging. Gets gold fever but knows nothing about the business. He digs a hole and sure enough, there's a couple nuggets. He gets excited. He goes home and he buries it and he tells his family and friends. They pool their money and chip in to buy equipment to pull it in by the ore cart and sure enough, the first cart comes out and it's filled with gold. Woo-hoo, they're rich, right? But then the gold ran out. He kept digging, but there was no more gold. Defeated, he walks out of the mine and says, "I quit. I'm done," and sees a junk man walking by. He goes, "Hey buddy. Give me $200. I'll sell you this mine, all the equipment. I'm going back home to Maryland." Well, the junk man looking at the equipment realizing it was worth thousands because all the family chipped in said, "Of course. You've got yourself a deal." Darby goes home defeated. But the junk man, he seeks counsel. Goes to a local engineer and says, "What happened? This cat hit gold and ran out." The engineer starts laughing. He goes, "That's Mining 101. Everyone knows that gold runs in a straight line. That's called the Gold Vein." What Darby did is he came on one side, hit treasure, and popped back into dirt. He goes, "Go back to where they discovered the gold, go 3 feet, 90 degrees the opposite way. You'll tap back into the mine." And sure enough, pulled millions of dollars out. Millions upon millions. That still fills Fort Knox today. But the moral is, how many times have we or someone we know quit one class short from a degree or sales or marketing? It's easy to quit, but it's the people that go that extra three feet, they're the ones that we tell the stories about today. I had an opportunity to sit down with a guy named Dave Liniger. Again, you might not know him, but you'll know the business he started. I said, "You know, you wanted to get into real estate back in 1970. Was it hard?" He goes, "God, it was the most brutal experience I ever went through." He goes, "It was the other economic collapse. All the money ran out, my investors... I didn't know what to do." He said, "For two years, every phone call that came in was from a bill collector." When the phone would ring, he'd run across the hall and pick it up so his secretary wasn't put on the spot. The third year, it got so bad they threw him in jail, calling him a fraud and a liar. I said, "What'd you do?" He says, "I took my attitude from trying to prove you wrong to something more important and prove myself right. I knew I wasn't what they were calling me." He said, "I had the courage to pick up the phone and call those bill collectors back and I said, 'I'll be honest. All the money's gone. I'm broke. I don't got $50 grand I owe you, but I have $50. I'll send it to you with a promise I won't quit. Don't give up on me.'" He says, "I won't give up on my dream." He said, "I called every bill collector every month until the fourth year. Someone finally believed in me and bought the first business called the Re/Max Real Estate." He goes, "I'm nothing but how many peoples' lives were changed because I wouldn't quit?" How do we know that someone in this audience isn't about to give up on their own dream because Visa was calling them during break? From there I had an opportunity to go face to face with one person, a philosopher, a poet, one of my greatest interviews of all time, Evander Holyfield. You know, the boxing legend? I went to him, I say, "Evander," I go, "How did you win more championships than anyone else on planet Earth?" And he looked at me and said, "That's easy." He said, "I have a higher standard." I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, I showed up early. I left late. I invented exercises. I had a higher standard and I won more championships than anyone ever will." He goes, "Where could you be outside the ring? If you were a pet groomer or stockbroker or insurance sales executive, and you had a higher standard." I said, "But didn't it hurt being in a fight?" He says, "Yeah, it hurts. But when you're in a fight, you don't focus on the pain. You don't focus on the blows. As soon as you focus on the pain, you end up on your back knocked out. But that's what people do outside the ring. They focus on gas prices, war, economy, and they wonder why they'd never become a champion." And he pulled me in tight. An Adonis of a man missing half an ear, bitten off by Mike Tyson, right? He says, "You know what the funny thing is?" He says, "When you do win the championship," he said, "everyone comes to their feet and they chant your name. They raise your hand in victory and the guy puts a big, shining belt around your waist. And at that moment, and at that second, you don't feel even one of the punches you took along the journey. But the guy in the losing locker room will have every excuse, feel every bruise for the rest of their life, wishing they had higher standard." So in closing, look, I don't know everyone watching this, but I do know this about you. You are the person that everyone else comes to for counsel. Everyone else thinks that you are the person that's got it all together, but you're just like the rest of us. You're a beautiful, shiny, duck on top, but underneath, you're freaking out like everyone else. But the bottom line is this. You've been taking care of your friends and your peers and your co-workers. And that's cool. Know why? Because you're a leader. But it's 2017. I invite you, I challenge you to draw a line in the sand and step across and say, "It's my turn. For years, I've been watching other people, not as smart as me, have more success. That day ends today." You draw a line in the sand and you step across and you say, "It is my turn. I've got that idea for a book or a business or entrepreneurial spirit. I will not take it to my grave." Just like Les Brown says, "You got greatness inside of you." But sometimes we have to fill our own cups so full that we can feed the world with what flows over. You draw a line in the sand and you step across and you say, "It is my turn. I will be a great steward of my prosperity and share it with those around me." You draw a line in the sand and you step across and you say, "It is my turn." And when you want to say die and throw in the towel, that's when you kick it in the most. You could literally be just three feet from gold. - Big, big hand for Greg Reid. - Incredible. Makes me want to do more high kicks. I was doing off stage, I'm over there... Evander Holyfield, the guy was hugging you with the bit off ear. That's kind of a cool story. - Bloody ear, yeah, yeah. - I want to say thank you all for tuning in. Thousands of registrations from all over the world. I want you to know, we'll email you this information that Scott's going to share in just a moment here. Definitely, remember the spirit of today is entrepreneurial. You can do it. There are more tools now than ever before. The seas are calm relative to every period that precedes this one and the opportunities are there for you. We heard from women in business, we heard about the greatest innovators, we're talking about going to the moon. I still can't get Naveen's moonshot out of my brain. But tell everyone... - I want to run through a wall right that... - I know. Don't...that's brick. Don't, don't do that one. These other ones over here are okay. But, please, maybe give some folks at home the resources or a couple places to go to find a little bit more before we call it a day. - Sure, well, again, we want to thank all of you for joining us all week for National Entrepreneurship Week. For more on this week to find great offers, amazing content provided by Microsoft and over 200 community partners. These are folks like USA Today, Dun & Bradstreet, and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Go to EntrepreneurshipWeek.com. Again, EntrepreneurshipWeek.com, or on Twitter @WinInBiz. Also, a few things that we do want to highlight. If you go to Office.com/WinInBiz, you can get two months of free business premium from Office, which is pretty cool. - Score. - And EntrepreneurshipWeek.com, you can also find great offers, 10% discounts on select Surface and Windows 10 devices. We want to make sure that all of you stay tuned and watch out for the new 10 for 10 series, provided by Microsoft. This is 10 companies with under 10 employees doing amazing things to change the world and the first one is going to feature Melissa and Phillip from Parachut. - Nice, nice. - Which is super cool. - Love that story. - Also, check out new episodes of "Business and Burgers." - That's right. That's your show. You shouldn't plug your show. Check out his new show, "Business and Burgers." - I was waiting. I was waiting. - I'm coming in. I got your back. - And finally, we just again, we want to say thank you. If you missed all that that I just said, doesn't matter. If you registered, we're going to email that to you. - Yes. - If you're here in the audience, we're going to email that to you. EntrepreneurshipWeek.com, again, thank you all so much. Go out there, build amazing companies that change the world. - Thank you, guys. - Thank you.