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What You Need To Finally Make It Happen with Steve Sims

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In this episode, we hear the incredible story of how our guest went from a bricklayer to working with some of the most powerful and influential people in the world and the amazing lessons that he’s learned about making things happen with our guest Steve Sims.

Steve Sims is an entrepreneur and expert marketer in the luxury industry. He is the founder and CEO of the luxury concierge service Bluefish. He has been profiled and quoted often in international publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, London's Sunday Times, and many more! He is also a sought after speaker at a variety of prestigious organizations including the Pentagon and Harvard. Steve is now also the author of Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen. He has been quoted as "The Real Life Wizard of Oz" by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine.

  • From a bricklayer to a VIP concierge to the world’s most powerful and influential people

  • “If I was a superhero, my superpower would be ignorance"

    • Ignorant to other peoples’ opinion

    • Ignorant to other peoples’ approval

    • Being laughed at

    • Being told you can’t do it

  • We spend most of our time being frightened of things we have no idea of

  • “I’ve never been charged with overthinking anything"

  • People aren’t terrified of making mistakes, they’re terrified of YOU seeing it!

  • Anyone who is at the pinnacle of success DOES NOT CARE if you see them fail 

  • People YEARN to tear people down and watch them fail

    • They don’t want you to succeed because it will demonstrate that they can't

  • “I’m a 53-year-old five-year-old, I want to ask every question until I fully understand everything."

  • “I'm testing for the weak spots in the engine, so I can fix them.”

  • Look for failure, don’t avoid it. 

  • How we fail, and how we react to it, get to the best growth. 

  • High performers and people competing at the world championship level dedicate huge resources to finding out their weak points and failures, whereas most people hide from it and bury their heads in the sand. 

  • You have to permit yourself to fail to get the greatest growth. 

  • Kids are the best salespeople on the planet. Learn from them. 

  • “I am gonna ask as many times it takes for me to understand it, period."

  • The concept of “ugly works"

  • Perfection is a blue unicorn with three testicles. 

  • “I keep things raw, I keep things simple"

  • As a species humans are imperfect. We spell things wrong, we take photos that aren’t perfect.

  • No one who has done anything fantastic has done it by following other people. None of the Elon Musks, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs of the world had someone to follow, they did something different. 

  • “Stop thinking, just do” 

  • Stop overthinking who you are, instead of trying to be what you think people want, just be yourself.

  • “ROE” - Return on Effort. Don’t spend any of your effort or energy being someone you’re not. Focus your energy on being the solution to other problems. 

  • You free up a lot of bandwidth - mentally and in your daily life - by not wasting time and energy on worrying what other people think about you.

  • Get uncomfortable. 

  • You have to learn how to FILTER. Entrepreneurs are comfortable being uncomfortable. Wantrepreneurs spend all their time taking selfies next to cars they don’t own. 

  • You have to be willing to spend most of your life being uncomfortable.

  • Make being uncomfortable your new normal. Raise the standard. 

  • When you push yourself up to a higher level, you will fail. But you will end up with many different results.

  • When you start pushing, something strange happens.. you start achieving. 

  • How you can start making yourself uncomfortable starting right now. 

  • Go to a restaurant and order the weirdest appetizer on the menu. 

  • Approach from a position of strength rather than a position of fear. 

  • Approaching discomfort in everyday life, low-risk situations can help you when you get into the big leagues 

  • Make discomfort a habit in your life. 

  • Homework: Do something that makes yourself uncomfortable. 

  • To do great things, you don’t have to take big steps. Take one tiny step. What you have to create today is momentum.  

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

This week's episode of The Science of Success is brought to you by Best Fiends.

Best Fiends is a 5-Star rated mobile puzzle game with over 100 million downloads. I’m not someone who is traditionally a mobile game person but I have to say I’m a HUGE fan of this game and it’s a great way to challenge yourself when you’re on the go, waiting in line, or doing some relaxing.

The games developers and team are constantly updating with new themes and levels so the game never gets old or less challenging. This really keeps you on your toes in a fun way as you need to utilize different characters and strategies in order to succeed. What may have gotten you to a certain point in most cases won’t get you to the next.

You’re constantly engaging your brain with fun puzzles and collecting tons of unique characters. Trust me, with over 100 millions downloads this 5-star rated mobile puzzle game is a must play. So check it out go to the Apple app store or Google Play store on your phone and download best fiends today and start playing.

The game is great, their team is great so go check it out now and start playing today, I’ll see you on the leaderboard! 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we hear the incredible story of how our guest went from a bricklayer to working with some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, and the amazing lessons that he’s learned about making things happen along the way with our guest, Steve Sims.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we shared the story of how our guest went from teetering on the edge of virtual bankruptcy to transforming his company into a high-growth startup with a massive exit, seemingly overnight with our previous guest, Saud Juman.

Now for our interview with Steve. Please note, this episode contains profanity.

[0:01:41.0] MB: Steve Sims is an entrepreneur and expert marketer in the luxury industry. He's the founder and CEO of the luxury concierge service, Bluefish. He's been profiled and quoted in international publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, London Sunday Times and many more. He's also a sought-after speaker who's spoken at prestigious places, including the Pentagon and Harvard. Steve is now also the author of Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen. And he's been called the real-life Wizard of Oz by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine. Steve, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:02:17.8] SS: Hey, thanks for having me.

[0:02:19.3] MB: Well, we're excited to have you on the show today. You have such a fascinating story and background. For listeners who aren't familiar with you and your journey, tell us a little bit about your story.

