STEVE SIMS – THE ART OF MAKING THINGS HAPPEN

I want to start this episode by asking a question. Do you know anyone that’s worked with, sir, Elton John or Elon Musk, send people down to see the wreck of the Titanic on the seabed or closed museums and Florence for a private dinner party. And that had Andrea Bocelli serenade them while they ate there.

Well, you do. Now. Our guest today has been called the real life wizard of Oz by Forbes and entrepreneur magazine. Steve Sims is the concierge for billionaires working with such people as Elon Musk and Richard Branson. He is also the best-selling author of Bluefishing. The art of making things happen.

Steve, it’s an honor. Welcome to the RUN GPG podcast. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for that. Yeah, it’s good to have you, anyone who knows your story, would definitely say you have an interesting life and a fascinating profession, right? You know, a real niche occupation. As I mentioned in the intro, you know, you’ve been called the real life wizard of Oz.

Not a lot of people would qualify for that label, Steve. Why do they call you? Oh, no. A lot of people would want it. Cause if you think about it, the guy was affordable. It was, it was very funny, it was one of those double-edged swords. So I had an, I had an Alsco ran up on me in Forbes, and it was pretty, pretty amazing cause they did an eight page article on me with, you know, everyone from, as you said, Elton Ilan mentioned, you know, a whole bunch of powerful people.

So it was great. Article for my promotion and for my marketing, for my ego. And then they went, he used a real life wizard of Oz, and then you go hang on a minute. You know, that guy was like some old perf behind the curtain. Is that what people think I am? But I basically became the Make-A-Wish foundation for people with big checks.

And I used to tell people quite openly that I can make you more interesting, you know, via your bank account. And I would take the things that they wanted, the things that interested them that they liked. And then I wanted to see how far I could push it? Like you brought up Florence, the client literally just asked me for a dining experience in Florence.

And I learned very, very early. Never, and it’s even more important now. Never give a client what they ask for, give them what they want last desire for, and very rarely will they come out and tell you what that is. So that’s your job to basically go above and beyond. And that’s what I did. You know, the guy wanted a dining experience.

I know he had to check, put the . So I took over a museum at the fate of Michelangelo’s David string quartet, piano, top local chef, and then halfway through his meatballs had on driver show. You come in and seven, eight. And so I took it well above and beyond it because of that and that creativity and that thought full steamed meat as the real life wisdom.

Well, like I said, there’s not a lot of people that would qualify for that label. So let’s paint the picture then. Where did it all begin? Like how did you go from being a bouncer in a Hong Kong nightclub to being a concierge for billionaires? I was pissed off. It’s the same as you. You know, we can drop names, we can drop locations, but they originate, the catalyst for all of us doing something.

Is that we get pissed off. We do something and then we go, well, why does it have to be so old? Why does it have to be like this? And as entrepreneurs, we then go and find a way to create it. Bearing in mind, Elan Musk invented PayPal because he couldn’t understand why it took five days to wire money from one bank account to another.

He got pissed off. He invented it. You know? So as entrepreneurs, we always start off by being aggravated with. And then finding a way over it for me, I’d come from an east London family. I was a bricklayer. Now I’m a Dorman and I’m looking at people with watches worth more than 10 years salary. And I’m like, hang on a minute.

Why have you got an, I have not, you know, why are you successful? And I am not. So the second I started getting aggravated and internally violent with that question, I thought to myself, I’ve got to go and ask a billionaire now, isn’t it amazing how people want to start a business. They want to get financial advice.

They wanted to get into real estate. They want to start a line of clothing and they go to the pub and they ask their mates who have no qualifications on any of those things. So I thought to myself, if I want to be me. I don’t want to go and ask one of my broke ass biker mates to stay. I’m fricking. Now I’ve got to go and ask a billionaire.

So as a doorman, I knew where all the nightclubs were. So I started by getting affluent people into nightclubs, and then I started throwing my own parties. And then I started working for companies like shell out and John’s Oscar party, Kentucky Derby, New York fashion week, the Grammys, the biggest events in the world.

And along the way. They would say, Hey, you know, out of junk, can you give me a piano lesson? Hey, can you give me a drum lesson with guns and Moses, can you introduce me to this? Can you get me to the frontline of this? Can you give me this hand picked whatever? And I just became the, the, the wish fulfillment.

I’m not that guy. You really want a hug. If you see me don’t know me at 11 o’clock at night walking down the street, you know? So I looked perfectly adequate for a dog. But I didn’t kind of look right for this new concierge industry. So what I was doing was I was using the concierge world as a Trojan horse.

