Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - #101: How to Command Attention: Steve Sims' Secrets to extraordinary outcomes

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

In this episode of "Escaping the Drift," host John Gafford chats with the one and only Steve Sims, the real-life Wizard of Oz. Known for his best-selling books and exceptional ability to make things happen, Steve shares his unique perspectives on communication, life, and business.Tune in for an engaging and humorous journey as we explore the wisdom of a man who's made a career out of the extraordinary. Highlights:"It's not about being on stage, it's about the art of communication." "The anatomy of a successful speech goes beyond the words; it's about engaging with the audience." "We're in a credibility crunch. Nowadays, it's all about being able to grab and hold attention."Timestamps:05:00 - Transforming into a Public Speaker10:05 - The Power of Effective Communication20:09 - Standing Out in the Speaking Industry30:05 - Networking Done Right40:10 - Managing Difficult Conversations47:15 - The Human Element in a Technological World

You go to an event for two reasons. You go there to get the advantage. You go there to get the information. You go there to get tactics. You also go there to surround yourself with people that share the same kind of philosophy as you, you know? Me and you, we go to a lot of events because we want to hang around with like-minded people.

And on a normal day-to-day basis, we're not. And now, the drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of escaping the drift. And ladies and gents, I got to tell you, I know I say this every time.

I say I got a banger for you, but today we do have a banger. Because in the studio today, you may recognize him from his best-selling book, Blue Fishing. You may recognize him from his best-selling book, Keep It Stupid? Simple? Simple? Simple? I'll get back to that. I forgot about the name of that one more probably you recognize him as the real life wizard of oz from stages across america good

friend of the show pull that mic a little closer to you but good friend of the show my man steve sims how you doing pal welcome buddy a pleasure pleasure always good to have you in the studio especially i'm going to warn you if you listen to this and you're thinking to yourself, man, these guys sound a little slow today. Sound a little off today. Steve and I may have gotten after it a little too late last night, more than we should have. But you know what? That's okay because we're here for you people. We're going to keep it real for you today.

So the reason I love having Steve on and I can always have him on is because every time you come in, bro, we never seem to talk about the same thing twice. And what was the book name before I go for stupid? Go for stupid. I knew it was something stupid. There you go. But yeah, we talk about something different because you're always, you know, one of the things I always talk about is a good way to escape the drift or get out of the currents of life and start swimming is to pivot, is to look for new trends and see things that you're doing and pivot and move along. And something you just kind of started doing as a whim, I think you started doing it actually just as a favor to some folks,

is really getting some traction now. And that's teaching people how to share their message on stage. And if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, well, I don't ever want to be on stage, it doesn't matter because it's not about the stage it's about your ability to communicate with other people so talk about that man yeah so look i'm an introvert and i always used to like and i've been in the background doing stuff i didn't want anyone knowing who i was i didn't want my face out there and then the book came out and it was a case of, oh, you know, are you going on a book tour? Are you going?

You're right. It doesn't matter whether you're on, you know, Wembley Arena or whether you're in your Monday morning meeting. Being able to deliver communication and be able to communicate with that crowd, that's a skill set that's being lost. And I noticed at the time that we're in, we're in a credibility crunch and everyone out there is trying to get your attention. And you know, if we go back like 10 years ago and said, Hey, would you like an article in Forbes? You'd have gone, hell yeah.

And now it's easy to get. Now anyone can get it. You know, 10 years ago, if I had said to you, Hey, would you like to be on a podcast? You'd be like, what's a podcast? So things are changing. The stage is on. You know, when someone like you throws an event and then goes, and welcome on stage, Steve Sims, that's an amazing piece of credibility. You're also in a room where you've got everybody's attention. In fact, it's your, it's up to you to lose it.

And so I realized that the fact that I didn't want to be on stage was irrelevant. I had to learn how to be on stage. And so I got a speaker coach and we learned how to deliver a speech. Great. That was good. Now to do that, break it down, the anatomy of a speech, you know, when the call to action is, when you deliver. Great. Then we noticed something.

Having a great speech is one thing getting it on a stage completely different skill set oh yeah for sure um and so i knew i had to be on the stage but i didn't know that gap how to can i bridge it from can i okay how do i get so i tried a few things and failed and that's how we learn. And then I started looking at it, which no one ever did from the stages perspective. Cause every speaker's out there going, I've got a great story. I've got this, you know, I, I lost both my legs and, you know, a bowling accident, you know, everyone's got all this kind of stuff going on,

but that's all about you. Yeah. And so I started literally going around to events, going to the stage people and going, how do you select speakers? What's important for you to get someone on this? And looking at it from that direction. And then from there, I thought to myself, okay, I'm doing well.

You know, I'm now getting on stage. I'm now getting 35 to 50 grand a speech. I'm traveling all over the world doing it. I wonder if it's just because I am that mustard. No, it's because you have an English accent. That's what it is. Or can I teach you this? And it was that curiosity.

Is it replicatable? Yeah. Is it scalable? Yeah. Because as entrepreneurs, we all want to know, did we just find that missing link? Yeah. You know, did we just solve a problem?

So you're right. At first I was like, well, I know you're a good speaker, but you know, you're not getting on this. I wonder if my process can work. And it did. So I just, not only did I never think I was going to be a speaker, I never thought I'd be training. And here's the reverse of it as well.

