Jay Abraham; Marketing Legend

Jay Abraham: Marketing Legend

This episode is a little bit of a different one. Jay Abraham invited me down to his office. We were chatting over some different marketing ideas and some different angles of what’s going on within the speaking world and consultant. He suggested we jump on and do a quick episode on his show. Quickly, it turns into us chin-wagging, but it is exceptional. I’m always amazed at how someone completely different to me, someone who I regard as an icon, as a personal mentor and a friend, how we share so much of the same views and opinions. Quite simply, entrepreneurs, we’re very similar. We have the same sports, struggles and DNA. This is Jay Abraham doing an interview on me for his show. I thought I’d share it with you and give you a little bit of an insight into how else to get on. Enjoy the interview from Jay Abraham, all the best.

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This is Jay Abraham. Our ultimate entrepreneur is a very dear friend, an amazing and unbelievably entertaining, stimulating, fascinating, inspiring friend, who I still can’t quite categorize, but I endorsed him, Steve Sims. This is going to be fun, exciting and unpredictable. I am sitting across from a dear friend, Steve Sims. He’s the author of a book called Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen. I’ve known him for quite a while. I’ve admired his mental agility, his diversified entrepreneurial capacity, and I’ve watched him do some extraordinary things. His book has done very well and you should all read it. I commend you. I love it and my kids love it.

One day, Steve called and said to me, “Jay, would you give me an endorsement?” I honestly said, “Yes, but.” He said, “What?” I said, “I watch you evolve and I have no clue what you’re doing now, so I don’t know what to endorse.” He said, “Do you want me to tell you?” I said, “Not on the phone, come here and explain it, but I don’t want to know. I want to be surprised along with everyone watching.” This is going to be a fun encounter because I haven’t got a clue what we’re going to talk about, but I’m sure it will be stimulating fun and fresh. I have no preconceived notion. Let’s start with some fun calibration, what do you tell people who you are and what do you say you do?

I’m heavily known for launching the world quite as experiential concierge firms. A lot of people know me as the man that can.

You orchestrate outrageous, off the chart experiences, trips and events for people.

The top 1% of the planet come to me when they want something a bit more interesting. We’ve gone through it before. You go to the Titanic, closed down museums, get married in the Vatican, that kind of boring stuff. That’s the stuff that I’m known for doing and because of the book, I consult and speak on stages literally all over the world. Outside of the US, I’ve done Mexico, Marbella, London and Thailand. I begin out there a bit. I want to be Jay when I grow up so I can do more in Asia, but I’ve been speaking a lot of places consulting, running my events called Speakeasy.

Speakeasy is a cool event. It’s an unbridled discussion that covers a magnificent swath of topics and has an eclectic group of participants.

When you first got to, you will realize that a maximum of 40 people pay $2,000 to turn up in a room and they have no clue where the room is. We don’t tell them until the week of the event and they have no idea who’s going to come in front, educate, make them grow, and challenge them. No one knew Jay or Ken Kragen was turning up. No one knew any of these things and they sit there and watch. The anticipation is exciting, but you get the right kind of mentality in the room. Those have been exciting. We’re doing our next one in Silicon Valley. No one knows what’s going to happen. They know the hotel that we’ve chosen for them and they know at 9:30 in the morning, we’re going to pick them up in the bus. They’re going to go walk into a room that they’ve never walked into.

You orchestrate an eclectic and memorable encounter. What do you see yourself as being beyond and above the outrageous concierge? What are you?

If I had to sum it up quickly, I would say I was a challenger.

How do you define that? How do you manifest that? What does it mean to me?

I want to take what you think you know and challenge it in order for you to grow. I’ve noticed a lot of people are too comfortable being in the rut. The first thing you’ve got to do is get them uncomfortable. We do that by not telling them where they’re going to go. What we do is we introduce to people that do things differently, like you, that challenges them. My promise is that you walk out a different person in anything I do. Whether I’m consulting you, I’m speaking with you on stage or you’re coming to my Speakeasies, my point is to rattle you to try and do things differently, to stay ahead of the curve and to stay ahead of the game. Whatever phrase you want to call it, but I want to get you thinking differently.

