Unlocking Why High Performance Isn’t About Strategy with Geoffrey Reid

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Cold Start & Intro
00:03:56 – Why “High Performance” Gets Overused
00:06:18 – What “Best Version of Yourself” Really Means
00:09:40 – Why Process Alone Doesn’t Drive Performance
00:13:15 – The Hidden Role of Belief in Results
00:17:17 – Why Teams Resist Change (Fear vs Courage)
00:19:55 – Coaching Through Resistance & Past Failure
00:26:23 – The Fifth Pillar Explained (What’s Missing in Business)
00:28:45 – Identity vs Motivation: The Real Performance Driver
00:34:59 – Belief vs Discipline + Lightning Round

Geoffrey Reid (00:02.00)
Why do some people succeed and why do some people not succeed. I’ve spent 25 years running, climbing up the ladder of a global company with 50 locations and 2,000 people to become a CEO.

Depending upon how it’s positioned, the sugar pill could have a similar physiological effect on their body as the medicine. And so that really puts into question, you know, at what point does, you know, do the chemicals have the impact more so, than the state of mind and the belief.

Skot Waldron (00:43.00)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point. 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to take care of you. And who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

What does quantum physics have to do with high performance? What? Yeah, you’re going to hear about it a little bit on the show today. Geoffrey Reid is going to be on, and he talks a lot, a lot, lot, lot, which is why I want him on the show, about another way to create high performing teams. And that is through our belief, our mindset around certain things. And a lot of you hear mindset stuff.

Geoffrey Reid actually talks about it in a way that drives revenue, that drives sales teams, that drives performance on all levels. He was, well, actually I’m going to read you his bio and then you’d understand a little bit why he is quite qualified to talk about this thing.

Geoffrey Reid is a best-selling author, he is a TEDx speaker, and creator of The Fifth Pillar™, a belief-driven performance framework focused on the internal architecture that governs consistency, execution, and results. He is the originator of Belief Engineering™, I love that term Belief Engineering, a methodology examining how belief systems shape decision-making, leadership presence, and sustained performance. Geoffrey is Chief Strategy Officer at the Offset Foundation, advancing data-driven climate accountability. With 25+ years of global leadership experience, including serving as Global CEO of an international firm, he advises leaders worldwide at the intersection of belief, strategy, and impact.

We’re going talk about all three of those things and really all what belief has to do with any of it. And I challenge him on a few things, and he gives some really good answers. So here we go.

Geoffrey, how you doing, man?

Geoffrey Reid (03:35.00)
I’m fantastic, Skot. How are you?

Skot Waldron (03:37.00)
Oh, I’m so good. I’m so good. And I’m really interested to talk about this whole topic today, because I’m going to tell, I’m going to start this thing out by saying, and I’m guilty of this. Okay, Geoffrey, I’m calling myself up on this thing. The word high performance, high performing teams, creating high performance, high performing teams, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is really, really like used a lot. Overused? I don’t know if we could say that, but it’s used a lot. I want to know what that term means to you.

Geoffrey Reid (04:19.00)
Look, great question. So happy to be on your show. Look, I guess high performance is a state that people are able to get to when they are in a place where their performance matters and where they can really have a level of, where they’re really peaking their possibilities in terms of being the best versions of themselves.

And I guess that would apply to people in sales, athletes, surgeons, anyone that needs to perform at any given moment. That is something that’s demanded in society on so many levels. If we were to take the example of sports, we all have teams that we cheer for and there are athletes that will vary in terms of how good they are on any given day. And there are mechanisms in place, including sports psychologists and coaching, to be able to ensure that athletes are bringing their best performance to the table.

Same thing applies elsewhere as well. Sales is where I’ve generated a lot of experience in that and being able to test benchmarks of people at different levels of performance. Look, it really comes down to being the best version of yourself at any given day and then reverse engineering, what is the process or is there a process that can help people attain that? Or are people doing that in a random way without structure? And I think that’s really the starting point for any conversation around high performance.

Skot Waldron (06:04.00)
So, is that what you think they get consistently wrong about high performance? Cause you work with a lot of high performing sales teams and leadership teams and whatnot. Is that the mistake that they’re making?

