Woodrow Wilson once said, “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
Greg Reid is a man who is absolutely enriching the world, and is poised to enrich millions and millions of people around the world, as he’s about to release a new film. Well-known for his kinetic energy level and his contagious enthusiasm for life, Greg is CEO and founder of Work Smart, Inc. and the author of The Millionaire Mentor and The Millionaire Mentor Corporation.
Greg is also a partner in Wish Entertainment, Inc., which is now producing the soon to be released film, Pass It On. Greg has more than twenty years experience in sales and marketing. He’s used many of the real life lessons he learned as the basis for his book projects.
Devoted to giving back to the community, Greg has received many awards for his civic activities. He routinely mentors youth in the San Diego area on positive thinking and achieving dreams. He’s also an in-demand national public speaker and his motivation talks to corporations, universities and charitable organizations are considered one-of-a-kind events.
He’s the author of The Millionaire Mentor which is an anecdotal story of a mentoring student which teaches some of the core principles of success in an engaging and fun, fun way. Greg has also been a contributor or featured in dozens of other books.
He has shared the stage with people like Zig Ziglar, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, Denis Waitley, Deepak Chopra, Tom Hopkins, Jim Rohn and the legendary Charlie “Tremendous” Jones among many others. It’s Greg’s enlightened message (the way to get what you want in your life is to help others get what they want) which landed him an interview with the Healthy Wealthy nWise Passion Series.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Greg, thank you so much for joining us, it’s really an honor and a privilege. First of all, Greg, tell us what is the role that your passions, the things that are most important to you in your life, have played in leading you to the work that you do today.
GREG REID: It’s very interesting. I believe that we are a direct reflection of the people we hang around with and we associate ourselves with. As a very young man, I surrounded myself some very intellectual people who mentored me. It’s one of my goals and one of my dreams and aspirations to share the messages that I learned from other people. So that’s what I started doing by living my passion of mentorship.
A lot of people think I got my nickname the “Millionaire Mentor” because I mentor millionaires and only work with big corporations, where, in reality, I mentor inner city kids in San Diego. I happen to be pretty successful in business, so as my involvement grew and I’d go pick up the kids in the brand new sports car, they’d say “Hey look! Here comes the Millionaire Mentor!” That name, that badge stuck with me and it’s been an honor to carry that out throughout the country, showing people that it’s such a cool thing to pass on what you learn with other people.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: It really is. What a great nickname to be given.
GREG REID: Yes, absolutely wonderful.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: I know you didn’t start off as the Millionaire Mentor. Would you tell us the story of how you made your first dollar following your passions? In other words, how did you get started earning a living doing what you love?
GREG REID: I’ve always done that, I guess. I’m one of the lucky ones because when I was a young man, I never graduated high school and I didn’t go to college. I was just a regular guy and my parents wanted to send me to college wherever I wanted to go. I said “No, I want to get into sales and marketing. I’m a real people person and that’s what I want to do.” They said, “Greg, you have to go to school. You’ll never make money just talking to people.”
I remember I got my first sales job and about two years into it, I was making about $100,000 a year in my twenties and I sent my W2 home and said, “Dear Mom and Dad, remember when you said…” It became the joke of the family where you proved that when you follow what you love to do, you could do anything you want and the money will follow.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: That’s so fabulous. Will you talk a little bit more about what, in your experience, the relationship is between passion and getting success? And I know that from your perspective, passion alone isn’t enough. Will you talk to us a little bit about that?
GREG REID: Absolutely. I created something called the Success Equation. To simply put it, P + T x A2 = Success. In fact, we do a big segment in our film about that, but what it says is that this is not a fancy math test.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: But before you go on, Greg, I know some of our listeners are taking notes, so would you repeat that formula again slowly?
GREG REID: Absolutely. P + T x A2 = Success. Now, I want to be very clear, this is something that I refer to as a 100% rule. You see, a 99% rule is this –you do something 99% of the time and this is what happens. For example, Chris, let’s say you’re going to go to dinner tonight and the waitress comes by and says, “Don’t touch the plate, it’s hot.” What are the chances you’ll touch the plate anyway? About 99%, right?
CHRIS ATTWOOD: About 99%, right.
GREG REID: Exactly. So I always give them just that loophole. People who follow this Success Equation 100% of the time will succeed. There is no variation. Here’s how it works: The first letter is “P” and “P” stands for what you just brought up – Passion. It’s passion. What you would do if you could do it for free? If money wasn’t an option – you’ve heard it a million times — what would do if you could wake up with a burning desire, you had a hundred million dollars and you didn’t have to worry about work, what would you do? Would you work with animals? Would you mentor kids? Would you become an athlete? What would you really do?