[0:02:30.2] SS: Left school at the age of 15 to join my dad's building firm in East London, went via Hong Kong as a doorman, ended up throwing parties in Asia and grabbing some rather affluent clients. From there, I've worked with some of the richest, most powerful people in the planet. I've also been seen with one from Elon Musk, Richard Branson and so Elton John. I've worked for also not only some of the most powerful people in the planet, but also some of the most powerful events, ranging from the Grammys, Kentucky Derby, Formula One, Art Basel, you name it, I probably had me fingers in it.

Probably two years ago, left I supposed secrecy for many, many years I was probably the most unknown man working for the biggest and most powerful. Two years ago, wrote a book and can I put it out there that if a bricklayer from London could be doing this, you're already out of excuses and all of a sudden, it got a lot of people to know the stuff I got up to. There it is in a nutshell.

[0:03:27.8] MB: I want to dig into a number of parts of the story, but you've just said touched on something that I think is a really key component of everything, which is excuses. We can so easily fall into the trap of making excuses. There's always a reason why you can't, or a million reasons falling into the trap of overthinking. How do you as someone who's gone from literally being a bricklayer to dealing and interacting and being a concierge to some of the most influential people in the world, how do you think about excuses and why they stop us?

[0:03:59.2] SS: This podcast can't actually see that I've got a damn great smile on my face as you're asking that question. My wife would probably put it more colorfully, but she has always said and I met her when she was 16 and I was 17. We've been together forever. She saw me from being a bricklayer to closing down museums in Florence and getting people married in the Vatican and sending them into the Titanic.

She's been there all the way through and she said, if I was a superhero, my superpower would be ignorance. I like to think that's a good thing, but the way she explains is I was so ignorant to other people's opinion, other people's approval, being laughed at, the fear of failure. Not only did I not care, it's slightly different from not caring, it didn't come into my mind. If I said to you, “Hey, would you like to drive a Lamborghini?” You may go, “Yeah,” but you may have no idea what it's like, because you've never driven a Lamborghini before.

I always wanted to fly a World War II military plane. I live up in Los Angeles, they occasionally fly over my head. I always wanted to be in one and I always loved it. For years this went on. Finally, I actually flew. I think it's a P-51 Mustang. My God, it was the scariest, most uncomfortable thing I've ever done. Now I never ever want to go near one of those planes again.

Quite often with frightened of things that not only we've done and know can hurt, like banging your thumb, but we spend most of our time being frightened of things that we have no idea of. I never had that, because I was so ignorant to failure, so ignorant to people being powerful and how many times if you want an example, how many times have you ever walked into and I'm talking to the audience here, walked into an event, walked into a party, walked into a business situation and there's the guy there, or the lady there that is killing it. Is the head of the party, the main focus, the person who you want to be near and everyone else is shit scared to go anywhere close to them?

Now I would walk in to a party, now bear in mind, I said at the beginning, 15 year-old, left school, became a bricklayer. I didn't want to be poor for the rest of my life. Quite simply, why should I hang out with poor people? Because they knew how to be poor, but worse, they knew how to settle for being poor. That's what I didn't like. I didn't like that settling bit.

Whenever I would be in an environment and this person was rich, while everyone's shit themselves go and talk to him, I was stood right next to him trying to engage him in a conversation. I'm stunned how many people are fighting for the point of being scared. They don't even know what it’s going to do, but they’re just terrified. Me, I was ignorant. I would just go raging on like a bull in a China shop.

[0:06:47.6] MB: That's an incredible – You said some amazing things. There's so many different great insights there. Just what you started out with to me is truly incredible insight, which is this idea, if you could be a superhero, ignorance would be your superpower. It's so easy to overthink things.

[0:07:03.1] SS: Oh, my God. My wife was often said that I have never been charged with overthinking anything. Then that also means that you make a lot of mistakes. Everything I'm saying now, you've got to understand that there's a repercussion to it. How you respond to the repercussion dictates how it actually impacts you.

I would go and do something and it would work. I'd be like, “Oh, great. That works. I'll do it again.” Then I would do something else that I didn't overthink and it would fail in some context. I've been involved in events, where it's cost me money to be involved in them, because I didn't account for certain charges I was going to get in being part of a major event. I didn't know how to use the media, or I didn't get the rights to use the media.

I was actually involved in sadly, I can't say it, but think of the biggest night in music and you'll get it. I didn't negotiate the ability, even though I was officially involved with this event, the biggest event worldwide in music, I was on that website, I was being promoted. In my contract, I never had press rights to mention their name. When I mentioned their name in an article, I actually got sued a $150,000 for doing it.

I learned very early on wow, I just lost all the money I basically made, I ended up paying back on a freaking lawsuit. I never got caught on that contract again. It's how you handle the repercussion, how you handle the failure that gives you the lessons that you need to never go into those mistakes again. I never overthink.

[Inaudible 0:08:43.4] said that I get going, then get good. We joked about the sound quality I have in my studio now. That's because I started doing podcasts, because I literally went out on my Facebook page and I went, “Hey, guys and girls. Should I start a podcast?” A bunch of people said yes. I went out the following day and bought every piece of shit you could for a podcast that was wrong. I realized, I live by well, a very quiet area, but reverb and stuff like that, I had a Yeti mic. Now Yeti is really good. I'm not going to crap on them, but they're not as good as getting a condenser mic.

I did a podcast with some bad equipment and I had some friends contact me, a friend of mine called Michael O'Neill just said, “Hey, you sound shit. We can hear all the reverb. We can hear all echo. You need this, this, this, this, this, this.” I learned from my mistakes. But I would never have had the sound quality I've had now had I not done it wrong first and learnt from that mistake.