Geoffrey Reid (06:18.00)
I think that nobody has ever been taught how to do the process, but they’ve never been taught how to be the best version of themselves in the moment that matters.

Skot Waldron (06:30.00)
I’m sorry to interrupt you. I want to nail that word, that phrase, the best version of themselves. What does that mean? I mean, they may assume they’re being the best version of themselves, but how do you really determine that? Like, what does that mean for you?

Geoffrey Reid (06:43.00)
Look, it’s a development question. And the other argument that is behind that is, is it possible for people to continuously reach new heights of performance through their own development and their own practice and their own way over time? So, that all fits into this model of high performance. What is possible today? But what I get into through my Fifth Pillar™ concept is really, and we can get into that if you like after, but it really is establishing a current identity, being able to strengthen that identity with an optimal state, and being able to practice walking through space and time till the achievement of that identity is fulfilled, and doing it consistently through practice.

And then what’s achieved, being able to then look at what’s possible next. So, it’s the constant evolution of oneself to become the best versions of themselves in many iterations over time, always in pursuit of peak performance.

Skot Waldron (07:59.00)
That’s great. I often talk about self-awareness leads to self-improvement, leads to self-awareness, leads to self-improvement. It’s just kind of this loop, feedback loop that constantly goes. People I believe that don’t do that and kind of stop at one step or another are the ones that we find are probably not being the best version of themselves.

I mean, the best version of yourself is the current version of yourself if you are continually working on that self and growing in that thing. I mean, do you agree with that? I just kind of made that up right now, but I mean, do you agree about that.

Geoffrey Reid (08:37.00)
I do. And it’s a cycle. And it’s kind of the opposite of what a lot of organizations spend a lot of money on at time in trying to develop. Organizations they train, they try to measure behavior, they try to motivate, they try to instill discipline. And all of those things are kind of the byproduct of identity.

And so, before we start trying to attack things at the behavioral level, there’s a lot of value in really looking at what is happening at the level of identity and what is happening at the belief level. You know, it’s very difficult for people to perform differently if they don’t believe in themselves, if they don’t believe in their product, if they don’t believe in where the organization is going. So, they try to attack behavior isn’t even going to move the needle if one hasn’t attacked things earlier in the process and really laid out a program for being able to ensure that those earlier elements are optimized.

Skot Waldron (09:45.00)
I used a great term. I’ve loved this Belief Engineering term. Like I really haven’t seen this until I came across you and your ideas in your Ted talk and your website and started hearing about this idea of Belief Engineering. I mean, this is so cool. Cause you know, I think most performance conversations focus on strategy, on skills, on systems. I mean, you’ve said the word process in here too. So, I mean, that’s all part of it, but you’re really arguing this belief concept, which is why I wanted you on the show in the first place. That you feel the real constraint is belief.

So, what is, do you think, I don’t know what you could say, the most expensive belief leaders in sales teams don’t realize they’re operating from or the thing that’s hurting them the most.

Geoffrey Reid (10:40.00)
Well, look, it kind of goes back to that adage, whether you think you’re right or think you’re wrong, you’re right both ways. You know, and that’s, you know, really is the fundamental argument around the whole belief concept is, you know, where does belief fall into the equation of behavior and impact? And if we were to look at, you know, a phenomenon that’s just very well, or commonly known the placebo effect, it kind of puts the, that a patient can receive a medicine that could create a physiological effect on their body or they can receive a sugar pill. And depending upon how it’s positioned, the sugar pill could have a similar physiological effect on their body as the medicine.

And so that really puts into question, you know, at what point does, you know, do the chemicals have the impact more so, than the state of mind and the belief. And from that particular conundrum, it opens up a whole world of possibilities when it comes to the whole topic of performance and the whole topic of why do some people succeed and why do some people not succeed. I’ve spent 25 years running, climbing up the ladder of a global company with 50 locations and 2,000 people to become a CEO in the London, UK headquarters for 10 years. And that whole experience allowed me to really scratch my head a lot of times where I would have people that sounded perfectly exactly the same. They applied the process exactly the same. They had the same output that was exactly the same, but one would be performing at this level and one would be performing at this level.

