Top 5 Gifts I Gave Billionaires Under $20; Steve Sims

Welcome to a different kind of episode for the art of making things happen. Podcast. I did a live on my speakeasy and an entrepreneur’s advantage, Facebook pages the other day, telling people what had been my most successful five gifts that I actually gave billionaires. And each one of them was under $15. It was very successful online and someone said to me, Oh, that should be in a podcast. More people should know about the impact of thoughts over price tag. So listen to this episode, as we give you the audio from that live. And of course, if you want to see these kinds of things, join an entrepreneur’s advantage Facebook page with me, Steve Sims, and we’ll do it anyway. Enjoy the podcast and start thinking before paying. Good morning. Good morning. I believe we’ve got a, we got one here. We’ve got the new Facebook live.

We’re going to do something new, a little bit special today. What I’m going to be focusing on today is gifts. If you’re there, if you’ve got any questions as usual, hit them in the tag, if you’re there and you want to let me know you’re there. So I don’t think I’m talking to myself put it in the tag, but you know, the scoop to do. But what we’re going to be doing today is I’m going to be running through five gifts that I’ve actually given to billionaires and still do. There’s a great myth that you kind of have to match the gift with the status of the person that’s wrong. If you know someone collects Ferrari’s, you can’t give them a Ferrari. If you know the person who’s a wine collector, what do you know about good wine? Okay. Other than the local counter BevMo. So you’ve got to focus on different things and you’ve got to try and do something quirky. There’s a couple of things that I usually do. And I’m going to be going through this with you is focus on the usage of something. Okay. How much use does it get? Marry that to the passion of the person. So look, I’ve got me cappuccino. I got 30 minutes to hang out. We’ve already got some people jumping on it. That’s good.

And we also going to be announcing today when our next happy hour is. So that’s a virtual happy hour. If none of you, people have been on a virtual happy hour before, this is quite simply a wasted hour of your life, where we just drink and tell ridiculously bad jokes and chill. Just think of it as that, that pub that you fell into with a bunch of weirdos and you just giggled for an hour. There’s no substance, there’s no point, but it kind of makes us happy. And that’s what we like to do. So I’m going to be announcing that today when the next date is. So look out for that invite in the entrepreneur’s advantage and the speakeasy Facebook pages and you’ll be invited on it. So that’s it. So without further a due should I tell you the little gifts that I give? I don’t know in which order to give these, and I will tell you straight off the bat, the I’ve always boasted and promoted that I try to give gifts under $15, but there were a couple, actually I tell a lie, there’s one, that’s more than $15.

Okay. So you got four at $15 one that’s not, and there’s another one that I’m going to tell you about at the end, which is a, a special one that you might want to consider. So the first thing you’ve got to ask yourself is why am I giving that person a gift? What’s the point I, anyone that’s been in my speakeasies, you know, I rattle on about that all the time. What’s the point? Okay. are you trying to establish a relationship? Are you saying, thank you for the relationship. You know, what’s the point? What are you trying to get out of it? So I’m going to give you the first one. I actually went to a party and the party that I went to was in Ojai, which is between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Very affluent. A lot of people live there because they’ve got Vineyards.

There’s all these different kinds of things that they’ve got. And that’s why people live in Ojai it’s a beautiful place. And I’ve been invited to this guy’s house. And I knew he collected two things, wine and horses. Well don’t know anything about wine. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to buy him a horse. So I turned up at this party and as I was about to go in, there was a gentleman there that I recognized or a couple of them actually. And they worked for a jet charter company. Now this guy owned jets, but not everyone uses their own jets for flight. Sometimes they’ll just rent one. I could understand them being there, but they quickly came up to him and they would say hey Steve you’re here. I know rich people. So I tend to get around more than COVID and they had a bag and inside the bag was six bottles of wine.

And if you’re carrying six bottles of wine, that’s quite heavy. Okay. This was a big fancy event. They were valet. People didn’t bother me cause I was on the motorbike, but they were valet people. There was security, there was a checklist to get in. And I said to them, I said, so what are you doing there? What are you got? And he went, well, you might not know this, Steve, but the guy collects wine. And I said, I do, but I didn’t know you did. And they went, we don’t. I said, so you’re going to go to a guy that’s passionate about wine and give him six bottles of wine ’cause the checkout girl at BevMo told you these were decent wines’. Oh no, we’ve done our research. Oh, that’s fine. And I didn’t want to poop on their parade. But I said to him, I said, okay, let me ask you this question.

You think that wine is going to make it to him? And I was being a little shit. They were like, Oh, where are you going to be proud to announce that good for you, goes good for you. And I left out of that. The bottom line is when you go to these events and you know what it’s like when you go to a kid’s birthday party, the gifts are taken at the door and then stuck on a table, the person is actual party. You’re going to get a hangout with, and you’d know I left. You do enjoy. But the bottom line is you are not going to be able to hand it over. So the story goes, we walked to the front of the door that will chuffed with themselves. They get the bottles of wine taken away from them. They get that name written on them and they get it put on a little sticker.