Let’s talk about some of the topics that you speak on and some of the issues you are challenged to respond to. You can give me the spectrum, the crazy ones or the embarrassing ones. I’m trying to understand who and what you are so I can give you the right endorsement.

What I’ve done is I’ve gone back to selling to the ‘80s.

What does that mean?

Let us go back to the way we sold in the 80s, where we all had to phone people or actually turn up on their doorsteps. Click To Tweet

We had no technology in the ‘80s. If we wanted to connect with someone, we did a few things. We phoned them up or we turned up on their doorstep. We’ve all come from a period where we would knock on the door of someone and go, “Can I have a few seconds?” We’ve all done that. People are scared now, even to phone somebody. They send a text, an email or a LinkedIn messenger or something like that. When the person hasn’t met because they’re busy and they don’t know you, they’re like, “I’ve reached out. I communicate with them.” You didn’t. You threw a letter at them and hope they were going to respond, which is stupid to do. If you go back to the ‘80s and forget all the technology that you’ve got and reached out to have a purposeful point of communication with someone, that can surprise people.

If you show up on their doorstep because you care about them doing something, then it impacts people. People are not used to it. People phone people now and the person getting a phone call was astonished that the phone rang, “I don’t know you.” I go back to the ‘80s. In every way that I used to communicate with people then is the way that I focus now. I will commend you because most of your literature was built around those periods. Everything you said then has become so much more relevant now. People are hiding behind these chatbots, AI, flows, funnel systems. Those aren’t there to replace you, they’re there to enhance you. At the end of the day, you’ve got to have some point, some care, some substance and you’ve got to be there to solve. That was what you were all about. I love going back to your stuff because it is so much more relevant nowadays than maybe it was then.

Thank you for that, but I’m going to nail you a little bit more granular and concrete. What was the last topic you spoke on?

The last topic that I did was at my Speakeasy in Reno.

What was the topic?

I wanted to take you from the newest profession to the oldest profession. One day, I had people meet me in Reno. They met me at the North door of the Atlantis Hotel. I took them to Elon Musk’s Gigafactory, where they were met with the newest technology, what it was doing, how it helped our lives and what problems it was solving? We had an open tour that no one gets. We were conversing with some of the experts in there talking about the battery power of attention, how it’s going to save our world. We then had food trucks for lunch and then we went to the BunnyRanch Brothel. We had a tour by one of the leading prostitutes of that place, Alice Little. She told us about the art of communication. We had some clever people in there telling us quite simply about how to make eye contact and what it means and body posture.

It was phenomenal to go from the newest technology in the world to the oldest, and we did that in one day. The beautiful thing about it was no one knew what they were getting. We had this bus pull up outside the BunnyRanch. They were very shocked. There were a couple of people on the bus that look to me and they went, “This is either going to go well or South really quick.” Thankfully, I think a lot of it has to do with Alice because she’s quite a vibrant character. Everyone loved it. It was pretty phenomenal to understand what’s happening to our world and how it helps us, what we still need to maintain, which is that physical connection. It was all about communication, how it helps us, how it can enhance us and what we can do with it.

You’re onstage, you speak to large groups and you get paid very nicely. What do you believe your big message is on the stage that none of your contemporaries seem to focus on?

I wouldn’t say none of them, but a lot of them are misguided because I’m up there to talk about the ROI of relationships.

What does that mean?

I believe my wealth and my bank account being my social health, my mental health, my support system, those people I can call up, the people I can call friends, is based on who I know, who I look after and who I’m friends with. People think that because they went to a networking event and they got a business card, that person’s now a friend. No, it’s not. It’s a seed. It could become a friend, but if you do nothing with it with 1 or 2 weeks or a month, they’ve forgotten who you are. You become an aggravation because you didn’t care and nurture the relationship.

My focus is on how can a relationship benefit you? How can it benefit the other person? Be selfish with your relationships. If you’re getting something from the other person and not bringing anything to the party, then that’s a transaction and is a dead relationship. It is not a relationship. It is a one-way street. My focus is on how you can turn up, how you can bring value to a relationship, how you can engage people that you’ve never met before and have them want you to stick around. Therefore, that is the nurture of the relationship and gain. I’m all about how to build up relationships that are worthwhile to all parties.