And I would, this really was perplexing because, you know, I’m trying to control the controllables. I’m trying to quantify everything and measure everything. And what I was able to glean through reviews and interviews and questions and, a lot of one-on-one interactions is there’s an awful lot that’s going on in people’s heads when they’re performing that will be the difference maker in terms of whether they end up here or there. And that really caused me to delve deep into the academic information, to go down the rabbit hole of quantum physics, to try to understand how this new science that has gained credibility in many ways in our society, how that could apply to human consciousness.

And are there links between the principles of quantum physics, which is fundamentally the science of possibilities and the ability for people to create whatever outcomes they truly believe in in their minds. And that’s really where this rabbit hole begins and certainly isn’t going to end today, but it raises a lot of questions that has caused me to try to put frameworks around it that are credible and accessible.

Skot Waldron (14:02.00)
When you’re interacting with people, I mean whatever, sales teams, leadership teams, whatever teams, what is a common belief that you hear that’s holding people back?

Geoffrey Reid (14:18.00)
Look, I, every change that occurs in an organization, whether it’s a product change, whether it’s an offering change, whether it’s, you know, coming back on something or adding something, for whatever reason, people are taught to be skeptical and maybe that’s risk management, education and business school. Maybe that’s just the way some people have been taught to survive the world through their upbringing. And that’s why communication, education, consultation, and proper implementation is so important when it comes to change.

But most people are going to fight changes that occur professionally, and they’re going to believe that it’s going to disrupt their ecosystem of what’s worked in the past to the point where they don’t want to buy into it. That is, you know, that only really occurs because they can’t attribute the ups and downs of their performance to anything more tangible than change.

If they could attribute it to mindset and what’s actually occupying their mind and their belief in their success and the extent to which they can assume that they are going to be as successful today as they were yesterday and do it consistently, that would in all likelihood mitigate that tendency, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily where people start. But that’s why culture, organizational culture, that’s why building identities individually and collectively is so important because that allows for these things to be controlled in a much more way and embraced in a way that people really have confidence in.

Skot Waldron (16:14.00)
Let’s talk about this for a second. I want to throw out an example, and I want you to kind of coach me through it or how you would advise people to look at this situation. Let’s just say there’s a company out there, because I want to hit on this change thing, because I think this is so relevant. I do a keynote on change and people want to talk about it all the time.

Say there’s a reorg. A company’s going through a reorg. Jobs are shuffling around. People are going to take on more responsibility or different responsibility. They need to learn something new, or they need to do something else, but they’ve been doing the same thing for the same way for a long time. And now something else is going to happen. Go. What would you advise a team to be considering as it pertains to belief and helping this change come about a little bit easier.

Geoffrey Reid (17:17.00)
Look, I may have already established through coaching and training that if we boil it all down, there are only really two emotions, courage and fear. And I would remind everyone that, you know, change is inevitable and we can approach it by one of two ways. We can either embrace the change and believe that we’re going to be served by the change or we’re going to fear the change and we’re going to not accept it in the way that it is and fight it.

And I would be wanting to have stimulated enough theory amongst the theorists that might work with me or the reflect different personality types who learn differently that they are empowered in their minds and their mindset and their ability to sift through the possibilities and find an upside is very important part of their success and their ability to maintain long-term performance. And so, I would really try to shape the change in a way that would guide them to have the mindset that would serve them as opposed to be threatened by it.

And if I could do that individually and collectively, for the most part of the change management exercise is a lot smoother typically and a lot easier to fulfill. And that was, there was a whole process that I would try to use to get people to support the change but also realize that they could be served by the change if they could approach it through the lens of courage as opposed to through the lens of fear.

Skot Waldron (19:03.00)
Yeah, I feel like a lot of, we’ll just stay on the change thing, resistance to things like this. We choose the fear or yeah, we’re ultimately choosing the fear because we’ve been traumatized in the past by something else that had happened. We’ve been taught that change is bad because of something that’s happened in the past.