I’ll look after you here. What I’m going to walk. That’s good. A question of, Hey, now in fairness, you’re kind of doing that with the podcast, you know, with the podcast, you’re getting popularity, you’re getting followers, you’ll gain credibility. But also let’s be blunt. It’s your curious nature that is allowing you via the medium of a podcast to now interview loads and loads of different people that maybe never would have been able to chat with in any other kind of life.

But now through the podcasts, you can, we didn’t have podcasts in the eighties and nineties. So I use the concierge industry to be able to have those conversations. And then the book came out three years ago from what I’d kind of like. And then I just took off speaking coaching and traveling the world, basically trying to get people to think differently.

What was the first experience you’ve facilitated? Ah, very unsexy. Because I was getting people into nightclubs. These four guys, good-looking young socialite guys came up the front door and they said to me, Hey, are you going to the yacht party? And again, this was in Hong Kong. And I was like, ah, no, I had no idea.

I had no, I had no idea what they were even talking about. And I was like, wow, there’s loads going on tonight? Which one are you talking about? So they gave me all the details of this party and they went inside the lounge and I walked down because the Harbor was actually quite close to this area that I was working in called when Kai, I walked down to the Harbor and I found the girl that was putting together the.

And I walked up to her and I said, Hey, how are you doing my name’s Steve, Sam. She doesn’t know me, but we got full guests coming down tonight. Just wanted to ask you, do you want them to come at eight 30 tonight or nine 30 to avoid the bottleneck? What would be better for you now? The first thing she did, because everyone’s got a knee jerk reaction.

Most of the knee jerk reactions are the word. No, you know, so first lesson here, fellows, some ladies never ask a question. Where the answer can be. No. So I had said, you know, what time works better for you. She starts going through the flip chart and a friend of mine. I didn’t even give her the clients’ names.

And I said to her, look, I’m not trying to stress you out. I know it’s going to be busy tonight. I’m just trying to think of what works better for you. So again, I’m thinking of her. So she chose a van and I can’t remember what she said, eight 30 or nine 30, but she gave me a time and I went, oh, thank you very much.

And I said, and unless. Everyone’s going to come to this party, they’re going to drink, consume, have fun, leave and forget to say thank you. I want to say thank you. Now, I was earning a thousand dollars a week for basically slapping people. That was my job description. that description must slap people on the club, in the club.

That was my job. And I had a thousand bucks a week for that pleasure. So I had gone into my wallet and I had $500. And I pulled out 300 bucks and I gave it to her and I said, look, tomorrow when this is over, grab, have yourself a nice bottle of wine and a takeaway and just go, Hey, I poured off a damn good night and chill, relax, and just be thankful you did it.

And she was like, oh, I got her thinking of the aftermath. Okay. I gave it 300 bucks and then I gambled it. I went and had a good night, turned away and went to walk away. Bearing in mind, had not given her the clients’ names that set it up so well that she went, oh, hang on a minute. Steve. What’s the client’s name?

And when I told us she wrote them down on the front of the sheet and as she was doing it, I went, oh, did you need them to ask for anyone in particular? And she went, yeah, you get them to Austin, mate, I’ll take care of them. And so I went back to the guys knowing, Hey, I’ve made some cool. I didn’t even have a phone, but, you know, I said I’ve made some coals and, pulled a couple of strings and a few people that gotta be looked after when you get in there, you ask for Mandy, you turn up at nine 30, you’ll be treated at VIP for the night, by the way, 500 bucks per person.

Now they jumped up and started dishing out there’s 500 bucks onto the table each going, oh, thank you. And they didn’t even focus on the money. If I see a couple of them overpay. And I had to give him a little bit of money back, but they were so thankful that I had arranged it without them standing the humiliation of getting the, knowing that this was worth the pain.

And I was like, eh, people aren’t paying to get into the event, that pain to save the humiliation of. That was it. It’s like a prostitute. You don’t pay a prostitute. You pay at Galway afterwards. You know, I said, I would say may be inappropriate for the podcast here, but I may realize very early on what people were actually paying for.

It wasn’t the access. It was to avoid humiliation. And I walked back up to the door and I just met. I turned to cash. I just plead $1,700 profit for a half hour. And so it started from there. I started gambling clubs. I started again throwing my own parties and really just trying to come see how big I could take it.

But it was one of my first big lessons. So Steve, that was a workshop on how to get things done and on networking. You know, if people take the time to actually break that down. So that’s impressive. Now, was it at that point that you knew you would become the Make-A-Wish for people that can afford a company?

Or was the growth somewhat organic and fluid back then? Like when did you know that that was your superpower? When did you know that? Probably eight years later. I’m pretty slow to learn. And as my wife says, I’m her favorite blunt instrument. You know, I’ve been with my wife. And all I wanted to do was to get off the door.