Do you have a couple of stories, examples, case studies on how you adapted and modified that to a specific organization, profession type of an attending?

A lot of the stuff I’ve done has been around like the mortgage and real estate business. A lot of the times, because they’re half built on selling an emotion, for example your home, the other half is based on all the restrictions that govern how you can do business. Nine times out of ten, they’re focused on the restrictions they’ve got. That given themselves their own road blocks, they’re like, “I’d like to do more marketing. I’d like to do more of this.” All you’ve got to do is show how much you care. There are no restrictions that say that I can’t do a video about the ten mistakes people make in going for a mortgage or the ten things they should look at when looking to buy a new house.

That’s educational marketing. That’s solving a problem. Many of them don’t do it. I try to teach them about, “Get away from putting the picture of you when you were 22 on the bloody bus seat and start focus on who you are. I find it funny. You meet a realtor and on her card, she’s got a picture of when she was twenty. She’s 62 and she’s upset because you don’t recognize her. There’s a disconnect on that kind of stuff. I try to get people out of their own myths and preconceived problems and get them in relationship-based marketing.

 

In all the speaking gigs you’ve done and all the Q&As you’ve attended, tell me what fascinates you most about both the quality of human beings and the ignorance because you see both sides.

You’ve always got those people that want you to not only solve it but do it for them. You’ve always got these people that turn around and they think, “If I buy that program, I’ll be rich.” Those are the people that buy a diet book and then wonder why they haven’t lost weight because they haven’t actioned the bloody thing. In every room, you’ve always got those people and in some of those rooms, you’ve got these companies that go, “We’re sending you to them.” They’re almost like resistant participants. They’ve got to be there. The company’s paid them to be there, but this isn’t going to benefit me. When you walk into any room with that mentality, you’re correct. If you tell yourself you can’t, you’re right.

How do you deal with that?

You don’t. I hate to say it, but you walk into a room and you’re going to get 10% to 15% of the room that has been there because of that position. Don’t try and reach those. I don’t want to make you better and more successful until you want to make yourself better and more successful. I’ll then meet you halfway and take you to the rest. I want to go out there and I want to talk to the community. This is where I do myself out on speaking gigs. I hate doing speeches. I like having conversations with thousands of people. I will walk on stage and I will say, “I can stand up here and tell you why I’m brilliant. I can tell you why I’ve got so much money. I can tell you about what fancy names I know, but that is not going to help you. How about we focus on what I know and how it can impact your life and make you more profitable when you walk out the door? Stick your hand up if you want number two.” No one ever goes for number one. It leads to a better conversation.

You have lots of principles, beliefs and ideologies. If you had to list the world according to Steve Sims, the ten most important elements, either top to bottom, bottom to top or mix and match, what would they be and why?

I’ve never categorized. I don’t know how we could put it into a priority, but I’m going back to the world of the ‘80s. In a world where if you didn’t keep your word, especially in the towns I was living in, you’ve got a smack in the mouth or worse. Now, we go on Instagram and we post on them and go, “You are fat.” We put it down and go and have our dinner. We have no idea of how that person reacted to that message. We can bully without any repercussions whatsoever.

What’s the implication?

That’s bad. I came from a period where if I called someone fat and it was at a tone, she would kick me in the testes. That is the period that I focused on. I’m a great believer in two things, keep your word, even if you’ve promised something difficult for you. I’ve done this before. I’ve given someone an invoice and then gone home, “I didn’t calculate the transfers. I didn’t calculate the fact that they were staying over the weekend.” You never rebill because my word is more important than my bank account. I can make more money, but I can never get my credibility back. The first thing is to know the power of your word because that’s your substance. In a world of Insta gurus, that will go by the wayside fast and fresh, that’s the thing that’s going to be there. The other one is it’s ancient, but it needs to be yelled at. Treat people like you want to be treated. You can’t keep your word and then be okay about other people not.

When you fill them, you go, “I want to have a relationship with you, but you promised me this or you mentioned this.” I want to know where you stand within your commitment to keeping that word. Challenge people. I believe a good friend, like you, challenge me. Sometimes I hate having phone calls with you because I know you’re going to pull stuff out of me. You’re going to challenge me. You’re going to call me out on stuff, but it makes me a better person and that’s why I love you. That’s what your friends should do. They should support each other and when you are crying, that’ll cover you and hold you for five seconds. They shake you by the shoulders and go, “Stand up and let’s handle it.” I believe a good friend should challenge you, but you need to also challenge. Keep your word, treat other people as it should be. If you want the 3rd and 4th one, repeat 1 and 2.