[0:09:41.8] MB: Such a good insight and it comes back to what you said earlier, most people are so afraid to even make the mistake that they're robbing themselves with the opportunity to learn from it.

[0:09:52.5] SS: People are terrified. Do you know, here's the dark thing; people aren't terrified of making mistakes. They're terrified of you seeing it. Now this is a horrible true story. Down the road for me in LA is an area called Glendale and it has his massive great shopping mall. I had taken the kids there. Me and my wife were walking around the shopping mall. In front of me was these pair of guys and these couple of guys. In front of them was one – it's going to sound mood, so you can hate on me if you like, but just listen to the story first.

Probably one of the largest women I've ever seen in my life. She was monstrous. 300-plus pounds. Huge woman. Now that wasn't what was bothering me and of course, that never should bother anyone. What pissed me off about this woman was that she been to Target and how I knew she'd been to Target was because she probably had about 10 carrier bags, plastic bags from Target on her arms, but then for some strange reason was holding these bags out to her side, like 9:00 and 3:00. Not only was she very large so it was awkward to get past her in a busy mall in any case, but now she was demanding so much more room, because of her bags being out to the side, instead of holding them to her front.

Now again, hate on me if you like, but I'm looking at this thinking, “How rude is that?” We’re in a busy mall, you're taking up a lot of room. All you got to do is bring your bags in a little bit. I was also quite impressed with her upper body strength to be able to hold these bags up in the way that she – All of this is going through my head when something horrible happened. She tripped.

Now because her arms were out left and light of herself, she had no way of blocking this fall. This poor woman went down literally like a sack of spuds. There was no way in the world she could brace her fall. She took it on her chest and the poor woman on the side of her face. I've never heard the sound of someone going down on a concrete floor in a shopping mall like that. Still hurts me now as I'm repeating the story to you. It was horrific.

When you fall, remember how it feels like it's in slow motion, I could see her going and the guys in front of me could see her going and I let go of my wife's hand and all three of us run to grab her, like it was in slow motion, never stood a hope in hell. She went down and we got to her quick. Now as she landed, all of her bags went all over the place. This poor woman, we were like, “Are you okay?” Now the two guys were looking after her, I started grabbing her bags. As I turned around, that sat her up, her legs were splayed, it was very unelegant. The poor lady had just fallen over.

She's shocked. Her legs are splayed, her dress is all over the place. I grabbed her bags and started sticking them between her knees, so that she had her bags with her, all right? She was obviously dazed. As this was all happening, she suddenly started coming through. All of her bags are between her legs now and the guys are talking her. All of a sudden, she starts moving her head left and right really quickly, looking around the room.

Now I didn't know if she was looking for something, or she'd lost something. I was concerned she was going to hurt her neck the way she was moving her head so fast. I said to her, “Hey, hey. Your bags are here. Don't worry. Is there anything that's not here? Did you drop a purse or a phone or anything like that?” She looked at me and she said, “No, no, no. I just want to make sure no one was filming it.”

Now the point is this poor woman, now the mall paramedics or whatever they are run over, we were asked to leave her alone. They started paying attention to her. They'd actually laid her down on a stretcher. There's no hope in hell the following day that girl wasn't hurt and bruised. She went down on her chest and on the side of – I pray it was nothing worse than that.

In that moment of pain, the only thing that she could care about was no one else saw her fall. Now the fact is Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, anyone, Warren Buffett, think about anyone, Henry Ford, anyone that is where they are now, do not care about you seeing them fail. They have no care whatsoever, because they are focusing on what those lessons can teach them to make whatever they're doing better.

An example is Elon Musk. If you remember a little while ago, do you remember he was trying to find a way of saving money on sending rockets up into space by reusing the fuel cells? Do you remember that? They would come down and land on that floating platform in the ocean. Do you remember seeing that?

[0:14:29.1] MB: Oh, yeah.

[0:14:30.4] SS: Yeah, and what would happen? They would land and they would shake a little bit, they would topple over and then they would explode into this Hollywood explosion from this platform. We saw that quite a few times, didn't we?

[0:14:43.8] MB: Oh, yeah.

[0:14:44.3] SS: Now when was the last time you saw those fuel cells land on a platform? When was the last time?

[0:14:50.5] MB: A couple years ago maybe.

[0:14:52.3] SS: Do you know why?

[0:14:53.6] MB: Because they started landing.

[0:14:55.0] SS: Bingo. We don't care when things go right. We care when they go wrong. Do you remember when Elon Musk did the unveiling of his cyber truck? The following morning, what was the press regarding in that cyber truck unveil? What was their key headline of when he unveiled that cyber truck?

[0:15:12.1] MB: I don't remember specifically, but was it something about the truck, like the shape of their being ugly and crazy? I forget what people's response was, honestly.

[0:15:21.0] SS: It was the glass. He actually said that he had invented this glass can withstand debris and could even withstand a rock and he had someone throw a rock at one of the glasses or one of the panels of glass on the truck and it shattered. Now the following day, forget the fact that he had unveiled this truck that never seen – we'd never seen anything like it ever. Like it or loathe it, we'd never seen a truck with that technology before ever and the headlines were that Elon showed up, because his glass didn't withstand a rock.

People yearn to laugh at people. People yearn to grab people down. It's the crab mentality. You could test this. If you get your friends together and you go, “Hey, I'm going to do this. I've decided I'm going to start a podcast. I've decided that I'm going to start a t-shirt company. I'm going to make my plumbing company the most respected plumbing company in the planet.” You're going to get a bunch of responses and I hope you don't get the last one of these, but you're going to get people going, “Go for it.” Or people are saying, “Well, how are you going to do that?” Now that's not negative. That's them challenging your commitment and I love being challenged.