I wanted to get off the door and I wanted someone to go look, you’re comfortable. Your. Sell my private jets, Selma yachts become a stock. I wanted a job that paid me, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And as income I wanted to drive around in a fancy car, I wanted to wear a fancy suit and I wanted to have a watch that was worked by the first house.

That’s what I wanted. Never kind of got it. Because along the way, I was so focused on building up my Rolodex to millionaires and billionaires, and again, never, ever, ever marketed to poor people. I never mocked the poor people because I knew what it was like to be poor. I knew that people with no money can’t afford or if they can scrape the dollars together to get into a club.

I know they’re not going to be buying drinks, so I’m not, so-and-so why mark. To me. I know what I’m like, so I started marketing to millionaires and billionaires. And as this grew, I thought to myself, wow, I’m making good money. Cause I was throwing private parties for roundabout, a thousand to $5,000 for a one night party.

And I was getting it. And then I’ll lose, go into places like car TAX Mercedes Rolex. I would have my PJ pink tape down here and these big luxury brands are going, Hey, how would you like to mingle with about 80 of the richest people in this area? And they’d be like, great, that’d be $30,000. And this party will be brought to you by Mercedes of Calhoun.

And they’d be like, oh, right. So I was getting paid for the people coming in. I was getting sponsor money coming in. I thought to myself, this is ridiculous. You know, I will get away with like about 70 grand a night. I thought this had to stop as life was going on every now and then I would go and have lunch with these people and I’d go and have dinner with these clients that I was building up.

I always wanted them to get this, this monstrosity here. I’ve always asked for water. This was the only time in my life that I was waiting for them to offer me a job. And then about seven or eight years later, I was working with this little car company called Ferrari. And I said to my wife, “ I’ve got to get a job.

You know, you know, we’re doing a lot, you know, hustle in these clubs and these events and getting someone in the Marinello and getting someone in the Paris fashion week and get, you know, I’ve got to get a job. I will get a job soon. I will get a job. And she turned around. You’ve made yours, you know, do you not realize where we live now?

We will live in an independent house at the time. And she said, you know, we’ve never had to worry about the vent. You know, we’ve got a car. I was always on motorcycles. So I always had a motorbike. Still now I don’t have a car just to have a garage full of motorcycles. And so as it went on, without me realizing it and it took her and I remember she actually printed off our banks.

And she came in and she put it down and she went, you have a job, you created it. I was like, oh, and that was, that was the way it, I have no, it took eight years for my wife to actually introduce me to the fact that we had invented the world’s first private concierge from, because up until the eighties and nineties, if you said concierge, they thought, what.

You know, and there we were, as a, as a personal private concierge, also doing a lot of the work for American express Centurion, the black card, which was the only, so everyone was like, oh, well, if you’re going to get a personal concierge, it’s either gotta be bluefish or it’s got to be central Vivian. Well, I hate to break it to you.

We were Chilean. So we got you left right. And center. So it was kind of fun. That’s amazing. What a profound moment that would have been. So let me ask you, can you tell us about a couple of the most memorable experiences that you created for clients maybe? Jesus. Well, we’ve already told you about the Florence experience.

So we had added, we had a couple of them, who wanted to get married in Nevada, come by the Pope. We had a crew that wanted to go down and see the record, the Titanic on the floor bed. I had a client that was a great fan of the rock band journey. So I got him invited up on stage and he sang five tunes live on stage during a con.

I had clients who walk on rolls on the back of missions, impossible, the entourage, a whole bunch of movies and TV shows. I’ve had people do drums with guns and Moses I’ve had people do learn to play. The guitar was easy. Top driven formula, one car done unarmed combat with Navy seals. If you can dream it and afford it, I was the guy putting it.

Wow. I’m going to ask you about two names. It was mentioned in your bio, Elon Musk. What’s he like? He doesn’t waste words. He is very thoughtful. You know, this was with all affluent people. They get to a point where they realize that the only thing they can’t afford. It’s time. You can’t buy more time.

So they become very precious with it. So they do not care what you’re binge watching on Netflix. They do not care. What takeaway you had last night, they care about the impact you’re creating. What is your problem? What is your focus? What is your drive? What is your passion? I remember the first time I started hanging around with people like Helen and they’ve almost intense, questionable.

I know I’d go. As far as saving some cases, interviews. You know, and it can, it kind of makes you feel good. Oh my God, I’m being, I’m being quizzed. Where’s the spotlight? I’m going to be waterboarded any minute now, but they want to get into that. I remember one time I was walking through space X with a couple of clients of mine and one of my clients.

Proud to be walking through space X with Elon Musk, he was just as happy as Larry. The other guy wouldn’t shut up and was trying to get a long to have a conversation about what G loans were. Sponsors were. No, that kind of thing. Didn’t really want to have the compensation, but this was at the time pre. And this was at a time when NASA publicly used to humiliate Ilan about there’s no space in this industry for civilians, you know, and if you remember, NASA was not very polite about Elon Musk going into the industry.