And it’s now on a counter full of everybody else’s presents and you’re wondering what the shit’s in there. The, my bottles of wine are going to be able to compete against. I didn’t have one. Okay. I just walked on through and carried around. Now just happened to be one of the guys was actually pitching me to have my company, starting to use there jet services while I was drinking an old fashioned. When the guests, the actual, not the guests, the actual host of the party came over to say hello to me. And he said hello to these guys as well. He knew them. They had been in conversation and they went into that. Oh yeah, you know, I’ve got the wines and I know you love wine. And I got your six bottles of wine. You’re going to really enjoy it. And he said, thank you very much, gentlemen, I look forward to trying these wines and he looks over to me and I said to him, don’t look at me.

I know nothing about wine. But what I do know is that when I’m at home and I’m opening up a bottle of wine, the thing that pisses me off is that foil on the top. So I know it aggravates me. John I wanted to give you this. And I gave him something very small. That was in my pocket, therefore was not needed to be taken at the front door. It was wrapped. I handed it to him and it was this, this is a little foil remover that goes on the top, of a bottle of wine, you clinch it, you spin it around. And it takes the top of the foil off of a bottle of wine. And I said to him, I know it always aggravates me trying to flick it off or worse, still getting a fricking knife and doing that and risking, losing a finger that I bought.

One of these. I didn’t know if you had one, do you know what he said to me? He didn’t. Okay. And then later on that evening, for our pleasure for him to show off, he showed us about 4 bottles of wine and they had wax on the top. And what did he do? He pulled this out and he went, Oh, my friend, Steve bought me this. I’ve never had one of these. And he did it for all six bottles that he uncorked, so that we could all taste this amazing wine. He used my $9 opener. Think of the usage. Now I actually got promoted, live at his party and I’ve been to his house since. And you know, the funny thing is he still uses this. See, you don’t need to match the passion. You need to think of the usage. First gift. If they like wine, get him something to the accompanies wine, get him something to saves wine, like a pressure Corker, get him a foil cap remover, get him a one of those rabbits, which actually gets the corks out actually this one’s a rabbit as well, but get one of those cork removers, but think of something that they can use that increases the pleasure of what they love.

Okay. Another client of mine always made a point that he got these handmade shoes. And this was back just after 9 11. When the advent of this evil, horrible, annoying bloody thing was invented called TSA where all of a sudden my knife, I used to carry a Leatherman knife. All of a sudden, I can’t carry that Leatherman knife. You can’t do any can’t carry anything onto a plane now, but this guy used to travel a lot and he would always boast about his shoes. And he had some absolutely beautiful shoes. So I said to him, I know you love your shoes. And I know that when you get on the plane and you fly and you probably all know this, your feet expand. So you’d take your shoes off. Okay? So I bought him a shoe horn. Now this one’s a plastic one, but I spent, I think it was about $20 for two shoe horns kept one myself and send it to him saying that you’ve got to take care of, of the things you love.

You can now slip this in your briefcase, suitcase, whatever pocket so that you can take your shoes on and off easily without damaging the backs. I focused on the usage accompany to his passion. You’ve got to think about these things. As I said before, given a gift, focus on the impact, not on the price tag. If I give you something and go, Hey, happy birthday. I’ve given you this. It was $400. I’m focusing on the price tag. So focus on something they love. So my second gift I give travelers is this. If you want to go for another little traveler gift, I really like to give it’s made by Tumi. And it’s brightly colored, leather luggage tags. When you’ve all got your black luggage and I got black Tumi luggage, when it comes off, there’s a neon green tag there, but you can get different ones. You can get shaped like stars, you can get different kind of tags so they recognize their suitcases coming off. Those gifts are all cheap but not under $15 but the shoe horns were under $15. Now lets move onto the third gift, I’m going to give a shameless plug as well. Give them a book! For just $13 We had Nir Eyal on the AMAs a little while ago and he wrote “Hooked”, fabulous read. Ryan Holiday wrote, “Trust Me, I’m Lying”, fantastic. Get a book and send it to them. They are going to read it with both hands. Total engagement!

You’re now engaged, whatever they get triggered from that book, they’re going to remember you, they’re also probably going to stick it up on a shelf or give it to someone else. But that kind to remember, that book, and they’re going to remember you and bear in mind, when you give a gift, you actually create a trigger. That’s what you’re doing. You create a trigger. So focus on the impact of what you’re given. So my third gift for under $15 is a book. Give them a book. In fact, fuck it, give them this book buy “Bluefishing” cause it’s brilliant. But seriously, think about what they like. It could be a cooking book and bearing in mind, the bookstores are having trouble. Okay. Everyone’s having trouble at the moment. So you can get all of this stuff really, really cheaply, but send them a book, say, Hey, I know you’re interested in so-and-so.