What are you setting your sights on? You started out as an author. You gained acknowledgement. You’ve got some very passionate followers. You’re speaking to great applause. You’re connecting and authentic. If you’re like me, you need to up your game. What’s up in your game look like?

I’ve been trying a lot of things to see, where I flourish and where I fail.

What have you discovered?

I’ve been successful in all the things I tried. I’ve got to try harder.

It’s like attrition. If you have no attrition, you’re not hiring well enough. You’re also not managing strong enough.

If you're just getting something from the other person and not bringing anything to the party, that's a transaction, not a relationship. Click To Tweet

I remember when I got the book deal, we were on the phone. The first day and I think I’ve got it by fax, which I found was weird. We spoke about an hour late when I went, “You’re not going to believe this.” We came down and we spoke about a book. I remember so many times I’ve told people, “You’re never going to get a house on the beach from writing a book. You’re going to get the house on the beach from what the book provides you, the opportunities it gives you.” I’ve always remembered that. We focused the book on changing people’s mentality but introducing them to Steve Sims. You introduce someone to a good restaurant, what do they want to do? They would want to come back again. If you let them down by not having anything to feed them again, then you failed your audience. I was stunned at how all of a sudden, I had an obligation that came to me. The speaking helps, but also it’s a double-edged sword. It gets me more people I have to feed. We started a show. That’s building up quite nicely.

What’s it called?

The Art of Making Things Happen.

What does it address?

I am trying to interview people that do things differently.

For example?

I’ve had Alice Little, America’s number one prostitute on there. I interviewed for-lifers that have come out of a level four maximum-security prison about how they address the perception of felons, the mistakes they made, how they own up to them, how are they going to change their lives? What are they doing about it?

Are they still incarcerated?

No, they’re already out. One of the guys served 22 years. They had never been on the internet. They never drove. At a time where he’d never driven a gas car, he’s looking at electric cars. Imagine you’re missing a complete chapter. That guy has never seen a smartphone or a cell phone. This is weird stuff and now he’s out. I was talking with that and that was a great one. We did Father Greg Boyle that launched Homeboy Industries.

Is he impressive?

He’s a quiet a storm. He’s a quiet man to talk to. He is powerful, but when he walks into that Homeboy Industries, they honor him because he was the man that recognized that they could be someone different. If you get to go down Homeboy Industries, they do tours down there. In the basement, they’ve got the untattoo parlor. It’s the number one location for doing untattoos in America. You’ve got these gang members that have got certain statements written on that face. It is very hard to get a job in Target. You’re working in an accountancy office when you’ve got your opinion on your forehead. It’s insane seeing this. I’ve got tattoos. Getting a tattoo removed is ten times, they’ve got to suck the ink out. I haven’t got anything that’s much visible but imagine in your forehead. He was good.

We had Barbara Lazaroff from Spago and Wolfgang Puck’s wife. We interviewed her and she’s great. We had her on talking about the beginning of Celebrity Chefs and how to brand Wolfgang, how to take him from the restaurant to the mass market. She was incredible. Let’s be blunt. The show has been a great excuse for me to be able to chat with friends and meet new ones. It’s stimulating as hell for me. Another thing that I like to jump into, which I never thought I would, I’m responsible for taking over 100 entrepreneurs over eight separate trips into Kern Level IV Maximum-Security prison, where they spend the entire day working with inmates that are now called EITs or Entrepreneurs in Training.

We teach them how to build resumes and how to hold interviews. Every year, we have a Shark Tank. At the end of the year, they pitch it. The winner gets $500 stuck in their account, waiting for when they come out that they can invest in their business. You take entrepreneurs into prison. The one we went to, there was an altercation as it was called before we got to the place where we’ve been. They dropped pepper grenade into the yard. All of us entrepreneurs walking across on an adjacent yard, we suddenly got pepper-sprayed.

