Called The Real Life Wizard of Oz by Forbes | The Steve Sims Story

Audio Transcription

Thirteen multimillion dollar businesses, eight kids get ready to enter the thrive time show,

thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive

time show on your radio and podcast downloads. And on today’s show, Chop. We are really in for a treat. This guy has been called the real life wizard of Oz by Forbes magazine. He’s been featured in entrepreneur magazine. He’s worked with Sir Richard Branson. Elon Musk, Sir Elton John. This guy helped somebody get married by the pope, the Vatican. This guy knows the art of making things happen. He calls himself the bluefish. Mr Steve Sims. Welcome on to the thrive time show.

Yes, I had to have a color. That lineup isn’t there, but I’ll try and live up to that.

Well, Steve Sims listeners out there that don’t really know what you do on. Could you share how your, kind of like the make a wish for people that can afford it? Yeah, it’s kind of, yeah.

Weird. Um, I, in a nutshell, what I do now is I give filthy rich people really interesting cocktail stories. So if they can think about it and maybe partially dream it. I see how far I can take and spend it now checkbook, so I have got people that wanted to meet that favorite rock band. Instead of that, I put them on stage and they actually sang with them live in concert. I’ve had people do walk on balls on movies, play the most exclusive golf clubs in the world. Dive down to two and a half miles under the top of the seat to actually see the wreck of the titanic. I’m the guy that you basically a call up to make the impossible possible.

Just so the listeners out there can hear another example. I want to make sure we’re getting this. Let’s say I’m listening right now and I’m a huge fan of, let’s say Kanye West or I’m a huge fan of boys to men or are some iconic group or person and I wanted you to have boys to men play at my birthday or to go backstage on the concert or to meet Kanye West. What is the first step look like when someone reaches out to you? How does that work?

Well, if we look at, we can look at it from two sides, we can look at it for what, what they need to do. All they do is exactly what you’ve just told me, hey, this is something that I’d really like to do. Can you make it happen? I’ll make a couple of phone calls to find out if we’ve got those people within our radar and then what I do is I come back to you with a guest on the car to the man and money and it’s Kinda tight and then I’d take anywhere from 20 percent of 50 percent to go to make it happen. Um, the backstage part of it, or should I say the back end part of what I do to make it happen is I’m a great believer from an entrepreneurial side to no one ever walks onto the vase. You get that by stepping on upon the ones of the ladder. I’m not the same situation with every major connection to mind. I don’t know. Kanye west absolutely categorically can tell you. I have no idea how to get hold of him, but I know a dozen, maybe two dozen people in, is it his field in this gravitational toll that know him that a credible enough and the peers of his that I could contact them and go, hey, this is what I need to happen

place if you feel comfortable, go forward and make the first introduction and then he would get two or three meet shouts from peers of his, the no mean to the point that he would end up picking up the phone guy. I’ve heard about you. What are your one?

Wow. And then once you get them on the phone there that, that’s a whole nother conversation. So I want to start with where you began. I’m understanding

I’ve, I’ve got credibility so far. You’re going to ruin it now. Oh, I’m going to ruin it.

Well, I, I want, I want to pick your brain on this because I understand that you used to be a London brick layer, so how, how did you, how did you get to where you are today? From being a brick layer in London?

So I know more of what I don’t like that I do like and as an entrepreneur we always feel as though we don’t fit in the boom done and I knew being a brick layer something was rubbing me the wrong way, you know, there was just something that was uncomfortable and there was a fateful day that I was actually on the building site and on the scaffolding was my dad, my uncles, my cousins are right at the end. Like it was a timeline was my granddad and he was like in his late seventies and I remember sitting with him, it seemed like consignment.

Did you,

I think to your age you are going to be on a building site. And he literally turned around to me and we’re an amish family. Turned around and he went, if you don’t quit today, you’ll meet tomorrow

both.

And it was, what exactly was one of those Kinda like, brace yourself, kicking the test these moments. And I literally got up, walked over to my dad because it was his building group and I said, I can’t be here. I’m sorry. Nate took it. Okay. But my mom didn’t, um, and then I just went through a flowery, have loads of different jobs trying to find something that didn’t give me friction, didn’t give me pain. The I actually felt as though I was good and we’re supposed to do so I get a ton of stuff that was rubbish from delivering cakes, working on doors, um, eventually talk to a financial company into hiring me is the next best hot shot. Stockbroker, bear in mind with zero experience, best sales job ever. Um, and they flew me to Hong Kong for the job and I landed on the Saturday go drunk with them on a Saturday or Sunday orientation on the Monday and I was fired Tuesday morning. So very short career. And then working on the door of nightclubs

now real quick. So at age 15 you started working with your family on this brick, laying in a business there. And then from age, when did you quit the family business? Were you 17 years old? 18,

I don’t know. I was like 15 and a half. I knew it wasn’t me very early on. And then I could, I bumbled around London and crappy jobs. So about another three and a half years before at the kid, like 19, 20 year old age. I talked my way into the Hong Kong job.

