Greg S. Reid with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. Stickability

Greg S. Reid talks with Jason Barnard about stickability.

Greg S. Reid is known best for being the Founder of Secret Knock, a Forbes and Inc. Magazine top-rated event focused on partnership, networking, and business development. Greg S. Reid and Jason Barnard discuss the concept of “Stickability,” which is all about perseverance in business and life.

Greg shares insights on how to maintain perseverance through challenges, citing examples from successful individuals like Steve Wozniak of Apple and Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A. Greg also talks about the idea of “relaxed intensity,” staying calm yet focused in stressful situations.

He discusses the difference between seeking counsel from successful people versus listening to opinions. The episode is an essential guide for entrepreneurs on how to lead, persevere, and ultimately succeed in business and personal life.

What you’ll learn from Greg S. Reid

00:00 Greg S. Reid and Jason Barnard
01:09 What Did Jason Barnard Highlight in Greg S. Reid’s Google Learn About Results?
02:32 What Did Google Learn About Say on How Leaders Create Stickability, per Jason Barnard’s Search?
02:55 Who Did Google Learn About Suggest as Expert Speakers on Stickability, per Jason Barnard’s Search?
04:32 What is Perseverance?
04:34 What is the Process for Achieving Your Goals According to Greg S. Reid?
04:39 Why Do Only 0.1% of People Persist Through Challenges to Reach Their Goals?
04:49 What is One of Greg S. Reid’s Biggest Bestselling Books Besides Stickability?
05:00 Why Do So Many People Quit Just Short of Success, and What Separates Those Who Persevere?
05:14 Who is Truett Cathy?
05:23 Why Does Chick-fil-A’s Success Stem From Capitalizing on Unexpected Chances?
05:31 Why Do Leaders with Stickability Focus On Opportunities Rather Than Obstacles?
06:39 Why Did Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs Choose to Keep Going Instead of Giving Up?
07:08 Why Should a Person View Challenges as an Opportunity for Innovation Instead of Simply Giving Up?
07:51 How Can a Business Leader Inspire Their Team to Stay Persistent and Keep Working Toward Success?
08:48 What Qualities Should a Leader Look for in a Team Member Who Will Contribute and Support Them?
09:21 What Kind of Person Should a Leader Surround Themselves With to Achieve the Results They Want?
10:19 What Should a Leader Do if Someone is Holding Back the Success of a Project or Company?
10:34 Why Should a Leader Have the Courage to Lead?
11:18 Why is it Important for Leaders to Step Back and Evaluate the Roles They Are Hiring For?
12:00 How Can Leaders Conquer Moments of Fear?
12:22 Why Did Pem Sherpa Choose Everest’s Summit for His Interfaith Marriage?
12:33 How Did Relaxed Intensity Help a Couple Overcome Crisis on Mount Everest?
12:49 What is Relaxed Intensity?
13:40 How Do Leaders Leverage Relaxed Intensity to Succeed in Their Goals?
13:46 Why Do Leaders Need Relaxed Intensity?
14:14 Why is a High Level of Commitment Necessary When Pursuing Big, Challenging Goals?
15:39 Why is it Important for Entrepreneurs to Keep Trying After Multiple Failures Before Succeeding?
16:39 How Can Leaders Determine When It’s Time to Stop Pursuing an Idea in Business Before It Fails?
18:10 What Does “Successful People Seek Counsel and Failures Listen to Opinion” Mean?

This episode was recorded live on video March 4th 2025

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Greg S. Reid

Transcript from Greg S. Reid with Jason Barnard on Fastlane Founders And Legacy. Stickability

[00:00:00] Jason Barnard: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy. A legacy we’re proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.

Hi everybody and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me, Jason Barnard. And a quick hello and we’re good to go. Welcome to the show, Greg S. Reid.

[00:00:42] Greg Reid: Geez, I gotta tell everyone’s watching right now thinking they got double vision or something like that. First of all, you were not drinking last night. We just happen to be twins.

[00:00:51] Jason Barnard: Right. And if you’re not watching, you’re listening. We’re both wearing red, we’re both bald, and we’re both incredibly handsome. So lovely to meet you, Greg. We’re going to be talking about Stickability, which is all about perseverance. I know about it because I do it. You know about it because you do it. You studied it and you’ve written about it.