So, my client actually pulled it up essentially. Ah, how do you feel about NASA actually publicly humiliating Ilan didn’t even miss a beat. He turned around and said that we’re always laughing.

Seconds before they applaud. And that was the only thing he said. And I was like, whoa, that’s good. Luckily it shut him up, but I have never, ever forgotten that.

And in fact, that was one of the catalysts that told me to go, okay, I go for stuff. That’s pretty outrageous. I need to go for stuff. That’s laughable. I need to go for stuff like that. So from then on every time a client gave me something to do, I was like, okay, what is the most ridiculous way that this can go down?

What is the most stupid, laughable concept I could come up with? And the funny thing is no surprise. Most of the time I’d get turned down and then I’d end up with the second or third, most ridiculous. Well, twin still. Miles away from the original request, but the better light. And it was amazing how many times I actually did get that stupid.

Well, I like the way you’re thinking, Steve, one more name. I want to ask you about Richard Branson. I worked for, I’m sad that his mum passed away, but I worked for his mum first, doing the VOC, the cows’ events when she was raising money for the ladies in America. His mum was a fireball. She was strong.

She was a wonderful lady. and vitriol used to come along to her events. And then I used to work, drumming up entrepreneur events for his neck of Ireland. I used to raise money for Virgin. And quite simply, I’ve also negotiated speaking gigs for him, around America and Canada. So he’s an interesting character.

Then what I’ll do is in them are brands and Richard’s a brand. And if you can think about the difference between making stuff happen, which is brand in it, I’ll leave it at that, but that’s the day for Columbus. Yeah, well, one I would like to break down at another time, maybe part two. We’ll do that.

Okay. I want to get into the book here and ask you about some of the concepts and quotes in the book, which is named after your company, right. Blue fishing. And then I want to talk about some actionable advice for sales professionals entrepreneurs today. So what was the catalyst behind the book? Like, what’s it about and what, where did the name blue fishing actually come from?

So we used to get people to come into nightclubs and we used to give them passwords and there’d be things it’d be stupid things. Cause I used to like to have people walk through the door with a smile on their face. So I would say, Hey, the password to get into this club. You’ve got a name, two of the Teletubbies, or you’ve got to name a big birds mate from Sesame street.

And one of the other ones was, Finish this sentence one fish, two fish. Which was Playfish now blue fish people then start going, oh, is your company called blue fish? Now, funny enough at the time, it wasn’t. We actually had to do a name change to call it bluefish. But this is what happened. We went from a silly name on a door to an aggregate.

People suddenly started contacting me going, Hey, I had a birthday party last night. It was pretty decent, but I blew the crap out of it, or you’d have been proud of me. I went to a Beyonce concert and I was able to blue fish my way back backstage. All of a sudden it became this, this, this mentality, this status in your head of how to take something above and beyond.

Where you normally would accept. So that’s where the whole concept of bluefish in the art of making things happen, which is the name of the book, came from. And I was contacted one day at a party. And this girl said to me, you know, we were telling the stories and a few days later, she said, you should write a book.

And she said, we want you to name all the celebrities and powerful people or what you’ve done from. And I said, if I did that, I’d be dead by cocktail hour. So I’m not doing it. And then she said, well, hang on a minute. And she came back a few days later, she took the note and then she said, well, hang on a minute.

I just heard a bit more about your backstory instead of all the rich and powerful people, do you do it for them? How does a brick layer from London start doing this with the Nevada Vatican? You know, that’s in low interest. And so we wrote the book, giving those tips and tricks and those basics. Facing more impactful items, not expensive, but focusing on the impact, I wrote the book and I thought to myself, no, no one’s going to buy it.

You know, it’s not going to take off. No, one’s going to believe it. And I don’t, did you see the video on the front of the website? I saw one of them. I don’t know which one you’re referring to. So we mentioned Colin Sandhya Hatta earlier, before the conversation, lovely peeps, they are, well, we had to, I was told by my publisher, which was Simon Schuster.

You have to do a book launch. And I was like, I don’t want to do a book launch. The pump’s not going to be, you know, not going to, I didn’t tell them he was not going to go anywhere, but I was thinking to myself, I’m not going to sit at Barnes and noble on a Saturday afternoon. Or golfing copies because no one’s going to come anywhere near me, you know?

So I thought I’m not going to do that, but they sent me some money and I went down to my favorite whiskey bar and I just signed it over to them. And I said, Hey, go kick us out when it’s over. And I invited like Jim quit Lewis Howes, Sonya had a, Cole had a Jesse out of mathematics, Greg. Great. A whole bunch of people.

