The Secret To Achieving Outrageous Goals

Intro (00:09):
Welcome to Innovations and Breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein, talking about the evolutionary, the revolutionary, the inspiration and the perspiration, and those aha moments that change everything. And now here’s your host, Rich Goldstein.

Rich (00:33):
Rich Goldstein here, host of the Innovations and Breakthroughs podcast, where I featured top leaders in the path they took to create change. Past guests include Joe Polish, Roland Fraser, and Kevin King. This episode is brought to you by my company, Goldstein Patent Law, where we help you to protect your products and ideas. We’ve advised and obtained patents for thousands of companies over the past 28 years. So if you’re a company that has software or product or a design you want protected, go to goldstein patent law.com where there are amazing free resources for learning about the patent process. And you could email my team welcome@goldsteinpc.com to explore. It’s a match to work together. You could also check out the book I wrote for the American Bar Association that explains in plain English how patents work. It’s called the ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent I have with me here today, Steve Sims.

Rich (01:22):
Steve is one of the most connected people on the planet, and through those connections and his ability to ask for the ridiculous, he’s created some unbelievable experiences for his clients. For example, he has sent clients down to the record of the Titanic, placed them on stage with their favorite rock group or closed museums in Florence, to place a table of six at the feet of Michael Angelos David. And then had Andrea Belli come in to serenade them because of this. He’s been called The Real Life Wizard of Ours by Entrepreneur and Forbes Magazines. I asked Steve here today to talk about his new book, Go For Stupid, The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals. And in this book, Steve explores an important question, What would you achieve if you weren’t afraid of being laughed at? I mean, seriously, how much a accomplishment have we cut ourselves off from by avoiding being ridiculed, made fun of, or even just feeling a little out on a limb? Uh, and then the counter question is, what outrageous things might we accomplish if we’ve suddenly felt free from our concerns about all of that? So, to talk about this, it’s my pleasure to welcome here. Steve Sims. Welcome, Steve.

Steve (02:31):
It’s a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Rich (02:34):
Yeah, and, uh, so I mean, you’ve done a lot and, and let’s just talk about how it, how you got started. So, it’s my understanding you were a brick layer and worked your way up to being a doorman. So <laugh> a little more context is necessary.

Steve (02:50):
Yeah, yeah. So I, I left school at the age of 15 in East London. My dad owned a, a small little brick lane team, which consisted of basically my uncle, my cousins, and my granddad. Um, and I left school at 15 banks straight on a building site. And like all entrepreneurs, we know something’s not right. You know, we, we were aggravated, they couldn’t understand it, but I had something in me and I couldn’t work out what was going on. I just knew how to discover it. Um, probably one of the biggest pivots of my, my early life was my granddad, who was in his eighties, still working on a rainy day on a building site. And I asked him, Did you ever think you’d be here at this age? Now, big mammoth of an Irish guy. I’m surprised I didn’t get a smack in the nose, but he didn’t even look at me.

Steve (03:38):
He just said, If you don’t quit today, you’ll be me tomorrow. And that, that stuck with me hit me. I quit that day and went off to hang around with quite simply wealthy individuals. That was my single focus. I wanna hang around with people with money so I can find out how to get some. Of course, I wasn’t built to actually look warm and fuzzy and compelling. And so all of the jobs I was going for, yacht, charter sales, stock broker, um, jet charters, I got fired or removed from every single one of them. And I ended up working at the door. I went from a noble profession of masonry work brick lane to now my job description was to thump people. Uh, and I thought this was it. I thought I tried failed, and this was where I was go, I’d actually gone down the ladder.

Steve (04:29):
The funny thing is, entrepreneurs, we look at things differently. We are dysfunctional. We go, Okay, was this done for me or to me? And as a doorman, I’m with, you know, a couple of other meats, dad’s just trying to get through the night without getting blood on the shirt. I’m looking at the crowd. I, every night now had an MBA on human psychology, human interaction, how people connected with each other. And really, I’m quite introverted. I wanna be left alone. And I think that’s why I kind of look like I do to repel people. And that works for me. And if you don’t wanna talk to me, I’m absolutely fine about me. But if you do wanna engage me in a conversation, make it interesting. And as an introvert, I learn how to be that extrovert for those few moments to have that conversation. And I realized people have problems no matter who it is.