I actually have in my stable of clients now some household names that just didn't know how to get on as many stages as they wanted. And now I actually showed them how to get on big stages. And it was kind of funny, but hey, it works and I run with it now. Well, you know, we were talking last night and we were talking about events and it's so funny because there's so many, I mean, if you, the amount, just the sheer volume of events there are now is staggering. There's so many. And, and it seems like everybody throws an event, says, you know, here, here's the, here's the standard formula for most events right now. A, it's got to have the word con in it, whatever it is. Yeah. Mega con, super growth con, whatever. So it's got a con in it, whatever it is, right? Got to have that. It's got to have some super like steroidy bro word on the front. Mega is a great mega con,

like diesel con, but it's got to have something like that. Just, you got to call me. We're going to kick your ass on the stage, whatever it's it's almost like pro wrestling and then it's like so i get my name and then there's then there's the same i'm gonna call them we'll call them the top 20 guys and there's a couple of women sprinkled in there which i don't think there's enough women that are good sprinkled in there um in this current selection and then they just figure i'm gonna have my super aggressive con name i'm gonna book the same 20 people and then we're going to sell it out and do great. And that worked, that formula worked for about two years. And now you're starting to see some people try to follow that formula and they're falling

on their face and they don't understand why. And here's my philosophy to that. My philosophy is people have already seen that show. They've already seen the concert. Like, yes, there's people that will go see Taylor Swift 855 times. I get it. I'm one of those people that if you're on this tour, I'll go see that show once. And then if you change it all up and bring a different show back, maybe not Taylor Swift.

I don't care to see that. I know it's shocking, but you get what I'm saying. I've already seen that show. And if you look at rock music, you look at tours, whatever it is, there's a reason there's an opening band. Because it makes the show a little different and it exposes people to new artists, to new bands that are coming up. And I think now what you're starting to see and why this is such a perfect window for you, this is what I'm getting to this, is you're starting to see events now where you're starting to see some new faces up there. You're still sprinkling some of those marquee names. You know, Hulk Hogan still gets the rest of the main event.

But you're starting to see some new people maybe you haven't seen before. And that's building these events back up because you're getting new followings. Because I think the event space got stale in that way because it just, they got lazy with their bookies. It's called repetitive. It was a rinse and repeat. And you're right. And what we want, the whole live event, you go to an event for two reasons.

You go there to get the advantage. You go there to get the information. You go there to get tactics. You also go there to surround yourself with people that share the same kind of philosophy as you. Me and you, we go to a lot of events because we want to hang around with like-minded people. And on a normal day-to-day basis, we're not. So that's one of the reasons.

But we want to go along and we want to hear someone go X, Y, Z and for us to go, yes, never thought of using that. Great, I'm going to implement it. And one thing that I'm glad to say, Diane, is the motivators. You know, because, you know, in the 80s, they would all kind of like, rah, rah, and, you know, you can do this, and we're all going to stand up. Just believe in yourself. Oh, this is what you can do it.

And then they leave the stage, and you're like, oh, I am so hyped up until you get to the car park. Yeah. You know, and then you're like, well, what are you going to do with that? Oh, I don't know. But I was really excited. Yeah. Now we're demanding tactical information.

You know, we want to go in there and we're like, hey, don't motivate me. I can watch the YouTube video. I need to know how do I get from A to B and then to C, give me that. Yeah. And they're demanding. And that's actually kicking a lot of speakers off stage because they're not sharing the tactics. They're going out there.

They're telling the story. They're getting you all hyped. Some people are actually going, great, good for you. Good story. What about me? Yeah. What about me? And that's the real difference.

You've really got to think, if you want to be on stage, you've really got to think, what do you bring to that party? What can you impart that audience with that they're going to leave that door and go, I've got an unfair advantage here, and I'm not going to tell anyone, but I'm going to use it. No, I love that. But let's talk about it, because I think communication with people is a dying skill, is a dying art.

Especially, I tell this to my kids all the time. I'm like, look, by the time you are 30 years old, if you had the ability to look another human in the eye and connect with them on an emotional level, you're going to eat all of your peers that are face down in their phones for lunch. Yeah. You're just going to eat them for lunch because it's good. That is going to be such a dying skill. But I think through crafting and delivering a good talk, I think you can learn a lot about how to communicate with people. So when you talk about crafting a good talk with your people and you're talking about going about how to do this, what are the steps in that talk?

What are the phases of that talk? What do you think they are? So we look at two scenarios. One of them, we look at the stage. If you're going on stage, the first thing you've got to do you're going on stage, you've got to do the first thing you got to do when you go on stage. There's got to be a grab. You know, it could be, hey, I was hanging out last night with Taylor Swift. You know, just some kind of grab.

Okay. But you very quickly got to make it about them. Okay. So there's got to be the grab to get your attention. You know, I own this company. I sold my company for $13 million. But before the audience go, I'm going for you, mate. Yeah.

You've got to go. And in the next 40 minutes, I'm going to tell you how you can do the same. Yeah. You've got to quickly get around to that. That's where a lot of speakers are going wrong. They're telling everyone how brilliant they are. I'm so excellent. I made a billion dollars before I went to the toilet.