If you wanted to get the real engagement of being in a prison, I can tell you I’ve officially been pepper-sprayed in a maximum four prison. I’ve done it eight times and it still stuns me how smart these people are. These run businesses that were making $1 million a week. We know Facebook Ads. You’ve got these people out here like, “I don’t know how to market it. I don’t know how to do that.” These are business owners. They did business differently. It’s been interesting the kinds of things I’ve been getting into and getting other people to experience.

What’s your opinion about people who have such rigidity that they have no interest in traveling outside of their comfort zone?

 

That’s 10% of the people that go to my speeches and were forced to be there. I don’t care about them. Why focus on people that want to be stuck in there? I’m not trying to turn someone into something they don’t want to be. I want to help. At the age I am, I’m selfish with my time. I’m selfish with my energy. If you’re receptive and you’re demanding a change of yourself and you want to be better for you, your family and your surroundings, if you commit, I’ll give you twice as much commitment. For those people that want to sit there and go, “I’m going to say the blue pill. This doesn’t work for me. The structure’s changed. The laws have changed. I’m restricted.” They want to naysay themselves to death and those people, let it happen. You’re fine. I’m going to focus on those that don’t look at those as obstacles. Look at those as opportunities.

You have some very interesting hobbies. What are your hobbies?

Anything that scares me. If it scares, terrifies or arouses me, I’m in it. I love riding motorcycles fast around corners. I’m constantly on there about once or twice a month when it’s not too hot. I’m on different race tracks with different levels of motorcycles. I’ve got one that came out, the fastest production motorcycle on the planet. It’s got 247 brake horsepower and weighs less than your filing cabinet. It’s got two little spoilers on the front to stop it coming up because it’s powerful the front end wants to come out the second you roll on that throttle. I’ve got others, which is 1975, which can go over 70 miles an hour. It rattles like crazy at 60, but the engagement you get is incredible at 50 miles an hour.

I can be riding around a race track of 50 miles an hour with one of those things with no electrics whatsoever and I’m scared. On the other one, I can be doing 185. I am only starting to get the same sensation as the other one. I like racing motorcycles. I love to travel. I never understood why people don’t travel because I want to understand different cultures and perspectives because you’re right or wrong. You’re different. I want to understand why it’s important to you. I want to understand how your thought process is. I don’t believe there’s anything that makes you richer and smarter than travel.

What’s your favorite location or what’s your favorite country? I can ask the opposite. What’s your most loathsome one?

I’ll get some hate mail if I’ve mentioned that one. The one that shook me up that I didn’t think I would be as fascinated with as I ended up being because we do a lot of travel to Asia. I love Asia and I love Japan as well. I went to Japan. I spoke in Thailand in 2020.

Did you like it?

We lived in Thailand for years.

Thailand fascinates me because I think it’s a dichotomy. We’ve talked about that. It’s like a broken dichotomy to me.

It is and that is strange. It’s got some good bits and bad bits of Asia. It’s got some good and bad bits of Western. It’s still a good place to go to because it’s not as polished as Tokyo and Hong Kong. It’s still very much of a raw Asia like Vietnam. It is the Land of Smiles. That’s what Thailand is. I ended up working for a guy in Poland. We ended up spending a lot of time on about twenty visits to Kraków. I found that place fascinating because it’s a UNESCO City.

Explain to anybody who doesn’t know what that means.

When something is historic, you’re not allowed to alter any of the facades, roads and streets. You can literally walk through the ghettos of Kraków as exactly as they were during the World Wars. When they talk about the Nazis, I heard enough or the Jews and then taken them down to Auschwitz and Birkenau, which are down the road that did you have to go to, you’re walking on the same streets that they did. It is incredible. There’s so much of that. They didn’t know what they were getting involved in. The Nazis were brainwashed that they thought they were doing good and then you’ll go into a death camp. It’s a strange place to be. I can’t say that I went to Kraków and enjoyed it, but I can say it’s fascinating. It gave me so much growth. The food is very stodgy. For a British guy that likes his sausage, mash and beer, it is a great place for that. This place is steeped in many cultures, the Polish, the Jewish, the Germans, the Americans are then liberated. It’s got so much going on in a place that is stuck in time.

What is the most outrageously interesting trip you ever arranged for someone?