Steve (05:22):
If you, if you are a plumber, find someone that’s got a problem with that sink. If you’re a doctor, find someone that’s got an ailment. If you’re an attorney, find someone that’s got a legal issue. As I knew where all the clubs and the premiers and all these parties were, I needed to find affluent people that were trying to basically get in. And that was my get in. So it started off just getting people into clubs, bars, premiers, quite simply. A, a new designer was having a cocktail reception. Get ’em into that. If I could get you into something, then I had your attention, the following Daddy, go, Hey Richard, what do you think of that party last night? Did you enjoy it? Yeah, Steve, thanks for hooking me up on that. And I could go, Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you start your law firm?

Steve (06:05):
How did you do this? How do you look at clients? How do you mark, how do you, if podcasting had happened back in the nineties? I don’t know if I’d have ever started my concierge firm, but the whole point of the firm was to get in front of rich people. So the request went from, you know, getting people in the parties to, as you’ve already said, closing down museums, getting ’em a drum lesson with guns, and Moses getting ’em to hang out with SEL and John, his Oscar party, get a walk on roll in a Hollywood movie. They just went bigger and bigger and bigger and crazier and crazier. But now the people I were dealing with were some of the wealthiest people in the planet. And I spent 25 years literally just doing things in order to be able to interview them for my education.

Steve (06:51):
Of course, when you walk out of a room getting advice from Elon Musk, Richard Branson, John Paul du Jolia, I may look stupid, but how much of a moron have I gotta be? Not to actions some of that mindset change as I walk out the door. And that was it. And then five years ago, I wrote a book, not really expecting it to kind out take off. And it did. And now I, as you know, I teach, I train, I coach, and I speak literally all over the planet and how to make those connections, how to bring value to ’em, and how to get the clients you want, not the clients you get in.

Rich (07:24):
And that, and that book that I didn’t mention in the intro, but that, that would be blue fishing, I, I imagine.

Steve (07:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It lit For anyone out there that’s trying to write a book, I apologize about the next story, but I was literally in a room, have a chat with this girl, telling her one of my funny stories. She ran off, brought this other woman back, turned out she was one of the heads of Simon and Shoestar, and then a few people around them I knew, and I knew Tucker Max, and I knew JJ Virgin that also knew this lady. A week later, I had a contract. We had no manuscript, we had no idea, we had no concept. They just wanted to get behind writing a book. And in fact, the first book they asked me to do was name dropping all the people that I dealt with, and let’s just say I’ve got some colorful people in my Rolodex. I’d be dead before my first whiskey. So I knew I couldn’t write that book. So they said, Well, how do we find out, how does a brick layer go from being a brick layer to working with the Vatican? You know, how, how does that happen? So we wrote that book, and again, I really didn’t expect it to take off, and it ended up being released in Mandarin, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Polish, and Russian. And it became a bestseller all over the place. It was stunning.

Rich (08:38):
Yeah, no, absolutely. And fascinating. And, and people like know of, when people hear blue fishing, they think of you like, it’s like you’ve, you’ve not only had a best selling book, but you’re really coined a term and you, uh, and, and it’s, it’s, um, you created a brand for yourself or a subbrand. Yeah. Um, and, and so, um, you know, you, you talk about how you went from, uh, kind of being introverted to being able to kind of like summon up that energy, to have that conversation with someone to learn from them. Well, what do you think was the secret to really kinda, um, engaging people in a way that had them interested in having a conversation with you?

Steve (09:23):
That’s a good question, but I wanna rephrase at the moment, because you said, How did I go from being an introvert? I haven’t, I am. Right? It’s like saying, how did you go from being left-handed to right-handed? You? You, you don’t, you learn how to use the right-handed being eminently, you’re still a left-handed person. I’m still an introvert. And when you see me on stage, when you see me at an event, when you see me throwing my own events, you can very easily and quite respectfully under be understood that, hey, you think Sims is an introvert? I’m an optional introvert. Oh, extrovert, Okay, I do what’s necessary when it’s necessary. And here’s a little tip for any of you out there that go, Oh, I’m too shy to do that. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do this. You’ve actually got a benefit that extroverts haven’t got.

Steve (10:08):
You see, extroverts need to be the center of attention. Regardless what the center of attention is, They love what our attention. I’ve got extroverts that, that are friends of mine that just have to be the center of attention, and there’s no gain from it with the beautiful thing about an introvert is we move with purpose. We will only do that event if it moves the needle. If I speak on stage, what’s the impact I’m gonna create? What’s the clients? What’s the book sales? What’s gonna happen to my business? What’s the advertising capability out of it? Those are the questions an introvert asks. And if he gets, No, there’s none. He doesn’t do it. But an extrovert, hey, they’ll go and stand up on stage for an hour just so he can get stared at. So an introvert, we move with purpose to move the needle.