How do you help people work through something like that? It’s like, “whoa, no, Geoffrey. We’ve been through this, man, and it was horrible last time. I was not served very well. I lost part of my team. It caused me to work extra. It burnt me out a little bit, and now this is happening again, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Geoffrey Reid (19:49.00)
Look, it’s absolutely a great question. It absolutely has to be addressed. And I think the way I would address it most easily would be, how does one choose their high performing team and how do they develop their high performing team? So, in many ways, I had an opportunity at one point to develop a methodology for hiring where and psychological interviews for being able to choose people that not only had the skills that I needed, but also that had the mindset that I needed. And that would also mesh really well with the culture.

And so, off the start, at the point when I had that opportunity, I would shape the organization with people that I felt could relate to the change in a courageous way, as opposed to digging in their heels and necessarily being inclined to see it fearfully.

Now, as I grew through my career and took on different offices and locations that had been constructed by other people and had to shape those mini cultures within the broad culture of the company, it was a different exercise. And often it would involve spending a lot of time with people, really finding out how they see the world. I would do different types of testing, you know, some that would show me, you know, who is inclined to take responsibility for everything that happened, you know, and the good and the bad, and those that would blame external factors.

So, I would really measure people’s inclination to understand situations that way. And I, you know, also wanted to understand people’s grit, you know, the extent to which they would typically finish things that they would start. But maybe most importantly, I would always have a profile of people’s learning styles. And rather than getting deep, you know, into a complicated personality test or a Myers-Briggs or anything like that, I used just a very simple methodology where I would throw people into boxes, and I would understand how they learn. And every team that I ever have would have a group of, you know, what I would call activists, reflectors, theorists, and pragmatists.

The activists are kind of go, go, go. They don’t stop. They might get their IKEA furniture and put it together without reading the instructions because they just want to get it done. And to create change, I might have to repeat myself 30 times and accept that that’s how they learn, but that once they get it, it’s locked in.

Or I might look at a reflector who, you know, all I would have to do is mention at the end of the day as they’re walking out the door, hey, have you ever thought about doing it this way? Or have you ever thought of this? And they would think about it, and they would probably try it the next day, you know.

Or I might have a theorist who would just need to know the theory behind it. So that’s where I would get into philosophy or I might get into books or I might be sharing with the methodologies that would make the change easier, you know.

And then I would have pragmatists that just needed to know what was in for them and how to see it through that lens. So, by breaking it down into pieces that were custom designed for the people that were in the organization, I could find ways of creating efficiency in the change that inevitably needed to occur.

Skot Waldron (23:16.00)
I hear you talking about like your people, knowing how they respond to certain things, being able to coach them up in the way that they need to be coached up. That one leadership style does not fit all. So, I hear a bit of that. And I heard you at the beginning of the answer talk about like reframing this into what is the opportunity. And we’re not trying to, I don’t want to like, you know bypass people’s feelings. I don’t want to like sweep them under the rug, right? And not acknowledge that things are hard or traumatizing last time or whatever. And I think that it’s really healthy to acknowledge those things, but also offering what is the opportunity from this time?

Like, what do you get to do? What did you get to do last time when that happened? And what do you get to do this time that you could also grow into a possibility? Whether that is you know what? You get to hire some new people, and you get to create a new team and develop some other team members. Like there’s some opportunity there, right?

Geoffrey Reid (24:23.00)
Yeah, look, I would often say, you know, sift through the one of the golden rules, sift through the possibilities until you can find an upside, you know, and focus on that, you know. And look, I know it becomes difficult when, you know, for example, I was talking to a friend of mine who had worked for me a number of years ago, who’s in a, you know, a high tech position that he was kind of talking to me about all, you know, management had brought in a commission change that he was very concerned was going to affect his income from year to year. And he was skeptical and suspicious of it because he thought that it was a way of the company adjusting to the fact that maybe they had overpaid everyone last year and they needed to cut that back.

And now all of a sudden, it becomes a little bit of a dualist adversarial situation where management is imposing a change that is threatening to people and it’s just very difficult to get them on side. And I was on the receiving end of that before I was, when I was a sales executive, before I was promoted through the company and I could understand that skepticism. And I also understand it from a management perspective, but that is the important part of management, being able to package things in a way that also brings as much opportunity as it does threat and being able to ensure that there is an upside to any change that could be perceived as management being the enemy.