So you go to Hong Kong, you were there for three days, is that correct? Four days. Four days,

yeah. I was there for four days in fired.

Well Steve Sims and your book, you teach, you kind of distill your forest gump, like life. You have this epic life here and do an end to this, this thing you called the art of making things happen, blue fishing and you teach some really powerful concepts in the book. And I’d like to invest some time here today to pick your brain about three concepts that I found in the book to be very insightful. So I’d like to Kinda break the first one down here. You talk about the importance of asking why three times what, what does this mean?

So every time I’m my clothes will start understand. And affluence sometimes not always comes with a position of power. I’ve noticed something about the powerful and the affluent. They cautioned me nervous or scared of looking stupid. Um, they don’t like to ask for things because they don’t want to be turned down. That’s why I’m in business. But when they come to you, they don’t want to look silly about asking about what it is they want. Like if I said to you, what’s your social security number? How much money you going to bank a wash you religion. When was the last time you had sex? Any of those questions may fit, may make you feel uncomfortable. But the funny thing is they are all just a number or an answer that, that very black white, you know, I’ve got this amount of money in my bank, this is my social security.

But if you asked someone what is it that you ultimately want to do is there was no possibility of failure, what would you do? Who would you like to meet? That’s game to the Va. And people don’t like to avail themselves that much. So I get people come to me, they mAy want to do something absolutely brilliant and they will dilute it. So they will come to me and they will say, oh yeah, I’d love to do this because it means a lot to me and you say, hey, that’s fantastic. That sounds really good and I’d like to understand why that’s such a dream for you and you have to get you in a sherlock holmes out and the second time you asked, they kind of have been a few more. The layers. Usually the third or fourth time is when they’re like, look, that music was from a time there was not so pretty in my life and it means a lot to me that I actually got through it and I want to say thank you for being there, you know, or this person did this mean and helped me to be motivated enough in order to be able to get why I’m now is really getting down to that coal spine of why it is.

And I’ll often say to people, that’s fantastic. I love the request because you don’t want to tell people, hey, that’s a stupid thing. You say, I love that request, but can I really ask you to confirm to me the, your gonna wake up after we’ve done that, 2:00 in the morning in a cold sweat going, I can’t believe I managed to do that because if not we need to adapt to request and I’ve often said in my company I have never given anything to anybody, uh, of what they asked me for. I’ve given them what they desired and needed and they quite often are two different things.

So you break down the importance with that person of why they want to do something and then why they want to do it again and why they want to do it again. So you’re really down to the, to the core that sets one of your big principles is really find out why people are motivated to do what they do to want what they want.

If someone wants something, and this is the funny thing, nine times out of 10, if you want to meet someone, let’s joke around about the kanye west non towns, that 10 people will spend so much time researching things, law that than just coding someone within that circle. So are you always make the fIrst point of research called in somebody. So I’m actually the first couple, so I think that may be slightly about a funnel on that. Okay. That makes more sense, but I use the phone a lot and I’m amazed. Here’s the dumb thing. How many times do people use their smartphone? So checking our emails, the texts, the website that whether they’ve automated pizza compared to how many times they use it to actually phone someone. That’s very true. Very, very tight. I’ll use it a phone because then they get the tone of voice to get the accent. They get the enthusiasm, they get the tonality, the passion. So much always combined on a phone call than a text.

I’ve heard you share. I believe it was an interview. You did or it might’ve been a speech. I try to. When I get prepared for each interview, I try to really deep dive into you, kind of draw on you on the internet and try to learn as much as I can and I’ve heard you talk about, uh, leaving the voicemails that get read or get opened. I mean the, the, the voice messages. It seems like you do text voice messages. Can you talk to us about your theories on sending text messages to actually get opened?

Well, here’s the beauty. Let me ask you, because if I tell you it’s great marketing, but if you, if you tell me then this gospel, if you wake up in the morning and you’re pulling your cup of coffee and you pick up your smartphone, the thing that’s going to show on your smart phone is a ton of email messages that have come in. Okay? And on your phone it’ll show you half a dozen texts. What do you look read or listened to first?

I think most people would go with text first.

I’ve never ever heard anyone go, no. I checked my 2000 emails. So what I can’t understand is why don’t text you see, the beautiful thing about it is if someone sends an email, it’s copy, it’s text, it’s words. It’s very hard to get that enthusiasm just in as tolkien. Now in an email and always understand that your email is read by a person in a terrible mood. Now that Sounds a bit stupid, but let’s say fog, turn around to you and I’d go, hey, drinks tonight, 7:00. If you’ve had something terrible happen in your day, you’re going to find that as a very demanding a email. But if I do a voice text or a video and then texted to you and I go, hey buddy, we haven’t had drinks for a while tonight. Seven pm. Yeah. You know, there’s enthusiasm, there’s passion. Show. Much more comes across.