Steve (10:55):
Everything I do moves the needle, and that’s the focus. If I’m gonna get into a conversation with you, I’m not just gonna walk up and go, Hey, how you doing? It’s good to see you look good. We share the same t-shirts. I’m gonna come along on a, and I’m gonna, first of all, especially if it’s someone I wanna do business with, I’m gonna get this thing out, okay? It’s called a phone and it’s got greater access to intelligence than NASA had in the eighties and nineties. And I can Google you and I can check the images and I can find out what your work is or what you are up to. And I can start a conversation just on those basic nuggets. And I’ve literally met someone, been introduced, or my go, Hey, j, I wanna have this conversation with you, but I did promise my wife I’d get her a drink.

Steve (11:40):
So can you, do you mind if I just get her a drink and then I can come back to you? And of course, no one’s ever gonna say no to you, turning your wife down for a drink. Here’s the secret, She’s not always been at the party. Okay? So I’m using that as an excuse to get to the bar, Google you so that I can come back with a drink in my hand. Usually I’ll ask you if you need me, get one for you as well at the same time. So I come back with your drink and I go, Hey Jim, I have heard of your name. Don’t you do patterns? Aren’t you an attorney for Pat? How’s that work? Now, the one thing everyone loves talking about is themselves and what they do. So if I can get you, I’m now looking for something that I can add value to.

Steve (12:21):
In fact, and you may know this already, so you know, I know we are friends, so you may have already heard it. Have you ever heard of the barbecue game that I do? No, actually I haven’t. Perfect. Brilliant. Right? So here we go, Rich. This Saturday I’m having a barbecue, and I say, Rich, you’ve gotta come to my barbecue. It’s in la, you happen to be in the area. What’s the first question you asked me when I’ve invited you to my barbecue? What do I bring? Bingo. Now here’s the dotting. A lot of time I did that, I was in Vegas a couple of days ago doing loads of videos for my, for my new book. I played this game a lot. Some people got it right, like you, and there isn’t right answer, and there is a wrong answer. But I had one guy once got up to 12 questions before that one turned up.

Steve (13:10):
Now, when I was in Vegas, I think it averaged about four or five. They were like, Oh, what time is it? Where is it? Who’s gonna be there? What shall I wear? You know, can I take photographs? Can I bring a friend? Oh, by the way, what can I bring? If you think of entering someone’s party without bringing something, whether it be your humor, whether it be a bottle of wine, whether it be a, a dessert, maybe you’re not the kind of person I want to have at my party. Now, if you think about a relationship, what do you bring to the relationship? Now, my relationship got better with you because I actually posted when I was releasing a new website, you know, Oh, can anyone gimme any feedback? And you took time, no gain out of it for yourself and giving me feedback on that.

Steve (13:58):
And we hadn’t been tight before that, but that really shook me. And then we bumped into the buffet line at one of those events with Roland and those boys, and that was, that really made a dramatic change. This was someone who put themselves out to help me. You gave me something for my party mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And for anything you needed, why not? Why wouldn’t I? So anytime you get into a relationship and you are talking to that person at the networking event, at the local PTA meeting at the local Bear Business Bureau, or swimming around a boat in Mexico, think about it. What can I bring to this party that’s gonna make that person go, Oh, when I go out and I talk to someone, I try to find out what they’re working on, what they’re involved in. Hey, I’ve on a podcast, would it help you, uh, if I gave you exposure on my podcast? Yes, Steve, I’d love that. Bring value to the party of every relationship. And that’s what I earned from learn from a very early age.