Skot Waldron (26:00.00)
Is this all so, we we’ve said the word for Fifth Pillar™ a couple times, but we haven’t explained it yet. And we’re, you know, a chunk into this interview already. I meant to do this earlier, but we got on this other topic, which I’m really cool. I’m really cool with it happening that way. Fifth Pillar™, explain it to me. What is that and what are the other four?

Geoffrey Reid (26:21.00)
Well, look, it’s a system that was born through a chapter in my book, The Revenue Catalyst, which was prompted by an observation that I had had in interviewing salespeople over the years for sales position, interviewing people for sales positions that made me realize that there was a real missing element of education in business schools.

So, people would go to business school, they spent a lot of money learning business, but they would learn accounting, finance, marketing, and human resources. And there was no sales education. And although there is an element of sales in marketing, it really doesn’t focus on the fact that most CEOs are responsible for sales, revenue is the most important part of any business. And it just seemed to me like it was a tremendous void in that particular set of educational skills.

And so, when I had the opportunity to, as a CEO, welcome the president of the university where I used to teach at Concordia in Montreal years before. He had to visit me in London in I think 2019 on a bit of a farewell tour. He was moving to another university, and he was interacting with the community. And I asked him the question. I said, “why is there so little sales education in business school?” And he laughed and he said, “give me a really profound answer,” that kind of led to the book. He said, “professors aren’t comfortable teaching things that they don’t know enough about,” which kind of highlighted the fact that academics don’t have the practical experience to teach business and that’s why a lot of business schools don’t add that fifth element.

So, that’s where it started, but the whole process has evolved as I’ve gotten into through the book Belief Engineering™ and Fifth Pillar™ and really understanding all the dynamics of performance. Now The Fifth Pillar™ is way more than just sales as the fifth pillar of business school. It really is a performance framework that impacts sales and also impacts leadership.

So, what it really does is it peels back all the elements that are central to performance. And as I mentioned before, it really starts with identity and people understanding their current identity, people setting aspirations of, and visualizing their future identity, and then creating a state that allows that to be solidified and all the elements that go into the byproducts applied to both sales and leadership. And at the end, everyone could come out with like, it really is a framework where salespeople can snap their fingers and find a place where they’re going to be at that high level on any given day, even on the bad days, and where leaders can create a community of like-minded thinkers who are going to appreciate that and operate that.

Skot Waldron (29:31.00)
So, it’s a framework that I use to implement or is it a mindset that I use to like, or is it both?

Geoffrey Reid (29:39.00)
Well, it’s both. And it’s now a course, which I just filmed over the last few months and have put online for people to be able to access the framework. I decided to do it in the form of a course as opposed to another book this time because I do feel that it is more accessible and it’s very valuable. And I can also expand the principles. I have versions of it that could be a university course to fill that void of the missing fifth pillar or what I have online is a light course that allows people in 5 or 7 hours to understand the whole thing by watching 8 modules and 44 lessons online.

Skot Waldron (30:29.00)
Okay, very cool. I love that. I love that it’s accessible to a lot of different people. They don’t just have to bring you in to learn it. They can learn it on their own. I’m assuming they can bring you in to learn this thing if they wanted to

So, when we talk about The Fifth Pillar™, I mean, there’s a lot of people out there that are fluent in strategy and execution and marketing and whatnot but something’s missing without that fifth pillar. What do you fundamentally think is missing without the fifth pillar? Like sure, like revenue driving sales teams, etc. But that’s like surface level. Like what’s fundamentally missing?

Geoffrey Reid (31:15.00)
What’s missing is the consistency because there’s only so far, the strategy can get us there’s only so far that motivation can get us and discipline you get us. We need something stronger than that that is going to allow people to show up as the best version, you know. People aren’t following up and doing what they say because they’re motivated, they’re following me up and doing what they say because that’s who they are and that’s why identity is so important because when your identity is to be high performance, that is what you’re going to show up as. And that is what this exercise is all about.