I found this book on the history of XYZ, you know, so try and think of what will get them to be engaged in the book. If they’ve got a brand new car, then sending them a book on that car, maybe a bit dull. Cause they’ve already got the car. People buy books on things and they don’t usually own, but the history of making to get to that car that may be of interest to them.

The last two things and the last one actually cost me $18. All right. Again, you don’t have to spend money to create an impact. In fact, as a home, we always do Christmas presents and they have to be under $10. Okay. Even if they’re slightly over $10, like a pair of socks, we give them one sock and tell them on your birthday. I’ll give you the other one. Now we’re joking. We don’t. But the bottom line of it is if someone says only give something to someone for $10, you start thinking, and that’s what you’ve got to do when you give someone a gift. So focus on the gift, given to create the appropriate trigger and response. And again, what’s the point. So the final two gifts and then the, the other one is more than $15.

It’s a Silicon scraper. I barbecue a lot and I love to sear the steaks before I finish them off on the barbecue to get the good crusty edge. Okay. What that does do is it screws up your pan and you get this real gritty kind of residue from the steaks starts to build up and it can get really, really rough. The first thing people do with pans is they get a wire brush and they rub over it. So if you’ve got any kind of non-stick and it’s not a cast iron skillet, then if you’ve got any kind of coating on that pan, the wire brush will get rid of the residue as well as fuck up your pan. Okay. These little scrapers here, and I bought a kit of these for like $9 and they got some, they’ve got little grooves on them.

They scrape it off and it’s Silicon. So it does it. And this one’s been used a ton and look at it. It’s absolutely. I can put that in a bag and send it to someone it’s still perfect. I use these all the time. Okay. If someone cooks and they cook outside or they like steak, you’ve got a couple of choices. You send them a couple of pieces of phenomenal meat and ends up spending, costing you 50 bucks. Or you send them a pack of these Silicon scrapers. Most of my stuff I get off of Amazon. Okay. So you get these Silicon scrapers and this will keep their pans, top, top, top notch. All right. So my fourth gift for under $15. For those people that like to cook a Silicon scraper. I hope this is helping you. Again, you may think that absolutely pathetic ideas, but I want you to focus on the impact, my fifth gift, which is over $15. It’s actually $18.

Now this is Calabasas style. As you know, I live well, somebody might know I live up near Malibu in a Topanga area, and this is a local magazine. The Calabasas area is where everyone from fricking Justin Bieber to the Kardashians live. They have this magazine and a friend of mine just moved into the area. So this is a magazine on all the best restaurants. You know, the typical bloody magazine, typical local magazine showing you where you can get your best diamonds and get your pet poodle, fricking groomed, that kind of crap. $18 a year for subscription. I love purchasing years subscriptions for my clients. Why? Because every month, every two months, actually, he’s going to get a copy of this magazine. And when he gets that magazine, come through the door, who’s he going to think about? So six times a year, he’s going to remember me.

I have done this so many times that people contact me. People contact me and I can tell that they’ve just received the magazine. It’s just triggered them to reach out to me. All right, this one was $18. Magazines are going broke. You can buy digital subscriptions now really, really, really cheap. Okay. So it could be an E-subscription or you can get the hard cover. Okay. It doesn’t really matter. This one was $18. It’s an okay magazine. You know, typical kind of like fancy flashy full of ads. But six times a year, they’re going to get triggered to talk to me. If you know, someone likes Porsches subscribe to a Porsche magazine. If you know, someone likes luxury, send them a travel magazine, the Rob Report, but magazines are having real trouble staying in business. And that therefore open to doing incredible insane deals.

If you want to “E” it, you can do an e-magazine very, very cheap. So that’s the fifth present. So to give you a recap, you’ve got the Silicon scraper, you’ve got the foil top remover, you’ve got a shoe horn, you’ve got a book and you’ve got a magazine subscription. One of the other things that I like to give to people is courses and communities. Now, as you know, shallow plug, I have the Sims Distillery, any really intelligent people out there are already members of it for the rest of you that are not why not? But I have actually given away memberships of this to my top clients for a year. Now, two things happen, they get smarter and they thank me. And I’ve given other people’s courses away. I’ve given Billie Jean’s, I’ve given Mark Lags. I’ve given Jim Kwiks. I’ve given Jay Abraham’s, Jason Gaynard, Joe Polish. I’ve given away other people’s memberships before I had my community because they’re learning and growing and they are going to remember the people that did this now, most courses, as we all know, like mine’s $295 bucks a year, you know, most courses are around about that kind of price. So they’re not cheap. So you’ve got to focus on who you actually give that to, and you don’t give it to a prospect. You give it to an established client, but I do want you to just ask yourself what tiny little gift could you give that would be constantly used. The impact is in the thought and the usage

I’ve given a nice pen cover.