Rich (14:55):
Yeah, that, that’s awesome. Uh, and by the way, if you ask an audience of people like what, um, the first question is the ones that say, um, Well, what do I bring? Those are all New Yorkers, <laugh> all been raised to buy our mothers. The yes ingrained in us never go empty handed <laugh>. So don’t, don’t go to someone’s house without something in hand. Maybe

Steve (15:18):
That’s why Vegas was, was so bad they weren’t from

Rich (15:21):
New York. And the LA people were like, I don’t know, like, is there gonna be traffic? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What time of day? And like,

Steve (15:29):
Is there a producer there? Is it direct to that? Yeah, that’s the, Yeah, Well, that’s probably why I don’t have a lot of barbecues in LA or a lot of friends in

Rich (15:37):
La Right? Exactly. But, um, but um, seriously, I think that the central focus there, what I, what I gathered from all of that is that, so, um, you know, extroverts tend to wanna have the attention on them, so they tend to make it about themselves. Yes. And like engage in a conversation about like, generating some feel goods. Okay, Get them to like me or something like that. Whereas if you’re introverted and you’re purpose oriented, you’re gonna focus on them and you’re gonna have curiosity about them. You’re gonna ask questions that show that you’re interested in them. And, um, and out of that, um, you know, you create relationship and like, you know, people that are, um, um, people that you’ve shown interest in, they now want you to win as well. Uh, and very much you let, you’ve asked for advice, they want you to win as well. So it’s, it’s just a great way to, to create relationship and build relationship.

Steve (16:32):
It’s also easy, uh, I, I know this sounds funny because when you’re moving with a structure, it’s easy to follow to that structure. So if you think about it, what can I bring to the party? How can I benefit the person? And here’s something else that it will remove. It’s the eyeballs on you. Now, today, we’re actually scared of what we look like, what we sound like. And especially in a, in a, in a social world where everything’s videos, you know, Oh my god, my hair’s not looking good. This camera, the lights, you know, look really fat. Today, when you care about this solution, you are providing to somebody else’s problem, what you look like no longer matters. You know, the person that’s all trim, leaning up against a car that they don’t own. We are all starting to see past that. We wanna focus on, okay, you may be rich, you may be beautiful, you may be powerful, but how does that help me?

Rich (17:28):
Yeah, what have you got to offer? What you got to offer?

Steve (17:31):
What do you bringing to my party?

Rich (17:34):
Exactly.

Steve (17:35):
Now, if I’ve got someone standing up in front of me, and this is what annoys me, and this is what’s annoyed me from past speakers, we’ve all seen those events where the speaker comes up on stage and he’s like, Well, my first book made 4 million. My second one made 3 million and I made 2 million before I went to the toilet this morning. Who cares? You know, good for you mate. Wonderful. Buy a boat. But when the person stands up there and says, Hey, I made $2 million before I went to the toilet, and I’m gonna show you how you could do the same, now I’m interested. Now you’ve got my attention. I don’t care what you look like, You can show me the pictures of you in the jet, don’t care. But now your brilliance is becoming my brilliance. That’s what you’ve gotta focus on.

Rich (18:21):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and you said something a moment ago about how, um, kind of we, we are, where our concerns are and how that kind of keep us from, uh, from engaging in certain conversations and such. I think that’s a good segue to go for stupid, where you, you know, like it seems like that’s the key right there, is kind of getting past some of that, getting past some of that self concern, um, to be able to ask for things. So, you know, let’s talk about that and, and how that all came about

Steve (18:53):
It actually. So there’s this book, Go For Stupid As You just, Lovely, thank you very much for the drop. Um, it actually started off as aggravating posts that I started doing joining Covid. Did you see how drawing c we came up with the cans, uh, council culture, and we came up with the, the points near and remove, You know, we wanted to find, you were dressed up in a fancy dress party in 1997, and now we wanted to scorn you for it. We were looking for those sound bites that made you sound stupid and ignorant. Someone does something. We are not caring about what they did and how impactful it is. We’re caring about how we can laugh at you. Give you a prime example. Elon Musk, who’s probably the lord of entrepreneurs, greatly revered as the, the impact maker. He pulled out a cyber truck. The only similarity with that truck, with anything else on the road was that it had four rubber tires. Everything else was different. The, the composites, the outlay, the look, the electronics, everything was different. He literally reinvented the truck. But what was the headline the following day from that unveiling?

Rich (20:13):
He broke the window.

Steve (20:15):
Oh, didn’t we like to laugh at that

Rich (20:18):
<laugh>,

Steve (20:18):
He broke the bulletproof window. If your specifics when buying a truck is you need bulletproof windows, you don’t need a new truck, you need a new zip code, you need to be moving somewhere else. But we wanted to laugh now. We all saw it. We all read it. Did you see the video where he actually lined up three doors and he had three guns, three projectiles, the threw things at the windows, and none of the windows broke. Did you ever see that?

Rich (20:46):
No.