No one cares anymore. Right. And the audience is going to let you know, because they're literally going to get their phone out and start checking the emails. And I've been on, that's the bad thing about being a speaker. You don't get to choose who you follow.

No. And I've been at some events where someone's gone on and they've killed the vibe. And I'm looking out through the curtain and people are getting their phones out. Let's go. And I'm like, oh, this is great. Wake up. You've got to go out there and not get them up you've got to get them up to to zero yeah before

you can take them up again so that's the stage so the first part so that's the first for me i'm gonna add this to that because because i learned i learned i learned i i got coached by pete fargus and my group on how to do this and and for those of you listening like well john you're not on any stage let me preface this by saying I wasn't hating on events earlier. I have been turning down speaking opportunities because I have a plan and a arc that involves my book coming out and all of that stuff kind of has to happen together. So before you want to hate on me that I don't have an opinion, I've been turning this shit down. There you go. So anyway, but with Pete, one of the things he talks about is, and I love this, and I think this is great for communication with humans is some of

the first stuff out of your mouth has got to not like, if you walk out and you're like, I'm a NASA astronaut, I was the first man on space. You start with that story. How many people in the audience are NASA astronauts? Zero. No one is going to connect with you on a personal level. So you've got to start that story in a way that they see themselves in you. Even if your story is fantastical, you've got to humanize yourself to a place. So you've got to tell a story like you're better off starting with a story that how you woke up and, you know, went in the kitchen and grabbed a glass of milk and dropped it. And it bounced off the carpet and went straight up and hit you in the face. You're better off with that

than you are with, I went to the moon because everybody can commiserate with doing something stupid in front of other people. Yeah. You got to connect. You got to connect with them. So when you're building your speeches and how you do this, obviously, like you said, you do it for the room. Do you, from there, I'm sure you have said like the way that I do it, I don't know if you do it differently. I'm just curious, but I'll have like the opening that's pretty standard that goes off that I think I can connect with whatever's there. And then I just essentially have this block of story blocks based on what I'm going to teach. In the next 40 minutes, I'm going to teach you how to do this, this, and this. And I can just build from those blocks.

And so wherever I'm going, I don't have the same canned thing. I've got my chess pieces and I play the ones that I need to play. Yeah. Is that how that works? Yeah, you got your Lego. Lego, better word than chess. One of the biggest, one of the biggest things I learned, one of the things that I teach in my speaker training is the pool dive.

Okay. And I teach that to everyone. And actually, funny enough, I was, I was in traffic and conversion yesterday and there was some great content, some poor delivery. And what happens is when the audience suddenly starts clapping that you're about to come on and you're walking towards that stage, you get excited. You know, the adrenaline starts pumping. You can't not, you know.

Some people call it fear. Some people call it apprehension. Adrenaline, whatever it is. Whatever it is. But there's this kind of like, all right, here we go. And you get on stage and you can very quickly start talking at like 9 million miles an hour. So what you've got to do is you've got to understand the tempo of the loop. I like that too.

Yeah. You've got to understand the tempo of the loop. So what you've got to do is you've gotta practice a pull jump and i i practice i've probably got about 10 okay based on the room depends on what pull jump is and that is a 1 minute 30 heavily heavily heavily rehearsed i could be in my sleep doesn't matter what happens and it's just a way of you being able to acclimatize yourself to the stage and to identify your tempo. And it could be as simple as kind of like going onto the stage and going,

whoa, anyone else a little bit nervous here? You know? Well, these lights are really hot. Okay, I'm going to get a tan after the end of this. Whatever it is, just have that down verbatim. So you don't have to worry about what you're going to say. You don't have to think. And here's the thing.

When this is being said, you can look at the room and see if you're kind of matching that tempo based on what was on before. So I teach the pool jump. At 1 minute 30, what are you going to do? Because you know when you're on the edge of the pool. Yeah. And you know once you're in the pool, you're okay.

But once you jump in and you get that kind of, whoo, that was a bit cold. Yeah. And then you know, once you're in the pool, you're okay. But once you jump in and you get that kind of, whoo, that was a bit cold. Yeah. And then you start, and you're good. When you go on stage and you haven't practiced

that pool jump, and all of a sudden you're speaking in two times, what ends up happening is you've got a 40 minute conversation. You've just finished in 25 and you're like,

I've got nothing else to say. Oh my gosh. And the clock's still counting down. And I've seen this. I saw some guy yesterday and I won't mention his name. And he did the speech. Great content. Bad delivery.

Went super, super fast. He had, I think he had like 30 minutes, 22 minutes. Okay. And he was like, well, I've kind of got ahead of my, anyone got any questions? You know, and it was painful. It wasn't a Q&A session. And like, he was like, well, well, I might as well just, you know,

thank you for having me. And it was, it was uncomfortable. And here's the downside. That was the ending. Oh God. That was the ending. Oh, God. That was the wrap? He had nothing else to do. You know, he had literally finished so fast.

And the downside is he got off the stage. The emcee got up and was like, hey, thanks. But what do you remember from that speech? Not the content. Just remember him falling. Just coming short. Yeah. So you've really got to pace things out.