There’s also no spellcheck in voice, mio and audio. You can do a video 30 times faster than you can invite a text and it will only be read in the manner of the you gave it because you’re giving all your senses across within the video or the audio. So I’m a great believer text every time and the other thing is if you send a text to someone or you send an email to someone, let’s say farms like you do too, at the same, both at the same time. I email you and I text you. Okay, what do you think’s going to be responded to quickly? It’s got to be the text first. I think it’s always the text I sent out maybe 200 texts and then I need to make sure for the next two hours I haven’t got anything planned because people are like, steven really lOved the idea of that. How are we going to do it? Text is brevity, Texas, very short conversations and then you can go, hey bob, I’ll email you all the details and then you text them. Did you get the detail? God, god, questions let me know what jump on the phone. I’m a great believer that email is a support communication process. It’s not the only communication.

Well, one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time and in America, his team was the Oklahoma state cowboys. his name was eddie sutton. Coach eddie sutton and he’s like in the top five of all a ncaa basketball coaches for winds and I got asked to help plan his retirement party years ago and steve Sims just to hammer home the importance of what you said and how true it is. There was a committee of people that we’re supposed to invite people to this hall of fame dinner and this committee of people, I want to say maybe 10 people had combined steve to maybe get 10 to 15 people to rsvp for a gala with like 500 people, a room or attendance for 500 people and I went to coach sutton and I asked him for his list of numbers of all the people that he wanted to invite and I did exactly what you said to do. Steve Sims. I text everybody on that list for a couple hours and then throughout the whole day I was able to book all of the seats within 24 hours for the entire event and it worked and we filled up the marriott hotel. The event went well, but it’s crazy how one man texting 800 people could book more people than a whole committee of people who’ve been emailing for months. It’s truly is a powerful tool. The texts, the voicemail combo, that’s a move.

If you ever check out the stats now that she just came back from doing a speech in vegas at a attend swallows and I actually went up there and I invite you to a lot of people, supplies a lot of people, the stats from mail chimp and constant contact as how many people actually opened and meet an email out of 5,000, 10,000, $20,000. You send ouT an email of about 5,000 is read by about 70 people and if anyone out there has gotten there and I still buy checkup. Some of my videos, I’ve got the stats to prove this. You’re getting about 70 people read for every 5,000 emails you send out, which means 4,930 people have no idea what you’re talking about. Yay. You send out 10 texts, 100, 800, however many texts you send out. You’ll get about 98 percent of those people respond.

Now, steve, just to add further a confusion to you, to your book that I read upside down apparently, just to make it more fun. You have with the third concept in there where you said, if I’m mangling the words you tell them here, but you said, don’t be easy to understand, be impossible to misunderstand. Can you explain what that means if I didn’t mangle the quote?

No. You’d go to on and it’s still one of the most powerful quotes that I heard from brian kurtz and joe polish. Um, it’s, it’s true. It’s worth repeating. A lot of people actually think that they were easy to understand. Interpretation is key on everything. And I sent you before the, you can send out an email, they may be brilliant to someone, but if the guy went home that night and found his wife in bed with the gardener, he’s going to be depressed and he’s going to look at your email in the worst possible way. And where is the you couldn’t even perceive. so there is a massive difference between being easy to understand and absolutely impossible to misunderstand. So whenever I buy anything, whenever I’m putting anything on paper, I actually will really look at it, go, okay, why should I hate what I go? How can I perceive this as negative? I lost myself or the derogatory questions so that that comes through impossible to misunderstand social saved as I meant to send it. Your perfect with that quote.

No, I’d love if you’d share with our listeners what the bluefish group does and what led you to starting the bluefish group.

While all the verse that I didn’t. I didn’t, I didn’t start it. People started. I was adult. I mentioned to you that I got fired in Hong Kong. I’m now working on the door because let’s be blunt, I’m 240 pounds of pig ugly lad. So god put me on this earth to stand on doors and turn people away. And so I was on the door in Hong Kong and I was working there and people come up and we go, oh, it’s just, you could club. I don’t want to lie to anyone, so I’ll be like, no, there’s one down the vote. there’s really good tonight. Go down there, speak to jimmy, tell him simpson. Yeah, so before you knew it, I became the overcall of what was going on in the wham chai club area of Hong Kong. And from there I started putting on my own parties because I wanted to.

I wanted to hang out with rich people and I’m a great believer that even today, any relationship I get into, I get into it with value. I bring value. If someone doesn’t make you laugh, smile. You don’t enjoy that, that time. It’s not going to be a very long lasting relationship, but they then they bring value to it in some kind of context. You’re good. So for me, I always bought, oh you want me in your neighborhood because I know the best parties. I’m throwing the best pies and it grew and it grew bigger and bigger and bigger and you need to know where the word blue fish came from. I would throw these parties, and this was back in the nineties, I would fax paypal. Yo, yeah, that’s how bad it was. I would fax these people wherever it was and I would actually put on the bottom of it, the password to get in.