Steve (20:47):
No. No one did <laugh>. No one cared because we couldn’t laugh. You know,

Rich (20:52):
We laughed at the one thing that he did do wrong, right? Like, we didn’t correct. The, the focus isn’t on his accomplishments. It was on the thing that didn’t go right.

Steve (21:01):
You said it at the beginning of this. We’re actually not frightened of failing because that’s where education comes from. We’re not frightened of screwing up. We’re not frightened of losing money because that’s where all the education comes from. Okay? When we go into a room like a, a war room or any of these masterminds around the planet, we are openly in a room full of serial failures. We constantly try things. They go wrong. We learn from them. We get to be refined. You know, you’ll make 20 mistakes before you make a success. That’s how it kind of works. But in today’s world, we’re not scared of that part. We’re scared of people seeing it, and we’re scared of people. Jim. Now here’s the funny thing. Elon Musk doesn’t care. Jeff Bazos doesn’t care. Richard Branson doesn’t care. Successful people don’t care about you cheering at them.

Steve (21:57):
They’re not focused on that. They’re ignorant. They can’t hear it. It’s white noise. But during Covid, Covid was the two year period of excuses, Oh my God, Covid here. I can’t go out with my mates now. Well, you weren’t going out with your mates much. In any case, you were texting them on bloody Facebook. You know, both me and you. Remember from a time I East London, your New York, when your mate had a baby, they didn’t post it. They phoned you up, said, just had a baby. You got together with cigars and whiskey and looked at the ugly little thing and went, Eh, let’s have a drink to the new baby. That’s what we did, wasn’t it? Right? Now, what do you do? You have a baby, you shove a picture of it up on Facebook and you’re off if you don’t get a million likes, you know, they all look the same.

Steve (22:44):
I’ve got three kids. Let’s be serious. Most babies look the same. Okay? But that’s the society we’re in. We want recognition for people or that, that we don’t even know. We’ve lost the ability to connect. How many people in Covid, Oh, I can’t get to the gym now. You never went in the gym before you fat bastard and now you’re using this. And as an excuse it, I, I literally used to post this and I used to get aggravated and I would have conversations with people going, all of these excuses. And then something big happened. We went from Me too, Asian Hates Matter, uh, a sorry, Asian hate Black Lives Matter. We were so aggravated, we were actually deciding that our voice had to be heard. Now, I’ve said those three things and I guarantee there are people triggered going, What’s he gonna say about Black Lives Matter?

Steve (23:34):
What’s he gonna say about Asian? The bottom line of it is we need to have conversations on important subjects. All of those plus many others are important conversations that we need to have to become educated to understand what are the concerns we’re in. But because we’re in a gotcha society, what do we do instead? We run away from the conversation. We would rather not say something that someone could get triggered about that actually allows someone to be triggered and allow them to educate us. We’re in a gotcha society. So I started writing these rants and then I started talking to some very, you know, wealthy people going, How do you handle this? And a lot of ’em were like, I don’t, I don’t hear it. And I decided that I had to write the book to actually start getting you outta the way. Now, I ran this concierge firm that you mentioned earlier, the one, we call it the Voldemort word.

Steve (24:31):
The word that we couldn’t say was impossible. Cuz how many people go, I’m gonna do this. I know it’s impossible, but I’m gonna do it. The second you’ve given that word, the second you’ve empowered it, you’ve given yourself an excuse. So what we used to do in the concierge world was someone would be like, I wanna have a great meal influence. Great. How can we take this to stupid? How can we make this ridiculous? What’s the dumbest, most ridiculous thing we can do here? We used to go for stupid. The point is we used to go for ridiculous goals and quite often, quite often fail and get goals that achieved that were like 20 times further than had we gone for something that we were able to achieve. Everyone out there whereby Larry Page, whether it be Elon Musk, they go, whether he walked Disney, they go for stupid ridiculous goals and then they reverse engineer to make them happen.

Steve (25:34):
And that’s what we did. So using, I’ve used that experience, go for stupid probably for about 10 years. Then this society, this period, this canceled culture got your society made me think, Hang on a minute, we’re actually not fighting of trying. We’re fine to people, people seeing us try falling over and then God forbid videoing it. And all of a sudden we become a laughing in stock. And so we play a thing that’s the catalyst. We, we play it safe, we dilute, we run away. Here’s a perfect example for all of you entrepreneurs out there. And this is gonna hurt. How many times you sitting in a coffee store in a bar and you start having a conversation about your business, Oh, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna breed it into this. I’m gonna scale it 10 times, then I’m probably gonna sell it. And then you some of the proceeds and you start going off onto your wishlist and you get someone at the table going, Rich, are you nuts?