You've got to understand that tempo and that temperature. Well, it's funny. You know, you talk about the, about your, your pole jump. For me, one of the things I got from you, right. And it was, and I will say, here's a bit of advice. Don't make that pole jump about controllable by anyone else. And I'll tell you what I'm talking about. So Steve gave me a great piece of advice. He said, listen, this is when I first started speaking years ago.

He goes, here's the deal. Don't wait till the end to capture the room. He goes, and you don't want people taking notes. You don't want them. You want them. You want them connecting with you on a personal level. Again, look at you, not looking at their phones, not looking at tablets, whatever else. So he says, here's what you do.

You go out and the very first thing, the very first slide you put up is a QR code. And you say, listen, everybody, I want you paying attention to me. I want you talking with me. Take a picture of the QR code. And you say, listen, everybody, I want you paying attention to me. I want you talking with me, take a picture of the QR code, get me your email, and I'm going to send you this entire presentation. So you don't have to worry about missing anything because I'd rather have you paying attention to me than taking notes. And that's how you capture an entire room of people. Well, this, he told me this trick and I said, man, that's really, really smart. And the very first time I built it into a speech, right? My My, that was going to be my starter, right? That was my, I know exactly. I don't have to think about it. I'm going to walk up and talk about

this QR code. Well, the one thing you didn't tell me about that was on occasion, people holding large events don't want you to capture their crowd and they look at your slides before you go up. And so I went on stage in front of 3 000 people and they had deleted that slide oh so i walk up and i'm like click and my first slide came up and the first one was gone and it froze me for a good solid like five seconds i was like uh i'm trying to go back and it's not back and after about five seconds it occurred to me because i thought i was having a technical problem. And then it occurred to me, no, I've just pissed off the event. Well, in fairness, you're the blame. And when I told you that story, you said,

why didn't you check your slides before you went on stage? I always, literally, before I go up, I'm getting mic'd up. I know who's the AV guy. I know who's the guy producing the slides. And I go, hey, can you just run through those? And I just watch them click through. And you will get people that turn around and they go, well, we don't want you selling.

That's fair enough. We don't want you capturing the data. That's fine. But if you go on there and you go, I want to help the community in this room, okay, but I want their attention in order to do it, and I'm going to send them this so they can just follow up. Yeah. And if you,

if you give them a reason that benefits the audience, yeah, you get that email. Yeah. You get that contact details, but you're doing something for the, for the room. It just never,

it never even occurred to me. Yeah. No, I can. I'm like, this is great advice from Steve Sims. I'm going to do this and we're going to make this happen. Yeah.

I've had that. I've had that before where people have edited the slides. But also like we had last year I was keynote at Traffic and Conversion in San Diego and they had a screen and I don't know why, but the lower part of the screen was like a frame and it had T and C on the bottom. Okay. And my slides, the bottom right-hand corner had my Steve D sip. But now, of course the T and C was covering that. So we had, we went over to see the room. We went over

to see how it was set up. And then we literally had to go back to the room and flip the slide, literally just flip it. So it was the top left and not the bottom right. Oh my God. Now, one of the things you talked about, and I, and I talk about this in my book too, because I think learning to, you know, if you're stuck, if you're stuck in life, I think one of the problems you probably have is you're not a great communicator. You're not a great at communicating your wants and needs. You're not great at communicating your value to others. You're not great at uncovering opportunities because you're not a great communicator you're not a great at communicating your wants and needs you're not great at communicating your value to others you're not great at uncovering opportunities because you're not a great communicator yes and i think part of that in my book i talk about

one of the most important skills you can have is being able to read a room and i think understanding it's more important to me of understanding when i've lost a room than when I've got a room. Cause, and if you're wondering like what I'm talking about, everybody listened to this, has that one friend and they got a joke or they got something and they got some story that they think is hilarious. And for all I know, if you're listening, if you're one of my friends, it might be me. I don't know, but they just drone on and everybody is just like their eyes are glazing over and like they just, but they don't get it. They don't get it. And if you're thinking maybe that might be you, or that's never you, it might be you. I'm going to tell you, here's the gauge of how,

you know, in personal conversation, if you're telling a story and the person you're talking to responds with this, that's crazy. It's you. Yeah. It's you. Man, that's crazy, man. That's crazy. It's you. You're the board. You've lost the room. You've lost the audience. So my question is, I tell people when in small groups and small conversational settings, when you lose the room and they're, that's crazy, or you've lost whatever you shut it down and you pivot to somebody else immediately. Yeah. What do you do? And you just kind of step back because you're only going to make it worse if you try to try to like, you know, dance and try to get the, try to get them back. But my question is when you're on stage and you started to lose them and it's happened to everybody,

I don't, maybe not you, I don't know. You're pretty damn good. The English accent is an unfair advantage, but tell me about a time you've lost the room on stage and how you got them back. So I am military with how I deliver a speech. And I will. And you've seen me give a speech before. I'll stand in the room and read the room before I go on stage. So I'm getting all that, you know. And if I see someone go up there and maybe the F-bomb comes out of them and the room goes, oh, OK, that's not going to happen. You know, they told a joke.