For many different things. I had a client that wanted to get married in the Vatican by the Pope. That was interesting because as an Irish boy, I’ve been very honored and blessed. He got special access to Jerusalem. As an Irish Catholic to then be going back in the back halls and the catacombs of the Vatican was incredible. What fascinated me more about the Vatican that you probably wouldn’t have known is the politics and the bureaucracy of where you can and can’t go, and who you can talk to. That you’re dealing with the twelfth century. You watch all these old movies and there was a program called The Pope where it was back in time. You look at Downton Abbey, you look at all of these old notions of how people did things. They’ve never come out of that.

Everything’s papered, signed and wax sealed. To go back in time and handle that bureaucracy was frustrating, but also fascinating. The wedding was quite interesting, but it was second to the actual bureaucracy that I was introduced to that most people don’t get to see. One that gave me a big kick was we set up a client in Florence by taking over the museum, the Accademia Gallery, which houses Michelangelo’s David. I always like to surprise the client. One of my sayings is that never give the client what they asked for, give them what they need and desire. You saw an example of that when we sat down and spoke about New York.

Keep your word, even if you’ve promised something that is now difficult for you. Click To Tweet

I like to do stuff. I like to plan to travel for me that you’re going to go on. If it doesn’t excite me, I don’t want to do it for you. When we set them up for Florence, we set them up with a table at the feet of Michelangelo’s David. The location was incredible. We had a string quartet that gave him the ambiance and also covered the fact that museums have a choir. That gave him everything he wanted. I walked up to the table while he was eating his pasta and I said, “I’ve got a local entertainer. Would you mind if I board them in?” The client looked to me and said, “That would be nice.” I walked arm in arm with Andrea Bocelli to serenade him. They were like, “What is this?”

It was nice to shock your clients, but I have to make walking into the Accademia under David with Andrea Bocelli on my arm. I was like, “How am I able to do this?” I’ve never got cocky with it. It’s never not surprised me. I’ve worked with everyone from Elon Musk, Richard Branson to Elton John. I get to name drop. I won’t say I’m not impressed, but I’m still that little kid that snuck into the party that he wasn’t allowed to. I’m like, “This is funny,” and I have a good time. Every one of those people that I’ve mentioned, I think that’s why I get on with them so much because I’m buying into the bullshit and the hype. I look at someone as a someone, and I judge them and not the checkbook.

I’m going to go back to your experiences up on stage. What’s the most unexpected, meaningful question anyone has asked you since you started speaking?

You get people to say things like, “Why do you do it?” I wasn’t expecting that.

Do you have a stock answer?

I have a stock answer of anything other than, “My name is Steve Sims.” It can be different to different crowds. I tell people that I like to challenge, to change and to surprise. As I said to you before design travel, that excites me and arouses me that you happened to go on. There are these different ones, but I’ve had people say to me and this is probably one of the best ones. Someone asked me once, “What is the most impactful thing you ever did?” It was a brilliant one, but it was around the experiences for my clients. I told them how we had recreated a picnic for a client that was celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary.

Every anniversary we had done for them before, they’d been in private jets, we’d closed down jewelry stores in New York. Everything had been like $100,000. The most expensive thing was $750,000. Everything had always been big. This one ended up being $1,600. We got old photographs from his mom on what the picnic rug looked like and what the hamper looked like. We reconstruct this and in the background of one of the picnic pictures showed the boombox that he had. When he first met his girlfriend at college, he bought the boombox, the picnic rug and the hamper. They cracked open a cheap bottle of champagne, hit the boombox with these love tunes and said, “Care to join me?”

That was very easy to replicate, but how do you record anything onto a cassette deck now? None of the portals work. People don’t even buy cassettes anymore. The only reason it was $1,600 was because we blew about $1,000 on trying to find a damn boombox that doesn’t work. We ended up with three of these boomboxes that would have made Run-DMC proud. Only one of the bloody things worked, but then we had to send off the cassette to a studio with a playlist to get them to transfer all of the music onto this cassette. The thing only had one cassette. If that broke, we would have been screwed, but we had the music on the cassette that was professionally done in Hollywood. That was the only reason it was expensive as it was, but that woman had drunk champagne sitting on a Diamond Hill that we had established in New York, she had flown a private jet for a meal in France.