I’ll phone up people going, “Hey, I'm going to do this.” I go, “Okay. How are you going to start? What are you doing about this?” They’re challenging me and now refining my commitment and my thought process, because people can think of things that maybe you're too close to see. Every now and then, you'll get one of them that will, “Oh, you can't do that.” That person that sits in the corner in their arm chair and mocks you for trying. They do not want you to succeed, because it will show. It will demonstrate that they can't.

Now the downside is the world is made up with way more of those people than there are challenges and people that will push and support you. Those are the people that will video people fallen over, laugh when Elon Musk does something that doesn't quite work. Do you think there's any hope in hell whatsoever that his glass on that truck now can withstand a stone?

[0:17:31.2] MB: Oh, it definitely can. There's no doubt.

[0:17:33.7] SS: There's no doubt. How do we know there's no doubt? Because he would have seen how is shattered and he will repair that. If you don't mind, I'd like to give you a little story I did in Texas. Is it all right if I –

[0:17:45.5] MB: Yeah, please tell it.

[0:17:46.8] SS: All right. Anyone that follows me knows that I'm a great motorcycle lover. Two-wheel forever. I turn up everywhere in the bikes. If you ever looking at you seeing me on Instagram or Facebook leaning up against a yellow Lamborghini or something like that, no. I'm two-wheel until the day I die. We go to the Moto GP in Austin Texas. Because I'm the character that always wants to find out how I can get the most out of something, I made sure I had every badge and credential possible to get into every place that basically I shouldn't have been.

I'm wandering around all these garages and the pits and with all the teams and I'm with this race team and I'm chatting away to him. This guy gets on the floor, he takes the plastic off the side of the bike, which is called the fairing. Now it's just the engine revealed. He's got this funny little greenish tinge torch that looks like an LED strip light and he's got what looked like a little tiny little baby hammer. He's laid on his side and he's moving this light around the bottom of the engine and tapping the engine, almost like he's tuning it like a piano.

I left the people I was dealing with and I lay down on the opposite side of the bike. I'm now face-to-face with the guy and I just said to him, “What you're doing?” He looked at me like some rich asshole that talked his way into getting credentials. He didn’t want to put up with me. He didn't care and he's like, “Oh, just doing stuff.” I'm like, “Ah. What's the hammer for?” “Oh, to hit the engine.” Again, he did not want to have a conversation with me. I kept peppering him.

We joked and I'm 53-years-old and we joked that I'm a 53-year-old five-year-old. I want to know and I'll ask every question necessary until I know anything. I'm like, “What you doing there? What's that for? How's that working? Why are you doing this?” I'm peppering him with these questions. I'm shocked, he didn't hit me with the hammer. He actually stopped and glared at me. The guy, you could see quite simply, the guy would have been very happy if he could have just stood on me. He looked at me and he said, “I'm trying to find where it fails, because only then can I repair it and make it go faster.” That was it and then he went back.

At that time, him obviously grounding him, he got the pit manager to come over and “Oh, Steve. let's show you.” Basically hustling me out of there. It made me realize, this is a team, like any race team that spends millions of dollars per race and this guy was paid to find failure, to discover breaks, to discover issues so that he could repair it. Then this actually, I went on, I watched the race. The team didn't win. They came about fifth, but they didn't win. This was burning in my head.

Afterwards, I actually went down to him. Now as I'm walking towards him, they've all packed up now, they're all ready to go home. As I'm walking up, you could see the guys going, “Oh, God. It’s this dick, the later.” I went up to him and I said, “You know, you said something so powerful to me. You were looking for failure. People try to avoid it, you were looking for it.” I told him who I am and what I did and I said, “I'm going to share you a story. I don't give a shit what you think, or even asking your permission, but I'm going to share that with my people, because it's how we fail and how we react to it is going to get us the best both.”

He actually started warming up and we got chat and everything and he said that literally, this was his job. If he could find a crack in a crankcase, then he'll be able to see where the stress was being created and lighting it, correct it, align, whatever, but they couldn't get any better until they found out where they failed.

Now if a race team is paying a man to fly around the world, looking and rejoicing, this was the key thing, they actually rejoiced and got together when he found something that wasn't perfect. Now of course, when you prepare that it puts stress on another part of the engine, so it continues, it continues, it continues. These people rejoiced when he found something that wasn't synced perfectly. Why do we therefore run away from it in our day-to-day business? Makes no sense to me.

[0:22:08.3] MB: That lesson, that story is fantastic. There's a couple lessons that come out of it, but that lesson that high-performance people, really people who are competing at the level of world championships, they dedicate a huge amount of their resources to figuring out every single weak point, every single failure. Whereas, most people do the exact opposite. They bury their head in their sand and they try to do everything they can to avoid figuring out where they're weak and where they failed.

[0:22:37.0] SS: I went up to Silicon Valley. I took a group of people. I run events called Speakeasies and I get people in weird places. I took them up to Microsoft, the Facebook campus and Google. On the first today I turned up at Microsoft, just outside of FEMA and we're walking around this very beautiful office building and everything's cool and colored and the wall was funny enough, were angled. They weren't perfectly straight, because they didn't want straight edges. They didn't want it to look like a corridor. Every now and then it would look a wave, or that angling in and out, or there'd be things halfway, like racks of magazines, or flowers coming out. It was very colorful, but very well-designed office space.