You know, the room's laughing. Great. They're happy. It's like the warm up band. The warm up band is to get everyone all happy for when the main band comes on. So you you read the room for a start. But there have been situations. And I mentioned to you earlier, you never get the choice of who you're following you know and i've had people go on

and drop a really bad speech or they were just off or they that slides weren't right and there's nothing worse than a speaker being on stage going oh my slides aren't working oh my god you know sorry about this i didn't actually say that when it happened i know know you didn't, but there have, I've actually followed speakers where they moaned about the AV or on stage and the audience are like, Oh God, you know, this is a prima donna. And then of course that person goes off and then you've got to go on. Okay. So in those situations, you've got to, you've got to get the attention. And I've gone on stage before and then walked on stage and literally jumped off the front of the stage and gone into the audience

and literally tapped people on the shoulder and go, why are you here? You know? And literally just walked up to people. You know, I want to know. I can jump back on that stage and I can spend the next 40 minutes telling you about my shit don't stink

and how I've made millions of dollars and how my life is cozy. But is that going to help you? Or should we break it down and just spend the next 40 minutes giving you shit that can work? Your choice. Yeah. And literally get into the audience. Now, I did that and I got, and actually it was an event here in Vegas.

I did that. And they moaned at me afterwards because, of course, the camera is on the stage. And I've left the stage. And I'm wandering around the audience. And I'm like, hey, stand up if this is what you want. Stand up if this is a problem. Stand up if you've been trying to find a solution for this. And I've literally got the audience.

Because you've got to get that participation. And you've got to get them in. I think if I walked on stage after somebody that was bitching about the crew, I would probably say something like, Hey, you know, glad to be here. Unfortunately, in order to get this speaking gig, I actually had to do multiple jobs. So I'm doing more than just speaking. And I'd like to address my performance on getting the slides up. The computer was jammed. I thought it was there. And I would literally act like I was the guy in the back. He was berating before you try literally act like I was the guy in the back. He was berating before you try to get the sympathy of the crowd, if you will.

Now, I just I can't believe somebody would do that from stage. But that's the old school. And that's the funny thing. There's a lot of there's a lot of speakers from the old school that just think that's how they did it. Therefore, that's how it's done. Stages have changed. Well, I did want to also comment that I've been at events with you

and I've been in the back. And it's funny because the green room back in those events can serve two purposes. Like it's normally a really good networking place because you get to share, you get to mingle kind of with other, a lot of the other people that are there.

And there's normally some high, if you're on, if you're going on stage, there's other high value people that are going on stage as well. So it's good networking in the green room, but I'll say that I will say this about you. Now that you said that, I thought about it. You're on stage at those events before you're on stage because you are, you want to go stand in the back of the room and watch the speakers that are going before you. And it never occurred to me until you just said that, that you're, you could care less what's

coming out of their mouth. You care how the crowd is reacting. 100%. And here's the thing. For anyone out there. Yeah, that's the lesson of the day right there, kids. Well, for anyone out there that's thinking, oh, God, this is all about stage life. And I don't want to be. You've got to learn to deliver a speech and to grab the attention.

And he who has your attention today has your credit card. Where the attention goes, the money flows. Absolutely. So I'm not'm not saying that you know if you're sitting here and you're going well i get a bit nervous when i do a monday morning meeting therefore i'm not gonna do it that's terrible you've got to lean into this and it's claire my wife she finds it ridiculous that i get paid to speak on the art of communication she's trying to get you to shut up all the time. She'd pay me to shut up, yeah. The point is I'm getting paid to teach people how to communicate. And sadly, not because I'm brilliant at it, but the rest of the planet is getting terrible.

Yeah, they are. You know, and we really are. And we're looking at people's foreheads now because everyone's got their face in the phone. And that's bad. And you've said it quite openly. If you can deliver and hold someone's attention, whether it be on stage to 20,000 people,

or it could be in a phone call, or it could be in a coffee room, you're in the wind. But I think that's what people don't understand is it's the same skill set. It's exactly the same skill set. 100%. If you can captivate the attention of three people at a dinner party, you can captivate 3,000 people from a stage. Should I tell you where you can go and get attention of three people at a dinner party, you can captivate 3000 people from a stage. Should I tell you where you can go and get a masterclass?

A bar. Okay. I like that. Yeah. We like that for many reasons. When you were at a bar. Okay. And you look at the bartender,

the bartender will react to every client differently. That, you know, look at the girls and go, hey, girls, you know, what are you doing, sir? What can I get you to drink? And then the guy next to her. How are you doing, sir?

You know, yeah, good afternoon, sir. You know, what are you looking, how can I help you? You know, what do you fancy for the seat? And they have to instantly react to different people. That masterclass, I literally would go to a bar and watch how the bar staff would actually react to different people. And you've got to do that.

Because they're selling. You're always selling. That in itself would be matching and mirroring. It's giving people back what they want or what they expect. And the only way you can do that is be a great, you first must be a great observer before you can be a great communicator. 100%. And that takes us back to me sitting in the back of the room and watching how the room

reacts. You've got to observe the reactions. And you can do it in a restaurant. You can do it at a dinner table. Yeah. Anywhere you are. Now, let's talk about it. We'll go into last night because, again, we're talking about communication.