She was used to being wowed. The limo took her off from her house and she had no idea where she was going. She did a lap around to a public park, pulled up to the side, he’s underneath a tree recreated this thing, hits the button, a bit of Alexander O’Neil coming out of it. She stepped out of the car and hits the deck sobbing so much. This was every trigger from the first time she ever saw him acting like an idiot in front of all the other students who loved the music, we’ve recreated everything. She couldn’t stop crying. The doorman that opened up the door for the car was like, “What do I do?” He picked her up and tried to walk her nearer to the rug. That was the most impactful. It was cheap. It could have been cheaper if the damn boombox that we first bought worked.

What excites you besides thrill-seeking?

Nothing.

I don’t believe that.

It’s true. Everything I do, I want to see a change. I want to see a different kind of thrill. My thrill was her excitement. My thrill was him given her that thrill. My thrill is talking to a client who’s working on a campaign to release a course and he stuck. I have a word with him. He changed his tangent and he made $20,000. My thrill is orchestrating a change, movement and reaction in you.

What are you working on?

My speaking is going nuts. We’ve already been booked for three committed with about six more on the pipeline for 2020 but we have room for more. I was thinking I was going to be a five-minute fad and no one would want me. That shook me up there. My Speakeasies are doing well. We’re planning our next one in Silicon Valley in November 2020. We’re already planning a Speakeasy Vegas. We probably start taking this into London and transfer it out, go into different places. Who knows, maybe building up infrastructure like Dan Sullivan, where we take on people to do affiliate Speakeasies and they build a great program. I’m enjoying life. I’m seeing where the show goes. We’re looking at doing a book number two.

I was going to ask that next time. If you do it, can you sneak preview what it might be focused on?

We’re going to look at how to get a yes to benefits of both parties. Most people have either selfish where they want everything or the affirmative, or they give the farm away for the price of a cow as opposed to making it an equal win-win. I’m looking at the joint benefit and long-lasting relationships. I want two people that have never spoken before, I’m going to help you build a relationship and then get into a relationship that benefits you both and therefore, building loyalty community and a support system.

I have a couple of other questions. The first one is what more than anything else do you want to hope or intent to anyone reading to walk away feeling thinking, grasping, reflecting, understanding about what you have conveyed? What’s the one outcome you want everyone more than anything to have gotten out of this time together that we shared?

I want them to realize that the slowest evolving technology in the world is what they see in the mirror every morning when they’re brushing their teeth. As human beings, our role is to grow, communicate and to build a relationship. That’s what we’re there for. A lot of people are fighting it. I want to see the old school to become a new school. I want to see people building up relationships. I want us to stop using the word authentic because we’re using that word and all it’s doing is validating the fact that the rest of the planet is no longer authentic. We’re going to be revealing people because they breathe. People should be people. They should be truthful. They should keep their word. We should never be surprised when we find someone authentic.

Let me ask two more questions and we’re done. It’s delightful that your son is here. It’s fun to watch your parents when they can show their stuff, but reveal what they’re made of. It’s a great privilege and a rare treat. I ask a lot of questions and I pride myself on not asking the kind of questions that most people ask.

I haven’t been asked these ones. You’re bang on.

They’re designed for your benefit and for the audience. My job is not to demonstrate my mental prowess. It’s to showcase the depth and dimension of you in ways that transcend the norm, but also transfer that comprehension to readers. Hopefully, I’ve done a decent job of it, but I never know all that reside in your mind, all that you’ve been doing all, it’s on your mind, all that rocks your boat, all that seriously driving you. I try to ask questions that are abroad a net, but had I asked a better question, what’s one question that I should have asked you and I didn’t? If I can I ask it, what would your answer be?

People always say a little bit of the what’s the next question, “What does your future hold? What are you focusing on? Where are you going?” You get those questions pretty much in every interview and in a different kind of format. You asked me one of those earlier. I like this moment. I liked the engagement. I used to do kickboxing. I used to love doing it because I was scared. I used to walk in the ring and there’d be another guy there that didn’t like me because he was looking at me. He hated me. I could have walked out of that ring but I didn’t because at that moment in time, every molecule of my body was alive.