And Colin, Sonia had. That devious little buggers that they are, they videoed the whole night. Now, I didn’t know this was happening. So on the front page of my website, Steve D sims.com, you can actually see this video that they did. And at the beginning of the video, everyone’s kind of always such a pleasure to be here with Steve.

The fact he’s done this book, it’s wonderful. You know, he’s, he’s very caring. That will be nice. And then slowly everyone’s game piston. And at the end of it, there’s a lot of profanity and audit, even though he could write a book, you know, we put that video up on the website, so we didn’t know it was going to take off, but it did.

And the reason for me behind it was because I was so furious again, it’s the aggravation gene, so furious. So the way people marketed, branded, sold, manipulated. I wanted to get people to go well, hang on. I don’t need to do any of those things. And I wanted to do that to create a mobile life that I want to live in.

So I get people to focus on the impact. I get people to stop selling and start solving. You know, I get people to focus on impactful waves of marketing. We were talking about a hotel station to me. It also happens to be free. So any of these things that moves the needle that identify you as. And get people to go, oh, I like the way this guy thinks on his go things.

I’m going to do pieces for them and to remove the big sea of business, which is confusing. Cause no one confused ever gave you that credit card, remove the confusion, seek clarity, and then you’ll close. That’s fantastic. I’ve also heard you say that passion is the fuel that makes things happen. Can you explain that?

Yeah, there’s been many times. My wife actually pointed this out. I’ve got so excited about doing something that I’ve gone in with very little information, with no reason for someone to agree, but I’ve got in with such excitement and passion. It’s addictive, like say negativity, breeds, negativity, and people that are depressed flock together.

When you’re happy and you’re excited and you’re passionate, especially in a world where there’s not a lot of it, people want it, you know, and we’ve, you can go in there and go, Hey, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I’ve dreamt up this concept and I want you to be part of that. And I want to see how it is, and people can like you, you gotta tell, you gotta tell me they’re almost begging.

To be part of that story and then you’ve come out and then people have said, oh, did you go in there with a business plan? No. Did you go in there and offer them a big load of money? No, we never spoke about the money and they’re like, well, how did you get it all done? And that’s often been the answer. I’ve come out of many of the things and just gone.

How the hell did I get that? But I did. And, and I think it’s because I’ve gone in there with so much passion. They want a piece of that. We do the same thing, jumping through the parachute later, you know, come up with an idea that is crazy as it sounds. And I don’t know how we got here, but we did, you know.

Interesting. Okay. I want to ask you about your filtering process. Like how do you know when to not work with someone? Yeah, so I learned that process because I filed it. It’s like everything you gain that experience three seconds after you need it. I’ve worked with clients and I’ve made a lot of money from clients that I’ve noticed.

One thing, if a client, no matter how big the checkbook gays that’s still. And the other thing is they don’t get better with age. So I remember in early life, it was a case of, Hey, I’m enjoying talking to you, but, can you afford it? Okay, can you, do you have a checkbook to do that? And I was focusing on your bank account.

And when you focus on the bank account, you ignore the relationship. And I noticed I was getting a lot of clients that were helping my bank account that I didn’t like. And I would come home at night. And I would be depressed and I would be pissed off because I didn’t like this person that I was doing X, Y, Z.

So then I turned around and I said, look, I’m going to change because I’m spending most of my days feeling violent and aggravated, and I don’t want to do that. So I’m going to chase the person and ignore them. You know, if I mark it correctly, that should filter. And again, we further markets will always be my main, I never had phone numbers or emails, so I’m getting referred.

And if you’ll filter your message, you tend to know other filters, which people, so as people were coming in, I would suddenly find a tune and get, why is this important to you? Why do you want to do that? What’s going to happen once this happens? And is it going to be sufficient? Are you going to talk about this in 10 years?

And if so, why? You know, and I would re I would almost become a therapist, but I would focus on the client and I started ignoring the checkbook. And I suddenly found that I was now establishing this weird thing called relationships. And it’s like someone buying a call and then being stunned. You’ve got to put.

You know that the money’s going to be the content of the conversation, but it should never lead with it. No one’s ever gone into a Ferrari dealership and gone, well, I really liked that, but do I have to put gas in it? No one’s ever done that, you know, but it’s how people work now. They actually chase the checkbook rather than the client and it gets them depressed.

So that’s how I feel today. Go for the person that makes me smile and doesn’t make me feel. Yeah. You also referenced that you, you asked the why questions and I’ve heard you say that sometimes. Why is it an offensive word to people? Can you explain that? Yeah, so people will DM me and that’d be like, Steve I’m in Los Angeles.

Let’s get together for a beer and I’ll DM him and I’ll go why? And none of it. And I’ll get people to spot what I heard. You were a nice guy, but you, you are praying to God on one of them. I now go off on it and then I’ll get other people. Good question. Actually, I’m working on a project and I would like you to be involved in it, or I need your help.