Then we went on to one of the floors. In the middle of the room was almost like someone had knocked up a shed. It wasn't painted on the outside and it was called shed, okay. On each floor, they had a shed. The door, you opened up the door, it wasn't painted, it almost looked rusty. You walked in, there was a concrete on the floor, no carpet, mismatched chairs and desks of all different shapes, but inside this room had some of their most advanced technology. We were not allowed to take photographs inside this shed.

They had 3D printers, they had laser-engraving, they had a ton of stuff in there. The funny thing was it was on shelves. It wasn't in a protective wrap or in a beautifully designed out cabinetry system. It was on this metal shelf. They said to me and they said, “This is the shed.” He said, “Every floor’s got a shed. You come in. When you come in, you have to get a key code.” As shitty as it looked, there was a key code to get in there.

When you went in there, it started recording what you were doing. You would be allowed in that shed to fail and to try anything. You didn't have to seek permission, you didn't have to ask what you were doing, you didn't have to submit any proposal. You could try anything. He said that we've got all of this technology outside, but give someone a place and more importantly, a place of permission to try and fail and that's the room that you get the greatest growth.

Now they had millions of dollars’ worth of equipment in there, setup like would be in a shed. He said, “Silicon Valley came from sheds and garages.” Now the funny thing is when we went to Facebook and the Instagram campus, they actually had again, private rooms with a garage door that you literally had to lift up the garage door to get into, the ones inside simulated a garage. They said, because everything great at Silicon Valley started in someone’s garage and this is the place that we urge you to fail as often as possible.

[0:25:41.1] AF: What's up, everybody? This is Austin Fable, producer and co-host of the Science of Success. This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you by the mobile app Best Fiends. That's best friends, but without the R. Best Fiends is honestly one of the best mobile games I've ever played. If you're looking for a truly fun and engaging way to pass the time while enjoying a great story, some awesome visuals, Best Fiends is absolutely for you.

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[0:27:22.5] MB: You shared another really good story and a lesson that comes out of it with the story that auto-mechanic that I want to revisit, because you just touched on it for a second but it's such a critical component of success as well, which is the fact that you came up to that mechanic and you were just grilling him with questions. I think curiosity is so important and I'm the same way, where I'll just relentlessly ask a question, ask series of questions, questions, questions until I really understand what's happening, because – and I have no fear of looking dumb or asking a stupid question, because if you can just figure out what the fundamental pieces are, a lot of times you can really understand pretty much anything if you're willing to ask about it, but it's so easy to fall into the trap of being afraid to ask, or being afraid to look dumb. I thought that was another really good lesson to pull out of that story.

[0:28:11.1] SS: Yeah, it's amazing. The best salespeople in the planet are the kids. They come up to you just before dinnertime and they’ll go, “I want a lollipop.” You go, “You can't have one.” “Well, why can't I?” “It's you dinner coming up soon.” “I know, but I want a lollipop. I'm hungry.” “Yeah, but you're going to want your dinner.” “Well, why? I want a lollipop.” They keep going. Now, usually ends up with parents and I know this, but I do it. In the end you're told, “Be quiet. Go and wait.” You resort to that in the end.

I'm stunned at how many people pretend as though they're intelligent. When you ask them a question and go, “Oh, can you explain that to me?” They can't. They can't explain it, because they actually don't know how to explain it and they don't know the information well enough. Told you before, I will ask as many times as necessary until I know what I need to know.

Now I don't care. I have no fear. I'm going to ask. Now would it be smart and we don't know each other, but would it be smart me asking you about what goes on in a Moto GP garage, or would it be smart of me asking the guy actually doing it? How many people are scared to ask the questions? They will look to their buddy next to them and go, “Did you get that? Can you explain that to me?” Don’t ask him. Ask the person actually teaching. Ask the person that actually does it. That's the person you go to ask.

[0:29:28.4] MB: Yeah, that's a great insight. There's another concept that I really like from the book that is tangential and relates to a lot of the stuff we've been talking about, both from a curiosity standpoint and even looking at the broader lessons that we're sharing about not being afraid to fail. That's the concept that you call ugly works. Tell me a little bit more about that and explain it.

[0:29:50.2] SS: It’s weird. The world got photoshopped overnight. Every advert you would look at, whether it be the TV, or print, posters, digital, Instagram, there wasn't a picture that you could post that you couldn't filter. The sky could be made bluer, the sea could be made greener, the girls and the guys can be made slimmer. There was so many filters that came across that we were actually taken away from what we were actually looking at. We were becoming desensitized.

If you remember the old magazines 10 years ago, you'd [inaudible 0:30:25.0], you'd start to look past them, because everything was perfect. Everything was just amazing. Then if you did your calculations, you realized that the beautiful woman walking down the beach, if you calculated the ratio of how long their legs are to the rest of the body, she actually worked out to be 7 foot, 3 inches. It was just bullshit. Stuffs not right.

Now if you remember, there was a movie that came out. God, I’m trying to think of what the name of the movie. It was a horror movie, but it was shot on cameras, but formulated to look like was shot on a cellphone, because the shaky hand of the cellphone, the bad reaction of a cellphone, we could all relate to. Taking a bad photograph that isn't quite perfect, we can relate to that because that's our normal.

Taking a superstar shot where everything's perfect, where no one else is on the beach, we know it's been photoshopped, but we can never attain that level of perfection. As I always say, perfection, it's a blue unicorn with three testicles. It doesn't exist. With me, I keep things raw. I keep things simple. I keep things impactful, because as a species, humanity, we're not perfect. We spell things wrong. Photographs are not filtered. They should not be. This is it. I was here, it was a great meal, this is it. Don't make sure before you take that picture you get the old light and then make sure that everyone's moved off at the table. Take it as it is. Keep it real.