Steve (26:31):
What? No, what’s wrong with you? And what do we do? Rather than challenge them, I go, Well, hang on a minute fella, You know, while you’re doing your day shift at the staple center, you know, what are you doing with your life? Rather than that, we go, Oh, I dunno what I was thinking. Someone must have spiked my coffee. Oh no, no ar beer. And we diluted, don’t we? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, our goals and aspirations are based on the people that have them. Now, I know this for a fact of you, cuz I know a lot of your circle, the first thing you have to do is remove that toxicity from your world. If I’m sitting at a table with you, Jay, Abraham, Henry, Roland, Ryan Perry, all of these people, and I start going, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna get at least one of you turn around and go, Is that it?

Steve (27:21):
With all of your enthusiasm, with all of your corrections, your connections, you are telling me that’s where you are aiming. Boy, I would’ve thought you would’ve shot higher than that. And you challenge me to go bigger. You won’t negate me, You’ll ask me finding questions. Have you thought about this? Have you looked into do that? So how are you gonna do this? Why do you think you are best, best, uh, to do this? You know, you challenge me. Those are all great. It’s not negative to ask someone questions to make sure they’ve refined their goal, but you won’t Jew at me, you won’t laugh at me. And I think today, if we could stop trying to build people up, only to knock ’em off and actually go, hang on a minute, I don’t fight of, of trying and I’m no longer frightened of being laughed at. And Elon, Elon Mu name drop, Elon Musk actually said to me, They’ll always laugh at you just before they applaud.

Rich (28:16):
I love it. And um, um, so just in terms of, of of like doing the ridiculous setting outrageous goals, first of all, just to cap that off, like yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s like you surround yourself with the right people and when you say something, they’ll just, they’ll start thinking of like, Okay, well how are you gonna get there? So if, if we were sitting at that table and I said, you know, I’m, I’m gonna create a hedge fund, um, that’s going to focus on, on, uh, tech startups in the healthcare space. And they say, Okay, cool dude, do you know like the healthcare companies to be connect that you, any, you need to be connected with any healthcare companies or things like that, right? Just whatever it is you said immediately would be like, okay, cool, uh, how do you get there and maybe can we connect you with, uh, the, the people that you need? And, and that’s, I think the, the beauty of surrounding yourself with the right people. It’s like that they engage you in the right conversation of how do we move this forward as opposed to like, like, you know, I don’t know, skepticism,

Steve (29:20):
You’ve gotta be in the right room. I told you the story about how I got a book deal. When you’re in a great room, great things happen and they make it easier to happen because they’re all sharing the same philosophy of on what up wooden forward. Um, those people that are down the bar. And it always makes me laugh. Someone sells that car, they’ve got five, 10 grand in their pocket and they go and get financial advice from Jimmy that’ve sat on the edge of the bar for the last 30 years and never done anything with his life. You know, be careful of the source of information. Where are you getting your education from? You need to get it from people that have actually done it rather than those that look good in a bikini or lean up against a car they don’t own.

Rich (29:57):
Yeah, absolutely. And

Steve (29:58):
By the way, you look great at Bikini Beach, so I wasn’t, I wasn’t blasting you there. Mexico, you shine, you’ve obviously been working out

Rich (30:05):
<laugh>, you know, i I try <laugh>. Um, and uh, in terms of being in the right room and also like asking for the ridiculous, So I think it’s just worth mentioning that like you, you throw these events, uh, a couple times a year that call speakeasy where, um, essentially you um, you, you get a pretty amazing group of people, um, together in a room by telling them all like, Hey, I’m throwing this event, it’s gonna be in this city, not gonna tell you who any of the speakers or, I’m not even gonna tell you exactly where the event is until the night before. Yeah. Um, so you wanna sign up and, and um, and, and pay me for this event. And you get this amazing group of people to say yes. <laugh>,

Steve (30:53):
It was funny. I, it was one of those things, there’s the classic line that says everyone’s in until they have to pay. And so I thought of myself, I wonder how credible I am. And this was four years ago. Um, so I, I literally went, Hey, I, I’m gonna get together, get a few mates, two days, two grand who wants to join me in San Diego. And that was the first one. Didn’t have a name for it, I did it on Facebook. I set up a PayPal link when they go. And I think within about two days I had maybe eight people sign up and I thought, Hang on a minute, I haven’t told you where it is cuz I don’t know yet. I haven’t told you who’s coming, haven’t told you what, what you’re gonna learn. And the first one that signed up was actually a friend of mine.