It's so clutch. But last night, we went to a networking event, which is good. And it's both ways. And I found last night, I told my wife, I said, in that crowd, especially with that, those entrepreneurs that were there, I said, I can tell that my podcast is doing well because a lot more people are walking up to me now, right? It used to be me going the other way and how that was. And two things from last night that stuck out to me. Number one was this, and there's two lessons in this. These are my personal experiences from last night. Number one, a guy walked up to me and, you know,

he said, what are you working on right now? And I said, I wish I was working on a tan is what I said to me, right? Like that question I think is, is, is being, is being trained. I think, what are you working on now? What are you working on now? And there's networking events. So I can try to find out how I can bring value. That's the whole, that's the programming is this, right? I don't ever ask anybody that shit. I ask, I say, tell me about you. And then when they start giving me their elevator pitch, I go, I don't give a shit about that. We'll get to that. I need to know if I like you as a person before I can figure out if I care about what you do. Do you have a wife? Do you live here? Where are you from? Tell me about you. And people are just, their brain is so skipped by that. Yeah. They're just like, uh, and then they tell me because, you know, one of

the best pieces of advice I ever got is in a networking event, you don't have to have the best memory. You need to be the most memorable. So I love that. And so there was that lesson I decided is, is don't do that. If you're walking around, you know, if you're trying to find how to build value with people, like how do you strike up conversations with people? Well, you've seen me. I'm terrible at networking. Yeah.

It does help that I look like this and I sound like this. Yeah. And yeah, again, you know, when you've got your books out there and you're on stage and you're doing podcasts, they're coming to you. They're coming to you. But you know, when's the last time you went to somebody you wanted to meet

that didn't know who you were? Let's talk about that. Well, it's quite a lot of the times now. You know, sometimes you kind of get, you're a big deal in your own little sandpit, you know, and you get out of it and people are like, so what do you do? You know, or what are you working on? You know, or something like that.

I always try to, again, quickly flip it and go to them and try to disrupt, just as you were saying, disrupt the conversation to get to understand if you like the person, you know, I didn't ask you that. I asked, who are you? You know, you know, and just, just really try to find a way to quickly understand is this the conversation I want to be in? I'm also an incredibly selfish person, and I'm not getting any younger. I don't want to spend a half-hour time frame in a networking event talking to someone that's absolutely rubbish. So I want to quickly identify, have you got something interesting for me

that I can actually be engaged in and I want to know? So I'm genuinely curious with everyone that I meet, is this person going to be a waste of my 30 minutes or are they going to add to it? Do you go into it looking to cut them as a waste or do you go into it looking to find the gold? I'm cynical as shit. I'll tell you right now.

I'm looking to filter the waste at this point. I want to get rid of quick. I want to end that conversation quick. So, you know, I, I have gone into conversations and gone, Hey, we're either going to have a really long chat or I'm going to go, Oh, there's Bobby. I gotta go. How's it going to go now? You know, and I've done that. I'm with you, you know, now that you're, now that we're older, more astute gentlemen, as we are, uh, I tell people, you got, there's three pillars in my life anymore. You either got to get me really excited about something you're doing, get me really excited about something I'm doing or make me laugh,

belly laugh, or hopefully some combination of those three. But if you're not pulling one of those three things off, I just don't have time for it. Yeah. But we, we know, we know we don't like going to networking events.

Yeah. We know that there is a lot of filtering going on in those kind of environments. We also know that the planet is getting really bad at communicating. So we know it's going to be awkward and it's going to be work. Yeah. And sometimes you can go to these events and you walk into the room, you're like, okay, here we go. Hey, how are you doing?

Well, what are you, you know, and you, you kick off, but you got to do it. Let's talk about the art of the blow off. Cause I think, and I'm gonna tell you why it's an art form. Cause the second thing that I'm taking away from last night, the second thing that happened to me last night, I'm sitting at the bar and I'm talking to somebody else. And this guy walks up to me and he says, you're not going to remember me. He goes, but 14 years ago, I was in, I was in banking at Chase and I got assigned to you to try to come get your business. And I called you and called you. And then you, I wore you down and you finally took the meeting and you were very upfront about like, look, I'll meet you and shake your hand and meeting and you were very upfront about like, look,

I'll meet you and shake your hand and see who you are, but I'm not really going to do what you want me to do. Right. And, uh, he came up and said, I just want to let you know a couple of things. Number one, you were so cool. I knew we were, I knew we weren't going to get your business, but you were so cool about it that I always respected how cool you were about it. And then he's flipped over and he goes, and now I am a pretty

high up person with this other company, which is something I'm incredibly interested in being their Vegas arm for. And he goes, I want to make you the men. So because I was cool to him blowing him off 15 years ago, he brought this opportunity to me last night that wouldn't happen. So there's an art form because we've all do, we've all been blown off. We've all gotten the okay enough of you moving on to the next. So there's got to be an art form to it. Because I know that, I don't know anybody that says a bad word to you, to your face, like nobody. Like, I mean, well, no, I don't even say a bad word about you, period. But that tells me that you are artful in ending quick chit chat, ending conversations in a way that still makes people feel better than they did before. But it doesn't make them feel bad about you.