If you've got a picture and granny's not posed for it and she's looking stupid in the photograph, that's the photograph, because everyone’s granny looks funny in a photograph. They don't know how to take a good photograph, because they've not been raised on the selfie-obsessed society that we are. It's relatable. At the end of the day, this is where it comes down to, relating and connecting. I don't care you're selling insurance. I don't care if you’re having a conversation with someone in the pub. The whole point is to connect easily. There should never be any effort and there can only be an effort when you're trying to be someone you're not. That is what comes over in your marketing. If you're trying to be more articulate than you are, if you're trying to use words.

When I wrote my book, I had a ghostwriter help me. The first ghost writer that we ever had wrote three chapters and we got it e-mailed to us. The publishing house, Simon Schuster said, “Check these chapters over the next three days and send us back with any notes.” Now I actually was traveling, so I didn't have the time to read the book. I sent it to my wife and I said, “Claire, can you read this and let me know if it sounds like it's me?” She came back and she said, “I've read all three chapters and I'm telling you, you couldn't spell half of the words in these chapters. Let alone even try and say them. This is not you. This is someone trying to make you sound smart.”

Now I didn't take that rudely, because it's got to be you. I've got to be so transparent that I am impossible to misunderstand. This person was trying to make me sound like someone I wasn't. We went back to the publishing house and we went, “This isn't me. I would never say these words.” In a heartbeat, they turned around and said, “That's fine. We need someone who gets you and speaks as you and can relate to you.”

Now the next person that came on used shorter words, understood that she couldn't put anything in there that it wouldn't normally and naturally come out of my mouth. You've really got to be very impactful. Don't try to fluff. Don't try to be someone you're not. Don't overcomplicate. Keep it real. Keep it relatable and keep it impactful.

[0:34:13.3] MB: There's an undercurrent of self-acceptance in a lot of these strategies too, that it's okay to be imperfect. It's okay to embarrass. It's okay to violate the social norms that we’re so terrified of violating, when really often violating them, not only doesn't have really any meaningful negative consequences, but it actually might open up a door, or an opportunity, or a connection that you never would have even imagined that you could have created.

[0:34:40.8] SS: That goes back to that fear thing again. No one that did anything fantastic did it by following others. Everyone that we brought up earlier, the Elon Musks, the Bill Gates, the Steve Jobs, the Mark Zuckerbergs, none of those people had someone to follow. Every single one of them said, “I'm going to do something different.”

You see here today, in the fast-paced world wherein, you are either a disrupter, or you're disrupted. You don't have the chance of an even keel. You don't have the chance to go Switzerland and go neutral and go, “I'm not going to be either.” You are either the cause or you're the effect. That's the only game that’s out there at the moment. You don't get a choice of whether or not to play, you only get a choice as to what team you're going to play for. I am stunned still why we are so discouraged in trying something different when we revere and rejoice everyone that does.

[0:35:36.3] MB: How do people start to step into doing things differently, doing things in an uglier way, an imperfect way? How do you start to get past that fear?

[0:35:46.7] SS: Well, there’s two things, that if you want to get ugly, that's easy. Stop thinking, just do. If you want to post something, don't spellcheck it, just post it. You'll get a lot of people going, “Oh, that's not grammatically correct.” Who cares? It’s what I said, okay. It's what I mean. You got the point. Stop overthinking who you are, because you're trying to be someone that they want to do business with, that they envisage – this is a calculation that's tougher than the bloody Da Vinci code. Be you. That's the first thing.

Here's the other thing you'll find out and I call it ROE in my coaching clients. I focus on an ROE, the return on effort, or the return on energy. Don't spend any of your effort or energy being someone you're not. Focus all of your energy and effort on being the solution to someone's problem and then finding that problem. You see, when you've got a headache at 2:00 in the morning and you get out of bed, do you have any care whatsoever of the packaging on your headache tablet, or do you just care that it does the job?

[0:36:47.1] MB: Definitely want it to do the job.

[0:36:49.1] SS: Bingo. Stop worrying about your packaging. There's all this talk about, oh, brand identity and you've got to establish a brand. No. Solve a problem and allow your tribe to create your brand and your brand should be your credibility metrics, okay. They should be out there going, “Oh, Steve does it. Tom does it. Brad does this.” That's your branding, that's your marketing. Get the people that you solve to be your marketing and you funnel. The first statement you said on there was how do people focus on not worrying and not getting frightened? For one, remove the effort. Secondly, get uncomfortable.

If I said to you, “Hey, this afternoon at 4:00, take all your clothes off and walk down the street.” No one would do that, okay. It doesn't matter who you are. You could be working out for the entirety of your life, you would not do it because it would be very uncomfortable, because people would stare at you, because you were being different.

Now I'm not advising that you want to walk down the high street this afternoon naked, but I am advising you to reveal who you are and be proud of it and don't apologize for being you. That is something you should never ever do. You will find that some people start to repel. They start to step back and they go, “Oh. He's very opinionated. Oh, he's got this. Oh, I'm not sure I quite relate to that.” Good. This is called filtering.

Entrepreneurs are comfortable about being uncomfortable. Wantrepreneurs spend all their time taking selfies next to cars they don't own. Entrepreneurs are very comfortable with being uncomfortable. They like change. Because they like that change, they like failures, they like mistakes, because that's where their greatest growth comes from. The thing is it scares the other people.

All of a sudden, you become ostracized. That's why your podcast, you, that's why this podcast is so good, because it's giving the Hogwarts crowd, the cool kids, those people that are different, see things different permission and a place to learn and grow and express themselves. You've got to understand, you're going to spend most of your life being uncomfortable. Here's a funny thing. When life throws something at you that you weren't expecting, hey, your environment has always been uncomfortable, this is nothing on you.