I feel that so much money and resources and time are spent trying to affect things that barely move the needle in modern sales organizations. And it’s repeated. And there’s only so far that processes can take us in the absence of the ability to help people find, teach people how to be consistent in their performance, there’s a missed opportunity.

Skot Waldron (32:23.00)
Wow. This is opening a can of worms, Geoffrey. Cause I’m really honing in on really hard right now on this motivation thing. Why people are motivated. What keeps me motivated? Why do people put off things? Why do they procrastinate? Why do they delay in any way whatsoever? And how do we get over that? And so, I’ve studied a few things, temporal motivation theory, self-determination theory to really dive into like, what are those things that help motivate somebody?

But you’re saying, well, let me ask you, are you saying they don’t need motivation because their identity is wrapped inside of what motivation is? Like they just are a person who is motivated as opposed to, I need to be motivated.

Geoffrey Reid (33:13.00)
Correct. Look, I’m not discounting any of those processes because they have value, but inarguably they pale in comparison to the power of using identity as the stabilizing force, creating consistency.

If you take a character actor, you know, for example, I read about Daniel Day-Lewis who would get into character and would take him a year to wind out of his character. But the reason he was such a great actor was because he would become the character that he was portraying as opposed to, you know, walking on stage and just sort of pretending to be. And so that was an identity driven that really demonstrates the power and the value of identity because it’s a very similar process to what I’m suggesting is the antidote to inconsistency of performance in sales organizations, in sports, and many other places elsewhere.

Skot Waldron (34:14.00)
Very, very good answer. I really liked that. The identity thing is really, really important to me and that we are, basically I call it our brand, like what we’re wrapped up in. How do we show up in the world? What do people know us as, and how do they look at us and what are we communicating, and how we show up? Like Geoffrey is the kind of guy who blank, right? And how do we people finish that sentence? And that becomes your identity in the minds of people around you. What’s your identity for yourself? I am the kind of person who blank. And I think that that’s really cool. I like how you’re talking about this.

Let’s shift a little bit because you have something I want to hit on before we start wrapping this thing up. Belief versus discipline. Leaders, a lot of leaders just say, hey, we just need more discipline. We just need to be more disciplined in our processes. We need more discipline in how we’re filling out sales force or how we’re doing whatever, we just need more discipline in what we do. So, how do you distinguish a discipline problem from a belief problem?

Geoffrey Reid (35:22.00)
Well, that’s a great question. Because I was going to say, as you were building up to the question that discipline is the byproduct of identity and belief, it just happens, you know, it’s not something that has to be forced. And I think that’s one of the misconceptions of management when they try to impose change at the behavioral level, change at the you know, and try to use discipline as the reason why someone should do something or not. I think that that can work, but I would argue that it’s unsustainable and it requires effort that is not required when one is moving up the changing the starting point and starting with identity and belief.

If someone is determined in their minds and tricks their brain to believe that their success has already occurred, the discipline will be a byproduct of that whole experience. So, I don’t argue that discipline is not important, but forced discipline is almost wasted energy compared to how discipline could be applied by thinking about it differently and focusing on belief as the starting point.

Skot Waldron (36:55.00)
Killer. Love it. All right. We’re going to do a little lightning round thing. You ready?

Geoffrey Reid (36:58.00)
Sure.

Skot Waldron (36:59.00)
I’m going to throw some things at you. Hopefully, I don’t drag out too long because then it’s not very lightning. And here goes. One belief that kills execution.

Geoffrey Reid (37:10.00)
Fear.

Skot Waldron (37:12.00)
A phrase that you feel sales leaders should stop using.

Geoffrey Reid (37:17.00)
Salespeople are born, not made.

Skot Waldron (37:22.00)
Oh, that’s good. I like that one. Let’s see. One question that you would use or leaders can use or whatever that would expose a limiting belief.

Geoffrey Reid (37:37.00)
What bothers you?

Skot Waldron (37:39.00)
Okay, tell me about that. I’m violating my lightning round. I want to know what the idea is behind that question.