That’s very, very important. However, this is where my formula continues, because you see these late night infomercials with these guys who say, “Go find your passion!” Well, I’ve discovered, unfortunately, it’s not enough. You might be saying “What?” It’s just not enough, because passion alone is not enough to carry you through. It’s “P” plus “T”, and the “T” stands for – you can tell them, Chris – we talked about it earlier.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Oh, you’re going to put me on the spot.
GREG REID: Talent, talent!
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Talent – that’s right. You have to have talent.
GREG REID: You know what? You’ve seen all these people on these singing contests like American Idol. They have a lot of passion, but a lot of them are lacking talent. Right? So, the bottom line is that you have to have your passion combined with your talent, and then you multiply it by A-squared.
The first “A” is Action. You have to do something. So many people might have talent, they might even have their passion, but they don’t move forward with it. Or one person has talent, but they don’t have passion for it and they wonder why they fail. You need all of these sequences to fall – your passion with your talent takes action and the “A-squared”, the second “A.” Here is one of the most important things, listen up – Association.
Again, you are a direct reflection of the five people that you’re hanging around the most right now and your income is the average of those five people. If you hang around with negative people, you’re going to be negative. If you hang around with positive people, likewise, you’ll be positive. So you are a direct reflection of the people you hang around yourself.
In fact, in business I sought out the greatest business minds I could find because I wanted to be mentored by the very best. And, what do you know, I became successful in business. When I wanted to write books, I went to Barnes & Noble, bought the best-selling books, called them up, asked them how they did it and I did the same for myself. It’s very important to surround yourself with the right people.
So let’s see how this lines up. P + T x A2 = Success. There’s a young man I worked with. His name is Lee. He lives in San Diego; he’s twenty-three years old. He is an electrical engineer and he didn’t like his job, but he made a lot of money. He had that “golden handcuffs.” And I went up to him and I said, “Let’s do your Success Equation. On one piece of paper, I want you to write one through ten, what’s your passion? What would you do if you could do it for free? On another piece of paper, write down your talents.” And he shared them with me.
I said, “On one side it says your talent is cooking. I’ve eaten your cooking, let’s cross that off. And you cross one off from each side until you’re left with just two — one from the passion and one from the talent, because whatever is left is your true burning desire.” And he said, “Well, my passion over here is art. I love art. It’s what I always wanted to do, but my parents wouldn’t let me do it.” He said, “My talent is engineering. Heck, I went to college for it and I’m pretty good at it.”
I said, “How could you take action with the right people?” And he looks at me and he says, “Tranqwall”, and I said, “What?” He said, “Tranqwall. They’re a waterfall that you build inside the wall, so when you walk into your home or business, you see it trickling down the side.” So I said, “Let’s go make them.” And he said, “I can’t. I’m an engineer. I’ve got golden handcuffs.”
About two months go by and we have lunch one day. He is sad and depressed, and I asked, “What’s wrong?” He says, “I got laid off.” I said, “Right on!” and he said, “What?” I said, “Right on! This is your chance to do your Success Equation.” He gave himself six months to follow through. Three months into making these Tranqwalls, ABC gets a hold of him. Have you ever seen that show called Extreme Home Makeover, where they tear down a house and rebuild it?
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Yes, absolutely
GREG REID: They asked him to put Tranqwalls throughout all the houses. He was on four of the best-of episodes. Now the kid is working full time making waterfalls for all these businesses and all these homes, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, at 25-years-old. Think about it. He is living his passion, combining with his talent, and taking action with the right people and what do you know. He just found his purpose.
You can do it, too. The bottom line is, when we’re done with this call, anyone who emails me and wants me to work with you on this for free, I’ll actually help you do so because the whole goal of mentorship is to give back. But, the bottom line is, when you combine your passion with your talent, take action with the right people, the right things will happen.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Now you just made a very incredible offer, and you can’t make an offer on this show without following through. I know, of course, you would follow through, Greg, so people who want to take advantage of your offer, how do they do that?
GREG REID: You email me at Greg@alwaysgood.com. My website is www.AlwaysGood.com . Can tell you the story how I got the idea of AlwaysGood.com?
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Sure.
GREG REID: I was at the grocery store and I was walking through, checking out like everyone else, and the girl checking me out kept saying, “How’re you doing,” “How’re you doing?” to everyone in line. And I noticed that she didn’t care, and people going through the line kept saying, “Fair,” “Fine,” “Fair to middling.” Someone said the double negative, “Not bad.” I said “Holy smoke. I’m going to come up with a double positive.”