I want to talk to you about coaching me and I’ll be like, fair enough. Great. When should we meet? I want to save myself the time by understanding what’s the point. Okay. And it is funny how that sweet word can really get people come up to you. And I go, hi, I want to do this and you’ll go, oh, that sounds fantastic.

And I’d be like, you’ve really got to get to the Y in order to be able to challenge the invoice. Interesting thought. Okay. Now, I’ve heard you say as well, that communication is a dying skill set, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Why do you think that and why is good communication vital to making things?

Well it’s air and sadly it’s fricking going. It’s like you got a flat tire. We need to get that prepared quickly. We’re in a world now, which increasingly. Has become transactional. Like it’ll be nothing for you to walk into the house and go, Hey, Alexa, turn the music on. I Alexa, turn the heat in on, Hey, Siri phone mum, you know, it’s, we’re, we’re coming very transactional.

You know, you go into Amazon or you just go don’t we don’t have relationships. We now create transactions. And it’s distancing ourselves. Okay. If you think you have a relationship with Amazon, phone them up tomorrow and go, Hey, I’m thinking of changing my toilet bowl. Which one would you recommend? There’s no number that you can call.

There’s no conversation. They don’t help you. They transact to command and we’re getting used to it, married with the fact that we’re becoming more educated, always becoming more. How advanced we are, whether it be black lives matter, me too, even COVID our politics. All of these subjects are out there, which is scaring us into making a conversation.

People are literally scared to walk up to a girl at work now and go, Hey, you look fantastic today. The thing that she will turn around and say, Hey, I didn’t just do it for you. I just, for me, keep your comments to yourself and then there’s color. Oh, it was only trying to be nice. No, you’re not. You’re trying to be sexy that I actually held open a door a while back for girls to come through to get coffee.

And as she walked through, she turned around, she said, thank you, but I can open my own door. And I said, I didn’t do it for you. I did it. And that was my response. But now if I had it, if I wasn’t doing that for me and my son was with me and I said to him, son, I don’t care which way the world goes.

But when someone is older than you, and you sit in a chair, you get your ass off that chair and you give them that chair. If someone’s trying to come through a door and they’ve got something in their hands, Milo, female, you open up the door. If a lady’s going through the door, you open the door, that’s called chivalry and courtesy.

And I had to, I had to say that to you. Because this should potentially affect the future of gentlemen being gentlemen. And we are scared to have conversations. Now you’re scared to say something in case someone says, Ooh, that was, that was slightly, you know, racist, stable, or that came out in this way.

And the worst thing is soundbite. I guarantee you, you could take this interview, find a soundbite in there, glue it together, and you wouldn’t have to try too hard. That makes me sound like an asshole. Okay. But you know, the funny thing is I don’t care. Okay. Because I’m going to have those conversations.

And if I say on the outside, I want to know. I said it out of turn so I can make sure I never repeat that again. But instead of having those conversations that we need to have today, we’re doing the alternative by not having a conversation. If I’ve offended you, I want to know why I offended you. Please bring it to my attention, help me know what I did.

Okay, don’t get on your bandwagon down, going to fricking March because most of the people do know don’t even know what a fricking marches, for educate as be better. And I think people are scared of having conversations now in a time period where we actually need to be having more conversations.

What an interesting breakdown, Steve. Okay. Here’s a deep one. W you’re speaking to entrepreneurs and sales professionals here. That’s most of our listeners and subscribers, what’s the right way to connect with powerful, influential people and open doors, dead, simple base solutions. Not. You will, you want to do a little bit of homework on who you’re dealing with now?

I don’t care if you’re going after, you know, a mother or father of two, the lives just down the road with you, or you’re trying to go off to Richard Branson and Elon Musk, do your homework and discover what they are working on there? You can provide a solution to, and then you go forward and you go, Hey, two things.

The first thing you do, and if you’d like this video at this podcast, you’ll actually hear, I did it earlier. Whenever you walk up to anyone that doesn’t know you and you probably have this David, how many times David have you had because of the success of this podcast, how many times have people listen to you so much that they think they know you and then they meet you and they go, David, how are you doing?

And they feel as though they’ve got to know you and you’re standing there going. I don’t know this person and you don’t want to be offensive. So this is all happening on the inside of your head. And you’re going, do I know this person as your friend of a friend, have I interviewed him? Has he been on the podcast?

Oh my God. And you’re getting very tense. And the person in front of you is looking at you going, why isn’t he being nice to me? You know, why isn’t he conversant? And they walk off going well, he was arrogant and stubborn, you know? The easiest way to get rid of that is to walk up to someone and go, Hey, David, how are you doing?