And I've also seen people that blatantly make people feel bad about themselves as they cut off because they're just sloppy with it. So what's the art of the blow off? For a start, it's always good to have humor. You know, it's always good to have a smile and, you know, you can easily turn around and go, I don't know about you, but how do you think this conversation's going? Because I don't think we've got much in common, you know, and you can, you can have that with the person. Then you can go, but that guy over there, i think you two may have a good conversation so you can do that i think what you you you kind of moved off uh moved over um that needs to be highlighted in

your conversation was how up front you were in the conversation like there's nothing worse than hey i'll call you sometime you know that kind of thing oh yeah this this sounds great yeah let me let me circle back yeah you know because that's just a jerk off you know but turning around and going hey appreciate your time but it's not for me but hey i'll be definitive yeah if you can be that people respect being clear and that's another. I think today we're losing the art of clarity. Oh my God. You know what I do for that? And I know I might've gotten this from you. I don't know if I got this from you or not. I don't know, but this is just something I've been teaching for so long. And it's like, you start, you know, you pick something up, you start teaching for so long,

it becomes yours. I don't know if this is yours, please tell me I've been plagiarizing it. All right. If it's cool, I'm just going to claim it. Yeah. Okay. You can't, well, at this point you can, but at this point, one of the things that I do is to make myself impossible to be misunderstood is whenever I have a conversation with a client, especially or a business partner or dealing, and we discuss a deal point terms, plans, what's going to happen next, any of that stuff, I will immediately stop at the end of the meeting. And sometimes literally in the meeting, I got a business meeting with two of our partners on one of our businesses the other day at lunch, at the end of the meeting, I have a three-way text with them. And I sat at the table

and I text them exactly what we talked about as I was sitting in front of them. Cause I don't want to hear in two weeks that that's not what we talked about. Oh yeah. So I have made it impossible for me to misunderstood it. Cause especially when you're dealing with clients, right? Cause when you're dealing with clients, like if they remember something differently and then you want to argue with them about it, the prize for winning an argument with a client is losing a client. You've lost. Right.

But if I can just say, well, let's refer back to the email I sent you on the sixth. And all of a sudden they are backpedaling. There's no argument. You still have your client. Yeah. Did I steal that from you?

You didn't. Okay, good. You can steal from me though. I'll probably go from you? You didn't. Okay, good. You can steal it from me though. I'll probably go teach you now. I do the exact same thing. I think anyone that wants clarity is doing it. I will often come out of a situation and I will email them and go,

hey, thanks for lunch. Had a great time. These were the bullet points that we addressed. Are we both on the same page you know let's let's finish it off next week but i will actually always do a summarize of what we actually talked about yeah and i'll do it in a text and i may do in an email and in a text as well just so we got on both both bits it's like that there's a commercial now where they do the instant replay everything like you leave the sunroof open i'm gonna throw the challenge flag and they look at

the instant replay like yes you did Add instant replay to your life. Add it. Yeah. I think today, I think today a friend of mine actually taught me this. And he taught me about it on the actual speaking thing. He said is you've got to know your audience. Okay. So, you know, why are they there?

You know, we all hear that. You know, how does someone do it? You've got to know your audience. You've got to know your client. You know, so there's always that kind of thing but then he turned around he said you've also got to know the temperature they're at and when i was speaking to him i was like well how do you get that what does that mean we are in a world today of distraction distortion miscommunication misdirection a lot's gone we're walking into a political year where we're going to get bombarded with it.

So what's the temperature of us? Anger. You know, fed up. You know, lied to. Oh, what's going on? Oh, God. That's the temperature. When you can understand the temperature of the person

and you can understand why you are there, that's going to enable you to be able to deliver clarity in your communication with the person now well okay let's talk about that so let's say you're talking to somebody and they go defcon5 right and it always happens at some point i have found in my experience the best thing to do is go to defcon5 with them not against them but on their team you You're damn right to see, man, that son of a bitch. I can't, we need to, you know what, we should sue this guy. I mean, just go right there with them. Right. And then, you know, but maybe this could have been what happened. I don't know. And then slowly try to bring them down with you. I find that to be effective. I find

it's just like, it's just like your wife, no wife in the history of wifing ever calmed down when told to calm down. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing with clients. So how do you, how do you deal with climate? Is it similar to that? How do you deal with it?

Yeah. So what you want to do, and Chris Voss talks about this, it is, and he's who I'm scheduling on the podcast soon. So you want to get down to your, your midnight DJ voice. Okay. Because nothing gets done when you're speaking like this.

So you want to be able to get them down to this so but you want to match the tonality and i do this a lot with clients people are like you know i really want to do it and you're like that sounds you match it yeah and then you start pulling that oh yeah but is is maybe that the best thing we could do here or maybe we should and you start getting them down there. So I'm a great, I'm with you. If you combat them at that tonality, you're losing. And if you're doing it with a client, you've lost already.