So I went home and I wrote down, “Supercalifragilistic, and all these crazy things. The next day I went back to the grocery store and went through the line. She says, “How’re you doing?” “How’re you doing?” She gets to me and I looked at her and said, “Always good.” And she looked up and said “What?” The person right next to me said, “What do you mean? How can someone always be good?” I said, “Just like Abraham Lincoln said, ‘People are as happy as they make up their minds to be.’ ” And I decided to start living my life that way and I created my entire website around Always Good.com.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: What a great story. Greg, somehow I have the feeling that you are always good, you know.
GREG REID: Always good.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Always good.
GREG REID: It beats the alternative, doesn’t it?
CHRIS ATTWOOD: It absolutely does. Now, you wrote a book called The Millionaire Mentor. You’re called the Millionaire Mentor. Talk with us a little bit about why a mentor is important to achieving success and how do you figure out what you need in terms of a mentor.
GREG REID: Well, again, I love telling stories. And if you don’t mind, I’d love to tell a story.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Please. We love stories.
GREG REID: Thank you. Well, you’re talking about my mentorship in San Diego, and I’ve talked about how I worked with these inner city kids. I can tell you an example of how one kid I worked with, how one person can make a difference. It’s kind of a powerful story. His name was David and I called him David the Goliath. He was six-foot four at only 14 years old. His father passed away and he didn’t positive role models. He got arrested for stealing a bicycle and carrying a pocketknife to school. A no-no, but he was hanging out with a bad kid.
I noticed, through the mentorship program he got thrown into, that he looked different. He had something in his eye. And I asked him, “Do you really want to have a different view of things?” And he said “Absolutely. I just need someone to show me how.” So every week I’d pick him up and we would go to the movies, arcade and we’d bond for a while.
About two months into it, I took him over to K-Mart and we’re walking around and we strategically ended up over at the bike section. I said, “Hey, do yourself a favor, Dave. Go pick out a bike, any bike you want and you can have it.” And he said, “I can’t get a bike. I don’t have any money.” I said, “Fine, let’s leave.” He said, “No, what are you talking about?” I said, “Go pick out a bike, any bike and you can have it.”
For thirty minutes this kid wheels every bike up and down the aisle and he comes over like a game show host and says, “Ta-daa! This is the bike I want!” I said, “You can have that bike.” And he said, “But how can I do it?” I said, “Rather than focusing on what you can’t do, what can you do?” He said, “I can mow lawns, I can wash windows.” What do you know? Isn’t it amazing how we can come up ideas once we have a reason why? The easiest way to hit a goal is to give yourself a goal to hit.
And so he put that bike on layaway. Every week when I’d pick him up I’d ask, “Where do you want to go? The movies, arcade?” He would say, “Kmart!” And he would pay down on that bike. Two months go by – two months – and we are walking out of that store and he’s pushing that bike that he earned himself. I look over at him and I say, “Dave, I want to ask you a question. I’m a pretty bright guy, but how in the world did you make that much money that fast?”
He said, “I did what you told me about duplication.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I can only do so much myself. I was making ten dollars a yard mowing the lawn. The other kids were sitting on the curb getting mad at me and jealous because I was making all this money.” I said, “What did you do?” He said, “I hired the entire neighborhood at five dollars each to mow the lawn for me.” The next thing you know, he had an entire crew mowing lawns. What ended up happening, it turned into a residual base where every time he would do another yard, the other kids would do it and he would make money just setting the job up. I said, “Man, that’s amazing.”
We were pushing the bike out and I said, “You’re feeling pretty confident right now.” The movie The Titanic was out and he said, “King of the world!” We were loading the bike up in the back of the truck and I said, “Let me ask you something.” He said, “What?” I said, “How would you like it if someone stole that bike from you like you did to them?” He said, “Wow – I don’t want to do that anymore.”
So he decided to turn his life around right there. He started mentoring other kids. He never got in trouble anymore. In fact, listen to this one: Channel 10, the local San Diego News did a segment on him as the most outstanding child who turned his life around. The mentorship program that I met him through asked him to come and serve on the Advisory Board where he sits right next to the cop who arrested him in the first place.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Wow, cool.
GREG REID: That’s the power of mentorship.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Yes, what a powerful story. Now, he got thrown into a mentorship program. But what about our listeners who don’t have a mentorship program to get thrown into? How do they go about finding a mentor, finding the right mentor for them?
GREG REID: There’s a mentor always around you. It’s that old reticular activator system. The bottom line is this: when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Has anyone ever talked about the reticular activator system?
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Please, no. Please talk about it.
GREG REID: Okay. What that is, is this: if I right now say, “Brand new red Honda” and you went out and bought a brand new red Honda, as soon as you got on the freeway, what would you see? Brand new red Hondas. They’re always there, but you didn’t notice them because you weren’t looking for them.