This can be super interesting. Stickability in business in particular. But before we start, here’s the result for tell me about Greg Reid in Google’s AI. In Google’s Learn About. It’s experimental in the US and it’s brilliant. It’s the ChatGPT killer. Knocks it out of the park.

Gives you a great description, really accurate. Explore related content. On the left hand side over there you’ve got keynote speaker, author, film producer, entrepreneur, context for who you are, what you do and who you might be serving. That is a brilliant result, Greg. And you tell me you’ve been working on educating Google Gemini and it seems to have worked.

[00:01:40] Greg Reid: Yeah, well actually a good mentor follows good counsel. And you gave me great insight. When you and I spoke a couple months ago with Scott Duffy, you mentioned how we need to train the AI that’s coming out because all it knows is what you know and GPT is what is that? General pre programmed, whatever, what’s the actual term? Right. So we got to program it. So what I did is I started going in the back end of Gemini and I kept asking it, who is Greg Reid? Greg Reid, Author and said, would you like to make a suggestion? I said, use this as a website when people search for Greg Reid or Greg S Reid. And every night I go through and I do that and by doing it, it looks like it’s working.

[00:02:23] Jason Barnard: Yep, absolutely brilliant. And the foundation is actually having a good website and then getting the machine to trust it and you’ve got both of those in bucket loads. I also asked it as a business leader, how do you create stickability? And it’s come up with exceptional customer service, innovative products and services, consistent brand messaging, strong community building and loyalty programs and rewards. I don’t know if that’s what your approach to stickability is, but Google’s AI Learn About has told me that. So we’ll be going through that in a moment. And then the last thing, I really like this, I saw somebody using an agent AI. So we’re going to be using AI to figure out who are the people we should be speaking to in any different any specific industry on any specific topic. When I asked it about potential speakers for my imaginary conference where somebody’s going to give a talk about stickability, recommend some people.

It came up with Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Gary Vaynerchuk, Greg Reid, Malcolm Gladwell. Greg, you’re up there with the best.

[00:03:23] Greg Reid: Well, thank you. I like to feel like I’ve done my homework and it’s starting to pay off a little bit. For those of you who are new to me, my name is Greg. I’m here in San Diego. I’ve been publishing 156 books, 45 languages, I have a star in the walk of fame. And it’s so funny because I write these books, but I’m dyslexic, can’t spell, can’t read, can’t write, very good. Play me words with friends and win every time. And I learned a valuable tool.

You work your strengths and you hire or align with your weaknesses. So I would sit down with these amazing ghostwriters and editors and I’d say a boy wants a bike, gets off his butt, he mows lawns, makes money, now he’s got a bike. Then we’d recraft and come back and say it was a glorious Sunday afternoon when a young bright eyed lad caught the entrepreneurial dream. And they would recraft it the way people would want to read it. And by doing so and aligning both of our directions, we’ve impacted the lives of millions.

[00:04:15] Jason Barnard: Brilliant, wonderful. And stickability is what you’re all about. It’s not just growing a business, starting on a lawn, getting a bike, then moving up. It’s perseverance throughout your entire life. Is that about right or is it a lot more than that?

[00:04:31] Greg Reid: Yeah, perseverance is the power to persevere. I mean, if all it is, is it, first there’s a dream, then there’s challenge and then victory. Almost 99.9% of people quit in the challenging times. The only the people that we tell the stories about are those who didn’t quit and kept going through the toughest of moments. And one of the biggest, bestselling books I ever did, besides Stickability was Three Feet from Gold. It’s a story about a guy who gave up three feet away from the biggest gold strike in the history of the world. And it seems like so many people quit one class short from a degree or sales or marketing. But it’s the people that persevere and have that stickability.

We’re the ones that, you know, tell their stories today. One of my favorite interviews I did was a guy named Truett Cathy. He started a company in America called Chick-fil-A restaurants. It’s one of the biggest franchises, multi billions. And I said, what makes you so special? And he said, the power of stickability is to keep your eye on the prize, but look for and capitalize on unexpected opportunities. I said, like what? He says, well, if I’m on my sofa and I want to get to the end of the street, I get off my back and I start moving that way. He goes, a planner. Well, they’re going to over plan.