Not pens, little cases that you put a pen in for when you travel. Okay, someone’s got a nice pen. They don’t want it rattling around in a suitcase. Okay. I’ve given straps, watch straps. There’s a company called Di Stefano out of Florence that makes the most incredible straps out of every kind of leather you can think of alligator, bear, whatever. The most incredible straps. When I’ve had a really good client and he tells me about his watches, I send them. The Di Stefano family are one of the oldest families in the world that made straps for Cartier, Panerai and watches like that. So that’s a $200 thing, but again, if you’ve got a billionaire client, you don’t mind doing that. So the focus is try to keep a gift under $15, make it thoughtful and impactful and useful to the recipient.

And don’t try to match what they have. Again, if they like wine, don’t buy wine. If they like horses, don’t buy him a horse. So focus on the impact and usage.

So we’ve got a question here as last I was scrolling. I do apologize. Do you tailor gifts for every client always or create a package to send them all? No, I create personal. You know, these are $15 and the only thing it’s going to cost me is 20 minutes to think of something. And then when I get it, and as you know, when I wrap it, I’ve actually bought wrapping paper. Vista print, do it. You can buy wrapping paper with your logo all over it.

I send out a lot of books and I put my little rubber stamp all over of it. The amount of times people have actually posted up pictures of the box, not the book inside the box, because they just get excited because of that. Why? Because you put a little bit of thought behind it. So if you’ve got the kind of client where you can just mass send out something, then you have a client, but do you have a relationship? You know, relationship is where you don’t mind spending those couple of extra seconds to go.

I know he’s going to like this. I know she’s gonna love this and just make it real personal. Funny enough, because so many people don’t do that. You end up standing out isn’t that what we all want to do. I hope that answers that question. We got another one here. Hey Steve, how do you figure out what they like? What are you kidding? It’s called Facebook. You know, just go into Facebook and look at the kind of things they like to do. If you see all of the pictures they’re posting of their motorbikes, you’ve got a pretty good idea. They like motorbikes, send them a motorbike subscription. If you’re looking, see if they wear ties, if they were certain shirts…there is enough Google images out there for you to be able to get a good indication.

And there’s enough social feeds out there for you to be able to cyber stalk someone. And you can even go into that feed and go, Oh, I saw you posted a picture of a horse. I didn’t know you like horses Roger and get him to tell you. Hey, I don’t but my daughter does. Okay. Another little thing I sent out which was quite funny a while back was a client of mine, had three girls and he bought them at the time, the latest iPhone. Okay. And so he spent like a thousand dollars on a phone. I bought them a selfie halo, which has a little clip on light that goes on the top of the cell phone. And she gives them a life. So the girls could do selfie videos with good lighting. Okay. And I remember I bought all three of those.

It was $15 for all three. So that was another thing. And I was focusing on the kids. So you don’t have to create impact by giving a present to them. Maybe give the present to their wife, their husband, their kids, their dog. All right. But pay attention on something like that.

I like things that are cheap and impactful. We have another question here. What do you think about generic mass gifts? Like a coffee mug or food basket for every home buyer. What kind of gift basket are you going to give me that you may be giving to Emily or Leanne or Courtney? Are we all alike? No. You can give me a gift basket and then find out I’m lactose intolerant. You know, I’m just not tolerant of anything, but you know, you can’t, you can’t mass gift. And here’s the thing. If it’s a new home buyer, then what do they need? Maybe a new key fob, you know, saying with a little icon metal new home on it or something like that, or maybe a welcome home door mat, you know, or maybe if they bought a home from you, a coffee machine, you know, with new mugs.

I did find out a friend of mine once before that I did this, that was in the real estate industry. And I’m glad you brought this up because he’s now remembered this one. He designed for his clients stationary with their new address on it. Okay. And he gave them a stationary kit with a picture of their house, beautifully done unfiltered. And he also gave them some stationary letterhead with their new address on it. And the name on it, some envelopes and return address envelope stickers on it as well. So he gave them stationary to welcome them to their new home. Okay. Candles. What sells a new home coffee, kegs, candles. We all know that. So maybe a candle, but you don’t know what sense they like. So I’ve got to admit, be careful, but I do like the idea of the stationary, but keeping it mass and generic will paint you as mass and generic. And if you want to create your relationship rather than the client focus on making it more impactful.

The stuff I’ve showed you is very cheap and cheerful. I hope it helps you. I want you to create the most impact you can with your people, so it can be reciprocated and come back your way. I really do hope the ideas have helped you again, they’re all cheap and cheerful, but they make you smile and we all need to do that.

For now, peace, love you. Be safe, be well.

Sims Distillery