My name is Steve Sims. You don’t know me. That’s the first thing you say. It relaxes people and they can go. Whew. Okay. Now the next question is, well, what do you want? So then you turn around and go, Hey, I know you’re working on a new project or I know, I know you’re having a new garage built on the side.

Have you looked at what kind of roofing you’re going on there? I’m a roofer. I’d just wondered. Have you considered what moves your point on that damage? Now you’ll come in along with a solution you see today with COVID with politics we’ll order there. I’ve already told ya because of the distraction and distortion that we’ve got today.

We don’t want to slick our salesman selling us something. Okay. Paul. We want a solution every single day of our life. If I do have a mortgage David. No. All right. So, I was going to go there with a mortgage. So I do Steve. Yes. I have a mortgage. Right. All right. So let’s, let’s say problems that let’s say, if I’m saying it is credit card, let’s say if I’m saying it gives a car payment, your whatever, you’ve got any liability you’ve got.

If I woke you up one o’clock in the morning. And you stumbled down to your door and the first thing you were surprised at was, how the hell does he know where I live? But then the second time you’re going to think. The second thing you’re going to think is what do you want is one 30 in the morning. You’re not happy with me, but if I said to you, David, I’m sorry for bothering you, but I just found a way that I can actually reduce all of your credit card debt.

I found a way that I can pay off your car. I found a way that I can reduce your mortgage by. It’s one 30 in the morning. You’ve just been dragged out of bed, but only now have your interest because I’ve turned out what a solution. I’m a great believer that whenever you turn up to someone, you do, you do a solution.

So David, I’m going to play a little game with you. Okay. I’m having a dinner party next Saturday. And you’re in my area and I say, David, you got to come to my dinner party and you go, hell yes, Steve. I’m coming. What’s the first question you ask, what time? And what do I bring? All right. Why don’t people do that when they get into a relationship, when they go to a relationship, it’s like, Hey, I’ve got this product.

I want to sell you. I’ve got this. Hey, can you endorse me? Can you do this to me? Can you exchange everything’s Mimi, Mimi. You’ve just turned off. You’ll come into my potty. And the question you asked was the only question I’m asked is what can I bring? So whenever you come to a relationship, especially a relationship you don’t know, ask yourself, what can I bring to the party?

It’s a simple thought, but people don’t think. So I passed, yeah. Past. You’ll be amazed at how many people get it wrong, but you pass, ah, thanks, Steve. Okay. I’ve heard you talk about fear. How do you use fear to drive you? What advice would you give a sales professional or entrepreneur to overcome fear?

Very easy answer to that. So I’ve always been frightened of being the same person that I am today in six months. Now my life’s pretty nice, but I want to have grown. I want to have experienced, I want to have failed. I wanted to try different things within those six months. Otherwise I become stagnant and dying, but I have always been propelled to want to try something in order to know if I like it or not, but it was Joe Polish who put it in words better than me, because he’s quite an articulate little.

He actually turned around and he said, the definition of hell is to meet the man or woman you could have been. And I was like, oh my God, I don’t ever want that. I’ve always envisioned in my life that I die. And thanks to my wife doing so much good work. I still get upstairs. And I turn up at the pearly gates and St.

Peter’s. Any time’s being old-fashioned and says, well, you add some funding. Yeah. That’s what I want. That’s how I want the end of my life to be. I love it. Okay. What do you do to pull yourself out of your comfort zone? The Steve Sims company. I do a lot. So I’ve done MMA. I’ve done it. Kickbox and I currently race motorcycles.

In fact, last week you mentioned that I went to Maui. Okay. Never been scuba diving in my life. So, Brandon hooked me up to go scuba diving. Okay. Scared the living shit out of me. I’ve never done it before and I never want to do it again. But I tried something that I’d never done before, because I wanted to be educated enough to go ask for it.

So I’m constantly trying different things, you can do it as well. Here’s a common thing. When you go out for a meal and you get the appetizers before you order the entree or an appetizer do, you’ve never had. Since your body tries new things. That’s real fun. When you go to a sushi restaurant and you can’t even pronounce the staff and you suddenly end up, well, I shaved politics or something, but Hey, you never would’ve known if you hadn’t taken a job.

So I’m constantly trying different things. Just to stretch me out of my comfort zone at the moment I’m learning Italian and I’m sure I’m going to get my head cakes. And when I get to Italy and try to use that stallion, I’m trying to stretch them. That’s awesome. Okay. I want to ask you about one more quote from the book here.

Opportunity comes when you’re in the right place to accept it. So has anyone ever come? I bought a car, all a watch and you’ve seen it. And then you said the words like, oh, I’ve never seen that color on a car before, or I’ve never seen that watch before. And then the following day. That’s the only color you can see on the vote on cars.