They’re going to look for every step and, you know, they’re going to look for obstacles along the way. If a sprinkler comes on, it goes against plan, they run back home goes, not me. I’m looking for opportunity. Did a kid leave a skateboard or a bicycle out I could borrow to make my journey shorter? If I get lucky, I’ll wade down a neighbor driving by and I’ll hitch a ride. He goes, no way. I’ll get to my goal. I have stickability. I’m just not so caught up in exactly how it has to transpire.

[00:06:05] Jason Barnard: Right. So there’s a huge amount of adaptability. Excuse me.

[00:06:09] Greg Reid: Well, hey, I’m just like, you said it better than I went.

[00:06:14] Jason Barnard: Except I stumbled on the word adaptability.

[00:06:16] Greg Reid: It’s so funny. Every time I’m on stage, I’m telling this deep story. I go, because my brain usually works faster than my lip. But stickability, again, is just the power to persevere. One of my favorite, you know, stories comes from a guy named Steve Wack, you know, Apple Computers. And I asked him, I said, right, yeah. I said, why did you and Jobs not quit? And he said, well, when we got started, he goes, it was really rough. He goes, Hewlett-Packard IBM would make machines that go from point A to point B and they had 20 chips.

He goes, these microchips are so expensive. He goes, we couldn’t afford all but one. He goes, Job sold this car. I sold my calculator. We pulled our money to buy one. And he said, I take those other machines from A to B and I’d pull away five and get it to work with 15. I pull away five, get it to work with 10. Eventually, I found a way to go from A to B using our one chip.

He goes, we were trying to be innovative or cool or air. We could afford one freaking chip. He goes, but by embracing that as an opportunity, we found the shortest, cleanest path. And by doing that, we changed the way people do personal computing forever. And he says, where could we be in our own chosen field if we stop looking at something as our greatest challenge and obstacle? But it could just be your greatest blessing and opportunity in disguise. Right?

[00:07:36] Jason Barnard: Okay. Well, that then poses for me the next question, which is, as a business leader, I’ve seen the opportunity. I’m willing to make the sacrifice to work and work and work and keep sticking and not stop 3ft from the gold. How do I get my team to follow?

[00:07:51] Greg Reid: Well, first of all, it has to be clarity of vision. And then also we have to understand sometimes we bring people along our journey that don’t deserve to be there, and we want to help our family and our friends and all the people that we grew up with. And one of the. I saw an Instagram video one time, and I put it in one of my big bestselling books. And it was a movie producer here in California. And here’s what he said. He said, stop trying to drag everyone upside the mountain with you on the journey. He says, understand that most people cannot breathe at 15,000ft.

You’re only going to kill them. He says, bring them up until you hit a plateau. Let them acclimate while you continue your quest, and hopefully they’ll catch your breath and joining along the journey.

[00:08:39] Jason Barnard: What are the aspects you’re looking in for somebody who will be there, who won’t be, somebody you’re going to be dragging up the mountain, who’ll actually walk up the mountain and support you?

[00:08:48] Greg Reid: Well, you want to get. I believe I do. At least, I’m not going to give. I’m not a psychologist, but I will say this. I give everyone an opportunity, but as soon as they don’t live up to the expectations that we both set for ourselves with clear and distinct goals and intention, I have no problem with cutting ways I mean, I’m pretty much a vulture. I give everyone a shot. But if it doesn’t go that way, I can’t allow that to pull me down from the ultimate dream because it’s not about my quest. It’s about impacting the lives of millions of people.

So I can’t let one knucklehead over here stop me from doing that. So it’s kind of a different perception. On the same note, surround ourselves with people that are getting the results that we want for ourselves. And now here’s the big word, dot, dot, dot today. And I think that’s what’s missing. So, for example, I’m a best selling author. Well, I wouldn’t go ask other starving authors that have never sold a book how to do it. I’m gonna go to Barnes and Noble and find every best selling title and call them up and say, hey, how’d you do it? What’s his system? And I would ask those people for guidance.