You can always make money, but you will never get lost credibility back. Click To Tweet

I don’t like getting in the ring too much because I’ve got slower in my old age and my son beats me up and it’s embarrassing. I love riding motorcycles. He’ll admit this as well. When you’re on the grid lined up against a bunch of screaming engines, everyone’s focused on the eyeballs and looking at the first corner, you’re waiting for that person to drop the flag or to release you out of the pit, up until that moment, I could go home and have a cup of coffee, but I don’t because again I’m alive. When that flag goes down, you’re living. Everything about you is getting that engagement. You can smell, hear, feel, and sense. I don’t care what’s coming up next month. I’ve got no plans for next year. I have no idea nor do I care. I want to be engaged enough to be ready to receive and when it comes around.

It’s either a very deep and a difficult question or one that you’ll have unexpected, but refreshing to answer for. What do you think the meaning of life is?

It’s engagement. That was easy. Too many people go through it with the windows up and they think, “I’ve got money in my bank. I did this. Look at my watch and car.” There’s no sense. Me and you have spoken about it before. You’ve got to know the feeling, the smell, the engagement, the scared, the arousement, all of those things make you alive. You can only get alive by being engaged. I hate passengers. I don’t want to be a passenger. I want to know that I lived every single day. The bottom line of it is both of us know we’re going to die. That’s a certainty. As much as Peter Diamandis is trying to do stuff, none of it is we’re all going to be eating worm food one of these days. As we’re about to bail out and the final curtain’s coming down and they say your life flashes before you, I want mine to be so full that there’s a popcorn break.

You’re delightful. What a refreshing discussion. What an interesting showcase of perspectives that should reinforce people’s resolve to get connected and engaged. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. If people want to get a hold of you for either speaking services, to get on your Facebook Group or any of a number of probably new and exciting services or activities, how do they do it?

If you’re in the US, you can text the word, SIMS, to 33777 or you can go to SteveDSims.com. Sign up there or you can find me on my Facebook Page, which is An Entrepreneur’s Advantage by Steve Sims. Look that up and you’ll find me on there. Fill in a couple of questions and we’ll chat with you when you’re inside.

The book, Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen, is cool.

It’s been released in Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, Thai and we sold the rights to Russia. I’m not buying the beach house with it, but the opportunities are getting me and I am buying the land.

It’s a vehicle for bigger and better opportunities, but it’s also a wonderful valve to reach people at a very similar level that you couldn’t do otherwise initially.

It’s a fantastic thing to have a book out there. If anyone’s out there and they think they’ve got a story in them, then there’s an obligation to get it into paper. I don’t think I was prepared as we were leaving. We enjoyed some good whiskey that night, but I remember you saying to me. It was one of your profound moments. You looked at me and you went, “Are you ready for this?” I was like, “Hell no.” You’ll get messages from people from the other side of the planet, where they’ve written you a note going, “I saw this and it changed that.” I’ve shed a tear or two on little videos I’ve got where people have used something that I wrote and it’s helped them. That’s when you go, “This was fun. I’ve got a paycheck and I’ve got an obligation. I’ve got to commit.”

It’s a tremendous obligation and privilege and a rare opportunity. It’s all three rolled up to one. I hope you’re happy with this outcome. I think that you have demonstrated to me the complexity of trying to figure out what to describe you when I endorse you. I do endorse you unendingly. I can’t tell you what you are yet, but you are a thrill-seeking challenger with humanity and enormous engagement connectivity and intoxicating. Thank you.

Thanks.

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There you have it. That was another episode of the show. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to come and hang out with me with some of my friends, maybe you should come into one of our Speakeasies. Head over to SteveDSims.com, look up Next Event, click and get involved. We’ll find out where your problems are. We’ll find out how we can help you. We’ll give you a tremendous event. Hopefully to see you at Speakeasy one day in the future, all the best. Bye.

Important Links:

• Jay Abraham
• Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen
• Speakeasy
• Gigafactory
• BunnyRanch
• Alice Little – previous episode
• Father Greg Boyle – previous episode
• Homeboy Industries
• Barbara Lazaroff – previous episode
• An Entrepreneur’s Advantage by Steve Sims

About Jay Abraham