You know, someone buys a white car and then the following day it’s like bloody hell. There’s a lot of white cars as an entrepreneur. We’ve got to get our eyes open to opportunity in order to be able to see the opportunity. So that’s the main focus and I believe by stretching yourself out of your comfort zone, you’re now opening your mind to change.

A lot of people don’t like the change that successful people overcome. With those ones that COVID hit and they went, I, how can I make this work for me? And not to me, there were a lot of people that went, oh, woe is me reaching for the remote control. What am I going to binge watch on Netflix? Okay. And then there’s other people that did well.

Look, I don’t know how long this is going to last, but let me work. My sales brochure. Let me work on my copy line. Let me focus on my social platforms. Let me work on this. And that’s what you gotta do. You gotta be open to change in order to be able to see the opportunities that are already there. Great suggestion, and a final question on this topic for sales professionals and entrepreneurs that want to make things happen and achieve great things in 2021 and beyond.

What’s one thing for them to focus on? Well, apart from joining Sims distillery.com, which is my online inner circle, shallow plug well done. I would focus on. A lot of people and I would tell them to go back to their sales material and look at it as though you hate it and go, how silly is this? And you don’t want it to be selling.

You want it to be solved. If the beautiful thing is there’s two ways of marketing in the world only to what is aspirational, you know, buy this, watch, buy this car, get this. To demonstrate you’ve made it, you know, it’s like the people that can’t afford much, but they buy an Armani tile. They buy a Gucci belt just to show off to you.

Okay. Those are status symbol purchases. That’s aspirational marketing, your headache tablet has none of that. Your headache tablet doesn’t have a pretty logo. It doesn’t have a pretty box. It doesn’t give a shit about that. You care that it works when you are solution-based marketing. All the branding and prettiness falls by the wayside.

So focus on your copy to see how much of a solution you are versus how much of a cell. Okay. And here’s a question, you know, we’ve been talking about this, you make things happen for our clients and friends and associates, you know, networking what’s on the Steve Sims bucket list. Like what’s an experience you’d like to have before all is said and done.

So vicariously through my clients. And now I do a lot of speaking all over the world and I do a lot of coaching. I have moved away from spending billionaires’ money to give them interesting cocktail stories to coach and work with entrepreneurs, to help them have their own stories. And I will be happy when I’m on my deathbed.

When I know I’ve helped enough entrepreneurs do and think differently. And I openly say, If a brick layer from London can be doing this, you’re already out of excuses. Great. Now it wasn’t going to ask this question. We ask it on podcasts from time to time, but I’m dying to know your answer. You could have dinner with any three people in history, past or present, who would they be and why?

And it’s interesting what you get Steve sometimes. So who would be at the Steve Sims dinner table? Anybody pastor proud. So. I’ve, I’ve actually been asked that question before, so I know, I know the two, so I think I noticed three. So in no order, Jesus. Okay. What kept you so focused when everyone else was against you?

Okay, Margaret. One of the most powerful political leaders, again at a time where women were not supposed to be powerful, it was like, against all or gold. And there she was the iron lady and the third one, which is always my first answer, which does startle a lot of people, Hitler. Okay. I want to know why a short brown eyed brown head guy from Australia.

Was building up a race of two blue eyed blonde people. He was completely opposite to him. He was building a nationality in a culture. They would eventually turn around and go, well, hang on. You’re not part of the game. We’ll kill you. I want to know why he was so scared of what he was doing. So there you go.

So those are my three. I think it would be interesting, and the first one would obviously have to be a really good mixologist to keep us with the alcohol. Go. Enjoy that dinner. Yeah. So Jesus number one, answer. We get actually, the first time we’ve had Maggie. First time and second time we’ve had Hitler.

Very interesting. There you go. Yeah. So for some of the same reasons, but Steve, what an awesome discussion. I really enjoyed that. There’s so much we can take away from that discussion. I think it’s clear that we’ll always remember the experiences more than the price tags. Thanks again for that. Now listen, Steve, where do you want people to find you?

Go, look up information where you want it. Oh, it’s easy. I’ve got a Facebook page called an entrepreneur’s advantage with Steve Sims. That’s free of charge. And then I’ve got Sims distillery, which is my personal inner circle where I do coaching and, you know, talk about it. But basically you can either go to an entrepreneur’s advantage of Steve Sims or you can get a Steve D sims.com to find out about my podcast.

Find out about my speakeasy events, my coaching, everything it’s all there on that. And then, where do you want people to buy the book or is that where you want them to do it? They can go to Steve D sims.com or they can just quit. They can go into Amazon, just look up fish in the art of making things happen.

And if you love it, tell your friends or you hate it. Tell me, absolutely. Thanks. A million Steve. See a lot of back.