Oh nice. Yay. And this. This is stupid, but it will reveal why it was by accident genius. We thought it was a bit of a giggle and we would put on there silly things like name the lion out of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe or finish this sentence. One fish, two fish, red fish, and so people would literally come up to the front door and they would lean into it and go. Bluefish were saying get it, have a good night and we’d let them in. But what did happen, which was the supplies. You got these our middle management and you never get a problem with. Someone is working their way up the ladder. You never got a problem with the guy at the top of the ladder is that middle management where the a whole seemed to breed and we will get these people come up to the door.

I’m here for the party and then me and my fellow meathead and the whole place behind this like a yacht is going nuts and we were just blank them ago. Sorry mate, there’s no pie here tonight and we’re looking at my buddy and I be like, john is opa now. He’s got it confused is down in the hub and we would just get rid of him. We found it was such a cool filter to just have that little bit of a giggle to get in the room that if they didn’t do it, we got rid of them and then a little while people started walking around going, oh, who’s that blue fish company? I wonder if they can do this for me or what to take to. So we became a desire and now bluefish group has been around for Twenty, 24. I’m 24, 25 years now and we’ve done everything from located birkin handbags, skipping the line to get a limited edition car, find him rent bonds to quite simply closing down museums in florence for table of six michelangelo’s david and have an andrea bocelli, seven aid. YoU joined dinner. Um, we’ve just become the go to place for doing the amazing and miraculous, but we didn’t start it. It was started by desire and quite simply rich people needing to know where they could get brilliant stuff without looking silly, by being refused.

So what, uh, what concierge services does the company that you did not start to provide?

Very well said. Um, we do everything from travel tickets, you know, we’ll go as loud as can, like, you know, we don’t book anything less than five star, but we can get tickets to ballgames, anything like that. Um, and what we’re most well known for is then go in the other way. And someone said to us, hey, I’ve got a birthday party, plan the birthday party. And then we’ll turn around and go, well, would you like taylor swift to turn up and sing to you? Would you like aerosmith to turn up and teach you how to play guitars? We had a client that wanted a guitar lessons. So we go zz top to teach them how to play guitar list. That’s how extreme we are with. Here’s the dumb thing, the website, and we were not even mentioned it because we’re not pitching it. It doesn’t even have a phone number already because you have to be referred to us. So it’s that. Talk about marketing. We never advertise. It leaks out what we do, but you can’t contact us unless you know how to get ahold of us.

So for our listeners out there who want to get ahold of you, you did the action item is a hunt around the internet to find the secret password. Is that the idea?

Nine times out of 10 you need to find someone that knows who we are. But of course we got the we. We basically got two things going on. We’ve got the blue fish group, which we’re actually bringing out a new element called change to blue, which would be a lot easier for people to be able to find. So we got the blue fish and we got a taste of blue and of course then I’ve got my own private consultant and entrepreneurial speaking stuff as steve dot [inaudible] dot com. So there’s many ways of getting hold of us if you have a, if you’re clever enough to find a way in.

Now, steve Sims, I read in forbes that your company now supports just under 2,400 clients worldwide and in some 75 customers do business with you every one to two weeks. So these usually individuals are these usually, uh, corporations. Uh, what kind of clients do you work with,

with a top down? Before my book came out last year, quite simply, I was a big deal to about two percent of the population. Um, uh, I have some rich and famous clients in my, in my, um, voted decks, but 80, 85 to maybe even 90 percent of my clients have witches and unknown. I about loyal to. We actually looked at our one day, we had something like about 30, 30 royal families, pop stars, all these kind of stuff, but most of our clients that are richer and unknown to just need security, confidentiality and a standard they can contact us. We’re not gonna blow smoke up them and they’re going to go, steve, we’re heading on down to cannes, wed nova to Monaco. We’re heading over to star london, New York. What’s going on? And we’ll handle everything from the floods, the security, the accommodatIons, the restaurants. Knowing what’s going on in that area were make sure that they’ve got access to it and give them the full itinerary way in excess of what they would have been able to find themselves.

I’d love. I’d love for you to to share your approach to calling people and pitching them something that they’re used to saying no to over and over again. You’re calling somebody who’s used to saying no and pitching them something that they’re used to saying no. Over and over agaIn too.

Gino, for anyone listening, you need to confirm that you have not asked me that question or had me prepared for that question because you have lined up a home run for me. with that question

I. I will confirm. I have not in any way lined out this question for you.

If you want to avoid a no. Do not ask a question where they can answer with a yes or no.

Now that may sound stupid, but I needed. There’s a museum in florence called the academia. It houses michelangelo’s david. They don’t even. I’ll give it a short story, but they don’t even allow food and drink inside the museum. I wanted to set up a table of six at the feet of michelangelo’s david. Don’t want him to shut the museum down at 3:00 in the afternoon and I contacted them to see if they work flip before I contacted them and said, hey, do you allow a private rentals? So you museum? No, it would’ve said no his. He would have been funnier. Hey, do you mind if I stick a table of six, six at the feet of michelangelo’s david? So we can have dinner that night that I said no. Okay. So what you do as your concept and said hi, how are you? Um, first of all again, do you remember the beginning?