When COVID suddenly appeared on my doorstep, huh, my kids are already homeschooled. I already mentor, I already coach, I already speak. All right, so maybe my speaking now has to be virtual for the next couple of months and not on stage. Maybe I need to be focusing more on my videos. Maybe I need to be using Zoom more than everyone did. We just find a way to react to the cards that we've been given. The rest of the crowd stood there going, “Give me my stimulus check. Oh, my God. How am I going to survive?” Negativity, negativity, negativity. Then what do they do? They watch TV.

Every morning, you turn the news on at 7:00 in the morning, you get some girl or guy that comes on there and that says, “Hey, good morning.” Then they spend the next three hours telling you why it's not. You're happy about this, because you're already negative and they've just given you another reason to be negative and then you can reinforced in the fact that you’re all negative, you're all going to go to hell and the whole day is going to be shit, I might as well just go back to bed. That's not the crowd that we're speaking to today.

Entrepreneurs are comfortable about being uncomfortable. If it bothers you, so it should. I do so many things in my life that make me uncomfortable. Speaking with you, we've never spoken before, it makes me feel slightly on edge. But I know what I'm trying to do is help someone, just one person out there go, “Screw it. I'm going down a different door today. I'm going down a different path. I'm going to try something different.”

I'll turn everyone. Get used to being uncomfortable. It will become your new normal. You will stretch your barrier. I had a client of mine, wanted to have a dinner in Florence to show off to his mother-in-law and father-in-law, because he was engaged. He said, “I want you to show me, Steve, just how powerful I am to my mother-in-law and father-in-law.” Very successful and very affluent and powerful East European gentleman.

I actually took over the Accademia Museum in Florence, set up a table of six at the feet of Michelangelo's David. I took over a museum for a dinner date. Then halfway through it, I actually had Andrea Bocelli coming and serenade them while he's eating his pasta. Now this not only impressed the mother-in-law and father-in-law, blew his socks off. But because I had refused to sell and I constantly got uncomfortable, hey, I could get a great little local venue. Let me get uncomfortable. Let me try and go through the wildest, wackiest thing I could possibly come up with. Let me close down the most famous museum in the world, that houses the most famous statue in the world. Let me try there and then I'll go down.

Too many people, we settle on what we can go for. We settle on what we can achieve. We settle for what is attainable or reachable. When you push a couple of steps up and you fail, which quite often you do, I tried to take over Buckingham Palace. I've tried to take over the White House and I've got declined, but I've ended up in this incredible other place, which is still 20 steps further than I would have got had I just settled for a good local location.

You find that when you start pushing, something strange happens. You start achieving. Then when you start achieving that level, if I go to Paris and I want to take over a museum for dinner party, do you think I'm going to get it? Yes or no. I got it in Florence. The first thing I'm going to do the Paris is go, “Hey, I took over a museum.” That's my new normal. You've got to see where you can raise yourself to and then stay there. That's your new normal. Now let's put a peg in and we'll go up a little higher. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's a great place to live.

[0:42:49.1] MB: To me, that is one of the most important lessons, one of the most fundamental things that changed my life was being willing to be uncomfortable and leaning into discomfort and even actively seeking it out. It really is, there's almost a magic on the other side of not being afraid of being rejected, of making crazy asks and really putting yourself out there. You can't conceive of the things that are on the other side of that fear until you're willing to push through it.

[0:43:18.1] SS: 100%. 100%.

[0:43:20.2] MB: What are some of the strategies that people can implement to start to push into discomfort and to make themselves more uncomfortable?

[0:43:28.3] SS: This is a silly one, but I still do this today. My kids actually love it now. Order an appetizer. Now we're in COVID at the moment, so we can't grab for restaurants. This is what we did. You say to someone, “Hey, do you like, I don't know, pig’s toes for food?” Most people are going to go, “Oh, God. No.” How many people have ever eaten pig's toes? You don't know, okay. You're making a decision based on little to zero education.

Whenever I go anywhere, we have this little game and my kids used to hate it, but now they get to ask permission if they can be the one that orders. We look at the appetizer in a menu and we try to find the weirdest one that we've never had before and we order that, because it's low-risk. It may cost you $8, it may cost you $9. May cost you more, maybe a real specialty appetizer and we order it.

We'll order one of the ones that we do recognize that we commonly like and we'll order something that we've never tasted before off the menu and we'll all try it. Now sometimes, we'll find something we go, “We really like this.” We were in an Indian restaurant about a month ago and we tried this weird thing. Well, I say weird thing. It sounded weird. With cauliflower, but we absolutely loved it. It's now our favorite.

We constantly push our comfort level. How many people go into a restaurant and they order the same three things whenever they go into the restaurant? Why do you just try something that's low liability? If you hate it, now you know what it tastes like, now you educate, now you can stand up and go, “Oh, I don't like that.” “Why not?” “Well, I tried it and I just don't like it.” Oh, okay. Now you're coming from a position of strength, rather than a position of fear.

Doing something as daft as that; reading a book, listening to a podcast, watching a video. I will go onto my radio and I will select a random radio station. I use a radio program called My Tuner Radio. It's on everyone's computer. You can download the app, whatever, and it gives me all of my British radio stations I still like to listen to while I'm here in Los Angeles. Every now and then, I will go in there randomly and pick a radio station from a country I've never listened to that radio, but I’m going to listen to it for an hour. It'll be on in the background while I'm working. Now I did this the other day and I did it with Belgium and I found an EDM music station, okay. Now I'd never heard of this station before. I'd never listened to a radio station in that country before and I didn't know what EDM was.