That’s a lot of these Laws of Attraction people are talking about – that’s a lot of what that is. All of sudden, you start thinking about something and start noticing it and you think you attracted it. Actually, a lot of it was already around us, we are just now tuning into it. That is where the saying comes from: When a student is ready, a teacher will appear. They’re always around us. We just weren’t looking for them. The fact of the matter is, a mentor is right around you, right now. All we have to do is start tuning into it and they will magically appear.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: So, if, having listened to this call, someone says, “I’m ready for a mentor,” and they start just being aware and alert, you’re saying they’re going to find a mentor who is appropriate for them?
GREG REID: I guarantee it. Remember this, mentorship can be virtual, through the books you read, the CD’s you listen to, the seminars you attend. But, more importantly, you can have multiple mentors, meaning I have a mentor in my tennis game, because I’m a pretty good tennis player, so I have a tennis coach. I have one with me on my finances. I have one with me on my personal relationships. I have one I work with on different things. So, the realities, are that we can have multiple mentors in our lives.
For example, I would not ask my tennis instructor financial questions, quite frankly. I would ask him how to hit a mean backhand. We have to be aware of that. So I believe in multiple mentors in multiple areas of our lives. Yes, it could be someone who’s right next door, a coach, a teacher, a friend, somebody else out there who can help teach and guide you. Again, as soon as we tune into it, magically they will suddenly appear.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Fabulous. In this context, you have connected with a whole large group of people. In fact, I think it’s about 70 if I recall correctly, who are some very serious mentors in their own right and are part of, in one way or another, this amazing film you’re creating, which I think some people say is Pay It Forward meets The Secret. The film is called Pass It On. Will you tell us the story of how this film came to be?
GREG REID: Yes, it was amazing. About five months ago, I was sitting in a car – the car that I’m talking in right now. I was talking to a friend of mine and we had just watched The Secret. I said, “Gosh, you know what? Those are all of our friends. I love what they said, except I want to share something more.” He said, “Well, let’s do a movie,” and I said, “Fantastic.” He said, “Who do you know?” and I said, “Who do you know?” We compared our lists and we said we had the makings of actually doing this.
We decided to set out on an adventure where we would ask ten to fifteen of our closest friends what they did, the actual action steps, toward the life of abundance in four categories: Wealth, Inspiration, Success and Happiness. We realized that if you asked a thousand people how they became wealthy, you’ll get a thousand variations, but you would also find common denominators that all of them did. That’s what the movie is about.
We share the actual five steps. It doesn’t make any difference if you are an Evander Holyfield or a billionaire, or a congressman, or a movie star. None of these people know each other. They all became wealthy. They did it different ways, but they all followed the same exact five steps. It’s the same way for inspiration, for having an idea for a book, a play, an invention, whatever, from taking it from your head to the market place. There’s a certain sequence you can follow, the same with Success, and the same with Happiness. That’s what this movie is about, the actual sequence steps that anyone can follow to go from where they are to where they want to be.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: Very cool. Why is it called Pass It On?
GREG REID: Because the concept is this: it’s mentorship, the most important thing in the world. I’m going to go back to the Laws of Attraction because I’m a huge fan and this is our big belief. However, there are the next steps that come into play. The Law of Attraction is all about attracting and attaining. It’s about getting. I believe the people who understand this, once you get it, you really can’t have anything until you share it and give it away with other people. We decided to create an entire movement about yes, we want you to learn it, and then we want you to live it and then share it with somebody else.
What we’re doing is not just making a movie, we’re creating a movement. What we want to do is get people so excited that they can take this information in this film, apply to their life, learn it, and then share it with someone else so someone else can do it. In fact, I don’t want you to hold on to your DVD. We’re the weirdest people in the world. We want you to just give it to someone. We want you to pass it on. The whole idea is the more we share, the more we give away, the more that we’ll keep for ourselves.
CHRIS ATTWOOD: What a great concept. Can you tell us a little bit more about when people watch this movie what are they going to see? You told us these four areas. What is it they’re going to learn? Can you give us a little preview?
GREG REID: Yes, I’ll give you an example. And this is what I’m talking about, because people may want me to explain more. Imagine that a lot of people are talking about thinking or wishing for something and it magically appearing. Well, we believe that that’s the first step. Let’s say I’m sitting in my house and I say I want a fruit tree in my back yard. That’s the first step about manifesting because I have a visualization; I have a goal. But then we realize there are action steps you have to follow to really manifest it.
You have to get off your butt and go to Home Depot and buy a fruit plant. Then you have to go home and dig a hole and plant it. You have to water it. You have to fertilize it. It takes about two years to grow and then it bears fruit. Now, you manifested a fruit tree in your back yard, but you took certain actions to make it come to life. That’s what this film is about. What are the actual action steps you can do to go from where you are to where you want to be? We show you step by step how you can do it.
For details on how you can get the complete interview, including a transcript and recording… ==>Click Here