It’s the same thing. Also, I wouldn’t probably go ask the guys who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul, even though they sold a billion copies, how to do it because they did it, you know, 40 years ago. I go find out who’s doing it today and get those results because again, they didn’t even have Instagram or any of this stuff when they were doing it. So therefore the marketing would be different.

[00:10:11] Jason Barnard: Right. So learning from others, incredibly powerful. But my next question then is in terms of pragmatism, you’re saying, right, we need to push or leave people behind if pragmatically they’re going to hold the company back, my project back, or they’re not going to present this to the, the public that I’m looking for, which is the biggest public possible.

[00:10:34] Greg Reid: Correct. And the whole idea is having the courage and the for you to lead. I mean, that’s what A does, unfortunately. Yeah, we become so friendly and kind and we want to create this culture and all this stuff. But at the end of the day, if it’s a business opportunity, then we have to make sure we surround ourselves with positive, like minded people. I’ll give you something that I’m actually doing right now and I’ll take accountability for this. I have fallen in this trap just like everybody. And for the last X amount of years, I’ve been paying my certain people a lot of money, I’m talking like a wheelbarrow money to do certain things in my company.

Well, I had a catastrophic event with my son in a major accident. So I kind of cut Everything back. And I said, I’m just going to put a pin in business for a while. And I got rid of everything. And now that I’m reforming it and doing it myself, I’m going, what was I paying these people for? It’s so interesting because sometimes, you know, we get too busy driving the car, we forget to look under the hood or check the tires. So I also think it’s going to be important to step back and make sure we look at some of the roles that we’re hiring to make sure that they’re being, you know, perform the best of its ability.

[00:11:43] Jason Barnard: Actually, that really speaks to me right now. So thank you for that piece of advice. I’m going to go away and use it straight away. The next thing is, if I’m now leading, walking up this mountain, I’ve got people behind me, they’ve got my back. How do I overcome the moments of fear?

[00:11:59] Greg Reid: Well, there’s a thing called relaxed intensity. We’ll use the mountain metaphor since we seem to be on it so much. The Pem Sherpa is one of the cool sherpas that climb Mount Everest and whatnot. Well, he fell in love with a woman from Kathmandu, and both religions forbidden each other to ever, you know, get married. And they pulled his or he pulled his wife aside. At the time, his girlfriend said, hey, do we believe that that mountain is a one true God that both sides, you know, honor? And said, yeah, took her upside the top of the mountain and they got married on top of Mount Everest. The only couple in history to do so. But on the way down, all of a sudden, they got.

The wife got snow blind for eight. I couldn’t see because she never even climbed a set of stairs. And now she’s top of Mt. Everest, and as they’re coming down, I said, how did you do it? And he said, relaxed intensity. I said, what does that mean? He says, relaxed intensity is like the captain of a ship. If it’s sinking, you don’t go around screaming, oh, my God. You stay calm and collective, and you keep calm so everyone else stays calm. If not, everything goes down with that ship. And he says, so I had relaxed intensity where I was calm, but inside, you know, I was making sure everything was taken care of.

He says, I got to the first plateau where life flight helicopter came up to rescue us. And as soon as they were landing, a wind burst came and slammed him against the side of the mountain and absolutely crashed the guys coming to save them. And I said, what’d you do? He goes, relax, intensity. He goes, we became the saving crew and we saved them. He goes, then we had to climb down more and another life like did. And then finally we got to the bottom and as soon as the father of the bride heard we got married, he had a heart attack. And I said, what do you do? Relax Intensity.

He goes, we have to stay focused on the mission and the prize and keep everyone safe along the quest.

[00:13:46] Jason Barnard: I really, really like that because I’ve been talking about remaining calm. But relaxed intensity takes that to a whole new level and it makes so much sense. Just staying calm isn’t enough. You need that intensity to keep things moving forward. There’s also a question of commitment. If I’m going to be walking up this mountain, Mount Everest now we’ve upped the game from just any old mountain to Mount Everest. The commitment I need is immense.

[00:14:13] Greg Reid: It is. And we also got to remember that stuff happens. Look how many bodies are on the side of Mount Everest. And those people were committed and they had the money and they were leaders and all that different stuff. Yet they did make it. And that is part of the quest. And we have to realize that not every single thing we set our intention are going to have the great success. It’s living a life what’s called non attachment.