I said bring value to every conversation. Do you be such on what? The person you’re talking to your needs. These people were doing a gardener for new roof. Okay. So I’d contact. And today I believe you’re doing some work in a godless coming up because you got some repairs within the museum. Acquired. That is correct. No, I’m happy with a yes or no on that one. I’ve done my homework. I know full well. I’m also showing that I’ve done my homework. So then I say to them, I’ve got a way that I can actually help you significantly with the money moneybags. Now again, that I’m open for it to be yes or no question. Now one’s going to say no for me. Giving you money that you’ve already bought on the internet that you ask him for wood. This is what I would like to happen. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What needs to be done in order for that to happen? That’s the first time you enter into a communicative statement. So it forces the person to go,

oh,

and she literally said, we’ve never done that before of what your response is. That’s fantastic. We’re making history.

You, I think one of the things that you do that, uh, um, if I’ve read about this when they’re talking about steve jobs, you’ll read articles about steve jobs. There’s articles written about richard branson. I’m, you’ll hear psychologists talk about this, this thing called the reality distortion field. But basically you are so excited and passionate about what you were talking about, that one you’ve really thought about what you’re going to say before you say it. You have such a power of influence. You have a strategy. You almost don’t think it’s possible to accept a no before you call. And I will have listened to this interview you did with jay abraham, the legendary, uh, executive business consultant, the best selling author. And during that interview you were talking about if you have no passion, then you have no point, no passion, no point. So even if you implement the strategy you just suggested suggested if we don’t have passion, then there’s no point. Can you talk to us about what you mean when you say there’s no passion? No point.

What is two things? I actually resented my family. Um, that’s a silly way to enter into a conversation, but I want to give me the fact when I left my brick lane life, um, I’ve presented my family because we were so poor and it was only in my early twenties when I was working hard and starting to get somewhere that I realized these people have given me everything I needed to be successful in life. I wasn’t aware of just how wealthy I actually was because they taught me what it was like to keep to your word, to focus. Don’t get up at 9:00 in the morning and go home at 5:00, get up when the work needs to be done and finished when it’s done. So I had all of those things built into me and I was very fortunate to be a look back and go.

I was wrong. I was incredibly wealthy. Then I was also, and I think this is also because of the era that we were in pre smartphone, I was eight event, so how sometimes how intimidating these things could be. I would walk into someone and go, hey, I need to take this over. What do we need to do to get this done? And I would be so cool and calm about it. The people would be like, oh, I’m a when you need it up. Thirty or 6:00 would be fantastic. I’ll see you at 5:30 and there was an eight ones cold blahzay, which was confused for confidence at the time, but then as things grew, and again this comes down to the three wives, I don’t deal with a hose. I really don’t. So what are speaking to people? Every single one of the experiences that I put together is a beautiful story behind this.

Touched me and if it doesn’t excite me that I ain’t doing it. Now bear in mind I have no experience of opera. I have no experience with one of soft, so it doesn’t need to be in my wheelhouse of passion, but they need to be passionate about it in order for me to get a voucher and then I can feed off of that and then I can go to those locations, to those, uh, people and go, this is what needs to be done. I’m unsure how it’s going to be done, but let’s work on it to make sure it’s done. The easiest way to get a no from any of these people, it will ask them how much. If you go out and john go, hey, how much would it cost for you to teach me a piano fund? slammed, okay? Because you get to a level where money questionably it dirty and an so, and it’s a challenge and it’s rude so you to do that.

True. So you need to go to, you know, I’ve got this situAtion, we really need to gIve this emotion and experience to this person. I’m going to tell you why that needs to happen and your going to be part of and you’re gonna. Be thankful you are. And when you can actually bring that passion into a conversation, that’s where people go, oh, I, I’m in this thing and I’ve heard that many times as long as I’ve got aroused originally, no took about the hotel. It’s, yes, we do a lot of hotel planning and the holidays with the family and so we do a lot of that. But where I get called by my team is when someone’s got that dream, that fantasy, that experience needs to come off and that’s where my shallow comes in. That’s where my three wives come in and it’s part of the second third. Why onstar to get aroused by it. That’s what I can take that passion and faded in whatever needed to be done.

Now in your business, you’re, you’re, you’re at now the heavy rejection business and so many people let rejection defined them. They let they let them let rejection upset them. It begins to make them a dream. Smaller dreams kind of become more reclusive, but I’ve heard you say that failure does not define you. It refines you. I’d love for you, steve, to to break this down for what? This what this means for our listeners,

so I’m a member. A while back I was working with peter diamandis, the guy behind the x prize foundation, and we went, we organized a trip literally for some of the mixes people in the planet. I will not name names it was there, but it wasn’t as one of the guests. He was actually helping us put something on, but the guests, the attendees that were there, uh, there was some about 18 attendees, I think 10 of them were in the top 100 people in the world. Okay. We have security guards all over, but it was, it was massive. But as I was talking and client flying around and change to each one of these people, they will all failures. They had all filed a things and tried to do things and it not worked, but carried on going. And that allowed them to be fine, that failures to be able to get into the professionally up. If you look at elan mask, how many times did that vertical walker crash? You know, you’d see on the news, literally there’s another lock blows into flames. You don’t see it now, why is he lands perfectly? They laugh at you before they applaud. I believe the failures in the paypal I have and I know I’ve allowed it to be them and not be fined them. And I urge you, if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.