Now I can tell you based on education now, I absolutely hate EDM from Northern Europe. It was the most grating music. I now know what EDM stands for, electronic dance music. North European EDM is so far from my style of music that there's not even a passport to get to it. I would never have known that had I not endured and educate myself to what the music was.

Just listening to a different radio station, reading a different book, trying a different appetizer. Those tiny little low liability pushes will get you used to trying different things and that's where it comes from. You get uncomfortable by putting yourself into places that you're not normally in, and that can be music, experience, feel, taste, texture, tone, anything. Try something different.

[0:47:01.5] MB: That idea of building the muscle of discomfort in your everyday life in these low-risk situations, it's amazing. Once you build up that tolerance, that ability to get uncomfortable, it translates so well into higher stake situations, whether you're pitching a big meeting, or you're asking your boss for a raise or whatever that situation is, it really is incredible that pushing yourself through these tiny little acts of discomfort.

I love to do rejection therapy. I don't know if you've ever messed with that, but we have the creator of that on the show a couple years ago and it's such a cool concept. The idea is just go out and get rejected every day. It's such a good way to build up that same tolerance and that same willingness to put yourself out there and to be uncomfortable.

[0:47:42.9] SS: Yeah, it's got to be done. I love the way you say that it's a muscle. You're absolutely correct. It's got to be a muscle and it's got to be a habit. I can't think of any better habit for you to can build up during COVID, because you're already bloody uncomfortable. You've already been dealt a pack of cards. You never knew how to play the game. No one ever, ever, ever has gone through this situation before, because it's not been around before.

If it has in the depression, we didn't have Internet. The bottom line of it is this is a unique situation that everyone in the planet has endured and experienced. While we're being uncomfortable, let's learn how to use it. Let's learn how to use that moment.

[0:48:26.3] MB: For somebody who's been listening to this conversation and they want to take one step to concretely implement something that we've talked about today, what would your homework, or your recommendation be for them to start down their journey, whether it’s discomfort, whether it's being unafraid to be imperfect, what would you say is the first action step to start implementing some of these ideas?

[0:48:48.1] SS: What, apart from reading Bluefish and the art of making things happen.

[0:48:52.2] MB: That's right. We’ll have a plug for that in a second.

[0:48:55.4] SS: I was going to say, there's the world shallowest plug. Well, we've already told you about your food, so you can very easy be a foodie.

[0:49:03.7] MB: That could be it. Yeah, that could be it if you want it to be that.

[0:49:05.7] SS: Yeah, it could be your food, it could be a TV station, it could be a documentary, it could be anything that makes you uncomfortable. This is the thing, people think to do great things, you've got to take great steps. Bullshit. If you want to get to the top of Everest, the first thing you've got to do is walk towards it, okay. Stand at the bottom of it, take one step. What you've got to create today is momentum. You've got to do anything. Hang up after this podcast, put the radio station on some country and music genre you never freaking heard of before and keep it on there for 40 minutes.

Go outside and do an exercise that you've never done before. As soon as COVID hit, literally the first week of clampdown, I bought a Peloton Bike. I ride motorcycles. I'd never cycled a bike since I was 12-years-old. I bought a Peloton Bike because I thought to myself, “If I'm going to be stuck at home, it's going to be on my terms and it's going to benefit me.” I started cycling. I've lost weight. I'm healthier, which in turn is going to help me with absolutely everything else in my life.

Now, I've created a habit. Yesterday, I had a lot of back-to-back podcasts, I had a lot of coaching calls. Yesterday was chock-a-block for me. Got about 5:30 in the evening, cocktail time, time to pick up a whiskey. Do you know, instead of picking up the whiskey, I did 30 minutes in the Peloton, because I didn't want to miss out on the habit that I had formed. It's not a big step. I am certainly not going to be doing the Tour de France next week.

The bottom line is you take small steps to make up big distances. Start anything today; exercise, music, food, that just challenges you to what you didn't do yesterday. Then here's the tip, the following day, do it again. Not repeat what you did, but try a different station, try a different piece of food, pick up a different book, listen to a different podcast. Try something that pushes you. Even listening to a podcast with someone you don't agree with. Someone has always said to me, alive or dead, if you could have dinner with someone, who would it be? As fast as a shock, because I've had this in my head since I was a kid, the one person I would want to have dinner with is Hitler. I just want to ask him, “What were you so afraid? What were you so scared?” This would be a very challenging, uncomfortable, scary conversation to have, but I would want to know why. What was going on in your head? What was your thought process?

You wanted to develop a culture of the ultimate German race of blue-eyed blonde headed strapping good-looking men when you were a short, brown-eyed, brown headed guy. There was a disconnect there and I'd like to understand why. Challenge yourself to do something different.

[0:51:56.6] MB: Great piece of advice and such good wisdom. Steve, for listeners who want to learn more about you and find your work online, what is the best place for them to go?

[0:52:05.7] SS: Oh, God. I'm around further than COVID. You can find me everywhere. I'm like a bad rash. Steve D. Sims. You can google me. There's only one M in Sims. I'm at stevedsims.com. I'm on Instagram. I started on Tik-Tok, although I don't dance. Probably the easiest way for you to get some stuff is The Art of Making Things Happen, Bluefishing is the book, or on Entrepreneur’s Advantage with Steve Sims. That's a free Facebook group, where I just go in there and rant about stuff that I'm up to.

[0:52:35.9] MB: Well Steve, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing some hilarious stories, some great insights and some really, really important lessons.

[0:52:44.8] SS: I hope it helps someone to start moving.

[0:52:48.3] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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