Now I’m going to be very clear on this. Danielle LaPorte came up with this. I stole it. And she said, basically living a detached life, that means you don’t give a crap because that’s not a good way to live. But non attached means you go all in, you give it everything you got, but you’re not attached to the outcome. And by doing that, I could always write a book and give it everything I got and I could let it go and then go to the next project and not be attached to whether people liked it or not. If I did, I probably wouldn’t got past my first one. And so by having that type of mentality of doing everything you can but not being attached to the outcome, that’s where success lies.

[00:15:14] Jason Barnard: The idea of not being attached to the outcome is really. Or the income for that matter, is really interesting from the perspective I wrote my book and then once it’s out there, I never read it again. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. It matters thoughts of the people who read it and love it. And that’s great. And it was the same with my music career, with the albums. I would obsess over details in the music and then three weeks later I couldn’t hear what I was obsessed about.

[00:15:37] Greg Reid: That exactly but that, that’s. What if more people did that, more people would have success. Because it’s been said that as an entrepreneur, we need to have 26 at bats before we have a home run. 26 at bats. But most people, they have one failed business or two or three, and that’s it. And they give up and they go, go wherever, or they stay in that, trying to save it. But you. We need 26 at bats.

So the whole thing is, as long as you have that mentality, it’s pretty awesome. It’s like having a deck of cards. You know, there’s four aces in there. If you keep flipping ones at two and a seven and a king and a queen, you don’t get to it. You know, it’s there. But unfortunately, most people quit after that second or third, you know, card that they’re not looking for.

[00:16:22] Jason Barnard: Right. And how can you determine whether or not you’ve hit on the right one? Obviously, in a card game, it’s easy. But when you’re in a business and you’re continuing, continuing, continuing with a particular idea, how do you know when to stop? When it’s actually going to fail?

[00:16:39] Greg Reid: Well, this comes down to a thing, again, where I’m not a psychologist, but I will tell you what I’ve learned from all these amazing people that I’ve talked to. The difference was the knowing. Not the hoping, not the wishing, not the believing, but the knowing. So, for example, when I met with Yaya Ling, a famous music conductor, I said, you know, when you know, why didn’t you give up, you know, when you were a kid in this class? He goes, well, he goes, every time they handed me a football, I knew it wasn’t for me. So I set it down and went to the piano. And he says, every time they handed me a soccer ball, I knew it wasn’t for me. And it’s that knowing that separates. You know, look, being committed and interested are two separate things.

John Asroth talks about this all the time. If you start a new restaurant because it’s the hot, cool trend, well, as soon as things hit the fan, chances are you’ll full shop. But if you take over the family Italian restaurant that’s been in, you know, the namesake for five generations, well, when you have challenges, you’re not going to quit because you’re going to go back and seek counsel to see it through. And that is the difference. And I’m going to give you one quick little aha. This is. I wish everyone listening to this could. I got three big takeaways and this is the big one.

Successful people seek counsel and failures listen to opinion. Successful people seek counsel and failures listen to opinion. And this came to me from the guy who invented string theory, who created string theory. And I said, what do you mean? Well, it says, well, if you want to write a bestselling book. And I go to my family, friends, well, they’re going to try to talk me out of it because they’re trying to protect me, to keep me safe. And they’ve never written bestselling book. That’s their opinion. But if I go to get Mark Victor Hansen wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul.

And I said, Mark, what’s the secret? He’s going to say, great, sit down. Here’s what you need to know. Give me counsel. He said, if we would spend our activity only seeking counsel from people that have got the experience, wisdom and knowledge, and stop listening to people’s opinion, that’s the day our lives would change.

[00:18:44] Jason Barnard: That’s a brilliant, brilliant way to end it. Thank you so much, Greg. That was absolutely delightful. I learned a lot. And I’m going to be pondering this for the next 24 hours at least, and then applying a lot of it over the coming years. You get the outro song, a quick goodbye to end the show. Thank you, Greg.

[00:19:04] Greg Reid: Until next time.

[00:19:06] Jason Barnard: Bye bye. Thank you, man.

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