Steve (31:42):
So I contacted him and just being typically, you know, sarcastic. I said to him, You’ve signed up for this event, two grand. You don’t know where it’s gonna be. You know the dates, you know the city. What’s wrong with you thinking, you know, just taking a mickey right now, We hear the question we want to hear. When I said to him, What’s wrong with you? He literally said to me, That’s a great question Steve. I’m having problems with this, this. And he actually gave me the issue. And I thought, eh, So I went to the next person, drove down the sarcasm a little bit and I went, Hey, what is your problem today? And he told me. And then what I did was I got speakers to come in to answer those problems. And if you get a hundred people together, when you go, Hey, what’s your problem? You’re gonna get like say five of the same

Rich (32:32):
Answers. You’re gonna get some themes, some common, you are gonna get commonality.

Steve (32:35):
And then I bring some people into us and people will literally at the event going, Steve, you’re not gonna, I’ve got that problem. And he’s just answered it and I’m thinking, well I know that cuz I listened.

Rich (32:47):
You are the real life wizard of ours. <laugh>. Yeah.

Steve (32:49):
And it just, and I suddenly realized that people should go to an event, not because who’s speaking, but because of the problem they have that they need solved. So I ran a couple, uh, we ran a few at like about 30 people run a couple of 80, that was too many. And I thought, well about 40 to 50. That’s brilliant. That’s still intimate. And I focus firstly on the room, who are the people in the room? And I guarantee you I probably turn away, God, maybe a third of the people we could have easily sold out of la uh, easily the one that we just did easily. But we, we stopped people. There’s, I think last week we had about four people who signed up. The worst one was when I did one around Oscar weekend and uh, we had about 20 people signed up and we refunded 16 cuz they were the wrong people to be in the VA in the room.

Steve (33:45):
And I wanna make sure the room’s right, I wanna make sure I understand your problem and then I wanna bring people in. And by getting those people that will be in for that journey and that experience, they’re all in the same mindset that anit what’s gonna happen here? I signed up, you signed up, you know, hang on a minute. You’re the head of a $10 billion company and hang on, you are an Olympian and hang on. Yeah. The room is as dynamic as the stage. I’ve actually had world class speakers stand on stage going, I have never spoken of a room where these people are smarter me, you know, and you want me? And I’m like, Hey, you have the problem to that, you have the solution to that problem. So I didn’t think it would take off, but four years later we’re still doing these speakeasies all over America and they’re real fun. I think we’re probably gonna go international at one stage, but, um, it’s real fun to challenge people to get uncomfortable before they grow.

Rich (34:40):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you, you, you hit on one of your, um, your key strengths here of not being an extrovert. Is that like an extrovert would be like Yeah. The more the merrier, right? Yeah. The introvert purpose driven, as you’ve said that the being introverted allows you to be purpose driven, which says, I’m gonna make sure it’s the right people in the room for the right reasons as opposed to the more the merrier, right? Yep. So part of your strength and that Oh,

Steve (35:06):
Thank you very much. I think it’s, I think it’s a, I think it’s a super power of, of introverts that they don’t realize they have

Rich (35:12):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, well certainly yours. And, uh, and I, uh, you know, uh, uh, I I think it’s fascinating kind of what you’ve done through blue fishing, um, speakeasy and now of course go for stupid. Um, and, uh, if people wanna learn more about you or get in touch with you, how do they go about doing so?

Steve (35:32):
Well? Here’s lesson 1 0 1 on Brandon. Be the same person everywhere. So Steve D. Sims, d for Dash in one in Sims, anywhere that you consume your media. So you can go to steve d sims.com or you can go to Steve d Sims on Twitter. You can go to Steve d Sims, it’s anywhere that you consume your media sticking Steve d Sims, and you’ll see my ugly mug in there.

Rich (35:56):
Awesome. And, uh, so Steve Steve D. Sims, thank you so much for being here. Thank, thank you so much for taking the time. Always great to hang out with you.

Steve (36:05):
It’s been a pleasure. Look after How rich. Until next time.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
Thanks

Outro (36:12):
For listening to Innovations and Breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein. Be sure to click subscribe. Check us out on the web at innovationsandbreakthroughs.com and we’ll see you next time.