Wow. Well, if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough in your mind, steve, why are people so afraid to fail? What’s going on culturally where people would just. Or they’re so afraid of failure.

Yeah, no, you’re brilliant. And I’m gonna. I’m gonna. Pull you with a little story. I was walking down the, uh, the than I was walking down the, um, the mall the other day. I’m in California, so it was hot outside and there’s this woman in front of me and I’m going to give you the picture. This was the very, very, very large woman. Okay. And on, with my, uh, with my wife and he funded me or two guys and I noticed her because she literally had about three or four bags on her arms. So she’s a white lady, but now her alarms about, because she’s carrying all of these bags and I was just kind of amazed that she would be able to carry so much, so much baggage. The poor lady slipped now because of the way homes were out holding onto these bags and because of the fact that soon.

But she’s a big girl. She hit the floor hard. Oh, bags. When, when I saw her going down, now you know, you know when you see someone go down and it’s like in slow motion, right. You know, I shut off to try and see if I could do anything. Thankfully the two guys in front of me were gentlemen. They jumped in nit. None of us could get to her fast. Not this poor woman went down and she hit the side of her head bags, went all over the place. It clattered I don’t know what she had inhibited, made some noise and we ran over him. We grabbed this lady and we didn’t want to move around too fast in case anything in her started pulling the bags and stuff like that. She, she came back from getting the client on her head. She hit this concrete floor with a head and the first thing she started doing was shooting our head around the mall looking and we saw it and all three of us guys started looking around the floor to see what is she looking for?

Is that person is a bag, you know, what, what is she looking for? And I said to her, I said, what have you lost? What is it that we need to find for you? And she turned around still on the floor and she said, I just wanted to make sure no one was video in that. Wow. Now we’re in a culture now where we’re frightened to file in case someone ridicules in case someone laughs at us and I’ve noticed one thick line of, of, of faith between all the successful people I know is the don’t really care if they’re laughing or clapping. They know what’s going on. So I believe quite simply now people are fighting with trying things because they don’t want to be laughed at. They’re actually no end of the failure. The find of someone seeing them fight and I think that’s, I think that’s very sad and I think it’s as to our society today, you know, I’ve heard you say that you tried to create an emotion with everything you do.

Well, what, what do you mean by that? Well, emotions, emotions become memories and memories get polished with time is dan sullivan says, I’m so if I’ve got a situation and I want to thank someone and not do this very often and you know, anyone listening to this that knows me, he’s going to be now can like begging for some more of it. But if I, if I want to say thank you, like if I asked you to make an introduction, I mentioned to you before about I needed someone who introduced me to kanye west. Um, if that was the situation and I got four people to make the introduction regardless of whether or not it comes off, I thank those people for going out of their way to introduce me and I will thank them by creating an emotion. Now I could thank them by sending them a couple of hundred bucks or 500 bucks.

Okay. But in my experience like cognac, she, you know, that’s gonna make you be, you know, 1:50 to 50, it’s got to be a lot of money. That was the backstage meet and greet them maybe 30, 40, 50 grand, something like that. But for me to be given away 200, 500 bucks to make the introduction is not a big equation enough. And skyler things, even if it doesn’t come off, but if I did that, if I gave you today and what, I don’t know anything about your finances, but if I gave you $500 cash angel and internet bloat and I handed it to you, you’ll be like, oh, tuesdays, thank you very much. It would go home. It would go on that night’s takeaway. It would go on, you know, gas in the tank. It would go on, oh, I’ve got to buy some dog food for the dogs are going to pay this bill.

I’m as I’ve got some cash out pay that a gone within 24 hours. Okay. But if I said to you, hey, thank you so much for doing this, I’ve noticed in your area I couldn’t really be such and there was a new restaurant specializes in some I know x, y, z kind of food that I know you’re you like fish and there’s a new sushi restaurant in your area and he’s getting fantastic reviews. Give them a call. I’ve alreadY covered it. Enjoy the night with you and your family or the drinks and the food’s already been covered. Have a great night right now. That’s still going to cost me $500 bucks. But now you’ve got a memory of spending time with your family at the new hot restaurant in your area. Now that meant me. We’ll start next time I meet you, a year to three years from now, you’ll see me In a room and you’re telling your friend, I’ve got to go meet this guy. Joe sent me to a beautiful restaurant. You know, I did something for any restaurant. That restaurant suddenly becomes a lot bigger, more powerful because it was a memory of a time when you shared with your family and then you come over and it’s a much greater, much greater reaction. So I, I believe, create the emotion. Don’t send a check,

create the emotion. Don’t send the check. No, no. Steve, I’m, I’m curious if you’d be willing to, to share with listeners out there. You had one story that I heard you talk about where somebody spent, I believe it was $17,000 with you to meet their favorite band, the iconic band journey. Is that, is that right? Or did I read your book upside down?