Geoffrey Reid (37:45.00)
Look, the background of this is when I was trying to construct an organization of people that were the right profile for me, which was I wanted positive people who typically succeeded at things that they set out to do. That was my profile. I was less concerned with, you know, measures of intelligence or academics or degrees or experience. I would focus on that principle.

And in order to be able to uncover people’s mindset, I could ask that question and I would get a variety of answers that would then allow me to delve into some supplemental questions that would help me profile how someone thinks in their mind, their tendency to maintain a level of positivity in difficult situations, their potential to be forgiving rather than vindictive if things don’t go well in the relationship, warding off liability. So, this was very important to me in constructing an organization that.

So, that particular question was often the starting point and based on that I could get into other questions such as, you know, would your friends describe you as a positive person? And I would always get a yes or a maybe, you know, because people see themselves that way. And then I could delve into it, and I would say, you know, why is that important to you? And they would give me an explanation of, you know, why they like to maintain that type of identity and depending upon what they would say, they might say, people don’t want to hang around with negative people. That’s why, I’m positive. Or they might say positive people tend to be more successful than I would have an idea of how sticky their commitment to being positive might be.

So, I know that’s a long answer, but what bothers you was often an entry point to my being able to profile someone in a way that could allow me to decide whether they were right for the organization that I was hiring for or not.

Skot Waldron (39:43.00)
Well said, very cool. Where do people get The Revenue Catalyst and how can people get access to The Fifth Pillar™ course?

Geoffrey Reid (39:55.00)
So, some of this is fresh. The Revenue Catalyst is everywhere on Amazon. So, in whatever country people are, they could just type in my name, Geoffrey Reid or Geoffrey and Reid, or The Revenue Catalyst and it’ll pop up straight away. It’s also on, you know, Canadian bookstore Indigo and some US sites as well as Barnes & Noble, etc. So, it’s out there, but Amazon is often the best place to get it. They can also go to my website, geoffreymreid.com, and there’s a link to it there.

With respect to The Fifth Pillar™, I have it up on a site. Currently, I might be doing a switch. So, I would recommend going to my website. I’m having a change right now and there’s going to be an interface with the course itself where I’m holding it. So, I would recommend just going to my website for now and people certainly can find it online where it is.

Skot Waldron (40:52.00)
Very cool. And y’all, if you want to hear a little bit of Geoffrey’s brain on the TED stage, go check it out. Because on YouTube, it’s got a ton of views and rightly so, it’s very thought provoking and very interesting and how you present to different topics. Talking about quantum physics and our belief systems and how we look at things and perceive things, become our reality and I love all that.

So super cool. Geoffrey, thanks for being on the show, man. Good luck to you. Keep spreading the good word and helping those high performing teams.

Geoffrey Reid (41:28.00)
Loved it. Thank you, Skot. Really a pleasure being here.

Skot Waldron (41:35.00)
I do talk a lot about change because you know y’all, change is happening all the time. In our personal lives, in our professional lives, it’s always happening.

And I mean, I was interested in his idea that there are two different ways you can think about change. You can either fear it, or you can have courage about it and through it and move through the fear, and what that opportunity is on the other side. I like this idea, this communication, education and consultation. Communication, education, consultation.

How do we help move people through change well, and how do we help them create mindsets of empowerment and growth and opportunity and things like that? I think that that’s important. Acknowledging that some people, it’s hard. Some people have the mindset they have because they’ve been taught, right? Certain behaviors get this type of reward or that type of consequence, and sometimes things do happen to us. We are the victims of situations and that can happen. Now the problem there is that we think of ourselves as the victim of every situation and that can hinder us. And that’s that mindset thing.

Thinking about how I will be served by this, this mindset about belief, The Fifth Pillar™, an identity-based system, the identity-based thing is so cool, y’all. And it truly is, and it goes back to the identity for your work that I’ve done in the branding space and how you as a leader are branded, how you as an employee, as a team member, a father, as a sister, as a whatever, how you are branded and the brand you are creating for yourself. You do have some control over that. So, take control. It’s really empowerment that we’re looking for, for ourselves and for others.

(43:34.00)
If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay Unlocked.