Oh, you didn’t meet it upside down. It was a little. There was another digit. Another couple of digits on eventually. But you, you, you all 100 percent correct. Even with the first one. And this actually comes down to the, uh, the three winds. The gentlemen actually contacted me through an introduction from richard branson because he wanted to meet the rock band journey. That was my, that was my instruction. Hey steve Sims, you know, I’ve heard the door. These things, I want to meet the rock band journey. I’m like, right, fine. Fair enough. Yup. Why do you want to do that? And I went through design principles, principles of nevers changed. Why do you want to do this? Maybe like the band. The band is cool, you know, I’ve heard them for ages. You get that kind of response. Okay. And then you go, okay, so let me just get this right. You’re going to pay me to stand backstage so you can shake the hands of journey as they come off concept, you know, they would have forgotten your name before I even got to the change event. Is that what you’re looking for? Is that going to wake you up in the morning and go, oh my god, I can’t believe we did that. Then can you explain to me why don’t you so important?

We went through a few of those wise to find out that this guy who’s now a cnn commentator, a money commentator, I’m used to sleep on his mate’s couch when they were college and to make money. He was the lead singer of a journey cover that. Oh, nice. Now there’s been illnesses. That’s sicknesses. There’s been life, let’s be blunt. We all go through it. There’s been a life going on. The ups and downs of an entrepreneur and the thing he was always able to rely on with the music of journey to bring them back up again and it really holds on tight. The journey was his thing to, to his lifestyle ups and downs. And he wanted to finally meet the crew and say thank you for the, the sound carl. Thank you for the uh, the thing track to my life. And I said to him now we’ve got some, now does, there’s something here and I’m telling you now you ain’t making him backstage.

So I contacted the band, I told the band again, bringing value to every conversation. The band was just about to start touring again. So they needed some good pr, some good publicity. Okay, got it. So I went and I said, I’ve got a great way, you know, this is a diehard fan. He been with you since.now. Also I found out the drummers, some has autism, my client’s brother’s son has autism. So why don’t we wrap all of this around. A client of mine, getting that final dream was raising money for autism speaks. So I was given a benefit of publicity and feel good factor for the band. I was raising an awareness to a good charitable foundation and my client was actually getting the dream. We went for me in the band backstage with handshake, which was why he asked to actually walk it on stage and singing fortunes live with the vogue band journey that is now deemed as the short term lead singer of the band.

Did your client crush it? Was he awesome? He was brilliant. Actually. You know, I had heard him because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a sock, let’s be honest. But they took it really seriously and that guy could belt it out and he had a guitar as well. So he got two jammers. Well he. He actually did very, very well. He was very careful of the songs. He sang [inaudible]. There’s some pretty pretty rangy songs in that. So he chose them. The wound, his wheelhouse. But yeah, he walked these fortunes. We went back and forward picking the chains, making sure the band was okay. Can the band van these four subsequently without ruining a, um, the tempo of the concert. And so it was a lot of logistics in it, but yeah, he went down to san diego and is now deemed as a shorter lead singer of the rock band journey.

Awesome. DId you have, you have so many great stories, but I have the trifecta, the final three questions for you. You know, so many of our listeners, we have hundreds of thousands of listeners all around the world and one thing that our entrepreneurial audience in business owner audience always wants to know about is they’re always curious about the habits and routines of top performers such as yourself. So I’d like to ask you, what do the first three to four hours of a typical day look like for you?

So there’s always a mix of everyone having all of these, uh, the tim ferriss habits as he talks about a lot. So I, I, I wake up, I made the coffee, I pick up my phone, I kicked the dogs out. As the dogs are going out, the first thing I’d do is I’d check my texts because anyone knows that if there’s a problem initial in emergency text it don’t email it, text it and I’m going to be asleep so don’t even phone it. So I’ll show that there’s no emergencies when he fires that have gone out. Then what I do like everyone is I filled up, I’m a great believer in only doing what I am, exceptional app, anything that I’m competent at doing or that I can do. Okay. I guess somebody else to do, which leaves more of my day to do my five percent grayish trip today is to outsource anything that anyone can do as good as you or better.

So I will go through my emails, just filter out to like get down to like 10 emails, 10 requests, 10 pieces of mail, 10 old terms the need my five percent. And then I’ll look at them quite simply and outside of them, which ones arouse me, which ones are just excited me. And if I get a guy and we get this a lot, oh, you know, I’m a, I’m a stock broker from New York and I need to go to, you know, the victoria secret party. I need to walk the red carpet at the oscars because I need photographs and stuff. No, no, that’s not what we’re in it for. We want the story. We want the reason. We want to make sure that there’s a, a true nugget behind devin and we do then wake my wife up, we’re getting ready to put the kids out. And then the day will start.

Now you are a guy who has had lived a life of traveling all over the world. You’ve experienced so many things. You’ve interacted with a lot of celebrities. You’ve, you’ve learned a lot through trial and error. And I’m always curious about people like you and, and the books or the book that you would recommend for all of our listeners if you said, hey, mr. Listener, if you only have time to read two books, okay, let’s say it’s a given. They’re going to pick up your book, blue fishing, the art of making things happen and everyone’s going to go out there by blue fishing. The art of making things happen. Is there another book or a couple of books that you’d recommend for all of our listeners out there? And, and, and why?

Um, you mentioned my, my, my good friend jay earlier, he gave me one of the most incredible books. Now burning my back guy. He is an author of some insanely brilliant masterminds of literature. But the book that really shook me to my core was a doctor seuss. Oh, the places we shall go. Oh yeah. Have you ever read that book? No. So it’s written as a kid’s bedtime story, but It basically for, uh, uh, gives you a full map of the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life and depicts in its essence about enjoy the journey because, you know, that’s the fun part. And he actually is a business card would give this book out and he gave me a copy once and I, I read it to my kids 20 times. I would read it in the office just on my own. I’m a great believer in dreaming.

I love to dream. So most of the books I like to read are ones that take me out of myself. Um, I liked these amazing books. I love the damn ground trilogy there. He did, you know, the davinci code. If it gets into business books, then I try to audio it. Um, and I ordered audio it for a couple of reasons. Reading books means that I’ve got something in my hand when I’m listening. I’m not there to be, um, to be ignited and motivated and dare to be actioned. If I’ve got an audio book, I can have a pen and paper in my hand and I can take notes or like, I like that quote. Oh, I’m going to be actually write notes. So I’m an audio person. Joe polish did a little book on marketing. Uh, that has been. He hasn’t released it yet, but I’m in love with that.

Caleb maddix is a young 16 year old lad that’s one of the smartest boys I know. Tim ferris did a great book, a virus, a viral and holiday at tucker max. I’m fortunate, and this is where I’m a little bit spoiled for choice. these are all my friends, so I’m very fortunate that where I am in my world now, I get all the books from brendon burchard, grasiozi, jj virgin. I get them, send them ebooks and I’m thrilled to be able to get those, but I always prefer shoving them on audio. I’m just going to recap here. You said joe polish and for that maybe the four hour work week by tim ferriss, is that correct? But he’s got one on mentors, mentors, mentors. You liked that one? I do. I do. I like that. If I had to name names, I would say those two are brilliant as a site.

Anything by jay abraham guy, the guy is. I was going to say rude, but probably the better way is course. You will read jay abraham with books and be aggravated because he’s an. He’s an incredibly articulate man. They’ll will reveal to you simple steps, the you’ve ignored. There is nothing in a jay abraham book. You can’t do it. There’s a lot of books out there now to teach you how to do things. In fact, he’s another great one. I’m a mind. Xcel less doing a rmis did a brilliant book on how to actually automate the things that you’re competent app. So again, you can have the rest of the day to day with your brilliant app.

We just had. Arianne is a guest there probably 60 days ago or so months, probably a couple months on the show, so he’s still emotionally recovering from the psychological nudity that is appearing on this show, but isn’t it? Yeah. No. I want to ask you this, this final question here. If there’s an action step, our listeners are so action oriented just lIke you, if they’re going, okay, as a result of this show, I’m going to do one thing and the next 24 hours I’m going to do one thing, one move, one action item. I’m going to take one. What is the one action item that you, mr steve would recommend for each and every one of our listeners to take today?

Alright, stop emailing, emailing, that’s going to sound stupid, but we actually do the regular basis. Wake up in the morning and pour your coffee, cup of tea, whatever it is, download all of your emails and then spend the next 24 hours only responding by every other method other than email. The best thing in the world is you actually phoned someone up and you go, hey joe, I got your email icon. Make sense to me, but I’m just one of the tokens from. See if there was anything that we were missing. You amazed at the amount of things that come back. The fact that you showed you cared enough to reach out. You can do it by audio detection, dubai video texts. You did it by phone call before one day. Do not respond by email. See the impact you have in money, relationships, connectivity, communication, and I swear to god, yo do it every single week for the rest of your life.

I always respond to emails on the phone call, by the way, that’s my move. I will not respond to people’s emails now.

Validated what I said then. So thank you.

Well, that’s how you build connections. It’s what you do. I mean, we have 160 coaching clients we’ve worked with for a long, long time. We really aren’t going to grow that business beyond that number just because the logistics of the backend support that we do, but our clients will stick around for a decade and people say, gosh, why do you have the same clients for five years, seven years? It’s that relationship and that’s what really resonates with me about your work and that deep emotional connection that you make with your clients. Uh, steve, we’d like to end every show with a three, two, one, and then a boom and boom around here stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum and it’s that big overwhelming optimistic momentum that it needed that you need to take to, uh, turn your dreams into reality. So, uh, steve sims, would you join us with kind of a ceremonial boom as well? Your countdown here? You ready? my friend. Okay, here we go. Chapter. Are you ready? Let’s do this. Here we go. Three, two, one.