Well, matching and mirroring is such a key component to communication. It was funny. What's the basics? Well, I used to teach a class here on matching and mirroring, literally on that. I would teach a class on it. And matching and mirroring literally on that. I would teach the class on it. And every single agent that I would teach to it at some point came to the company, got hired by me. And I would say, you know, do you think this would work on you? And of course,

if you've never heard this concept now, everybody has, but this is, I've been doing this for a long time when those concepts were novel when they first came out and it was, no, it would never work on me. I'm like, it worked on every single one of you. As I said, when I was interviewing you to come to the company, I would start mirroring you and I wouldn't close you on coming to the company because if I start moving with you, eventually then I can move for my cup of coffee and you will do the same. When I had you following me on a subliminal level, that's what I would close you. So every single one of you, this happened to you. So if you don't know what matching mirroring is, if you're living under a rock, it's where

literally you just, you subtly give whoever you're talking to back what they're giving to you. It's something that I have, it's so innate in me now. My wife says, I know who you're talking to on the phone by how you're talking. Because you become them. I didn't even realize I'm doing it. And obviously like, look, if somebody has a heavy Asian accent and don't, don't, don't imitate them that way. But yeah, the, the, the, the, the temperament of what it is and how quickly you speak. But like me growing up in the South, I on occasion have a

Southern accent. Certain people I talked to, it comes out. I've never lived, however, in Buffalo, New York. And I do have friends from Buffalo, New York. And I talk to them and that comes out. I don't know where that comes from. But yeah, because it's just so innate in me to do that. And I don't think it's manipulative. I think it's almost a sign of respect. You're matching the tempo.

Yeah. You know, you're matching the tempo and the tonality. And you want to be engaged in that conversation. Yeah. And to be in that conversation, you need to compliment where they're coming from and you need to imagine and mirroring is a compliment. It shows your interest and your commitment to actually want to be in that

conversation. Well, it's like, you know, part of that is who's your favorite person. Yeah. You ask a room full of people, who's your favorite person? Everybody's like my mom, you know, whatever. I've had people answer Jesus. I mean, I, it's, I've had all kinds of answers, everything in between and the end of people, who's your favorite person? Everybody's like, my mom, you know, whatever. I've had people answer Jesus. I mean, I had all kinds of answers, everything in between. And at the end of it, you're like, you're all full of shit.

Your favorite person is you. You are your favorite person, whether you like it or not. You love, you're like, I love me some me. That's how you are. So giving people back what they love the most, which is themselves, is a great form of complimentary communication. It's not manipulative. You're giving people what they want. Yeah.

We think today that if we're being sold to is manipulation. Yes. And so we've got to go, you're not going to sell to me. I'm not going to. So if you're communicating with someone, you can get to the, well, what is the problem? You know, what are we trying to address here? And then you become the solution. And that's all really just taking the time to get into the conversation and daring to care.

Daring to care. I mean, I think that's the place where in today's business climate, where everybody is data, everybody's a data point, everybody is this, the truth is in the numbers, everything else. The first thing big companies forget is there's a person behind that transaction. And if you can always find a way to connect with the person in any transaction. I mean, you think about Tommy Boyd, the movie Tommy Boy. Why do you get the chicken wings? Because he made the movie Tommy boy. Why do you get the chicken wings? Cause he made the, cause he made the waitress laugh. Not because anybody did him a favor, made him wings. Cause he connected with her on a visceral level that made her laugh. So, you know, as you go through life, right,

what are some skills you think people can practice themselves today? Right now, let's give tactical knowledge. Let's not, let's not motivate anybody. The rah-rah is over. Let's give some people some tactical knowledge of what tactical things they can do and practice to become better communicators. All right. Okay. And this one's going to be tough. And I have taught people this, and it is really uncomfortable when you first try it. Okay.

English accent. No, I'm kidding. You walk into a coffee shop. You stand next to the person who's just ordered that coffee, you order that coffee, and then strike up a conversation while they're waiting for that coffee. This is like fight club where you just go out and fight a random person, but in a nice way,

in a nice way. It sounds weird, but here's the daft thing. The person will be in Starbucks and I'm saying this now and I want you to watch it. Okay. And I have to say, I've taken people into a coffee shop

and actually done a live test with this, with people that I'm training and coaching. You go in, you order your coffee. Then when you step to the side, people, God forbid, can't be stood alone for like three seconds. They pull their phone out. And here's the other dumb thing. It's the fidget spinner.

I don't have to do it with my hands. I'll look at my phone. Well, here's the downside. Okay. If you were to check your phone now, you'd pick it up with one hand and you'd look at the phone. If you had to type something, then, you know, you, you put both hands on when, when you're in that kind of environment of a coffee shop, they pick up the phone with both hands. Okay. You watch it. You watch it. Okay. They pick up the phone with both hands. Now, when you take that phone out of their hands, you've now got this. This.

For those of you listening at home, he's making two fists where the phone would be. Yeah, you think about it. People hold their phone in a public space. In a defensive manner. Their elbows are in their guard is up their fists are up and they're holding the phone so when you try to communicate with someone it's like trying to communicate with someone when they got their arms crossed yeah that says no that says no no don't come talk to me do you know the easiest way to get someone to talk to you when

they're in that situation is to do do what? Compliment their shoes. Great shoes. Because now they need to part their hand. Because this is also the dumb thing. They forgot what bloody shoes they put on that morning, but they will just look down. You can turn around and go, you know,

oh, I like your shoes. I like your sneakers. Oh, that's a lot. Just say something about the shoes and they look down. Now it's a pattern interrupt. Yeah. And then you can start the conversation.

It's a tough thing, but you've got to push it. It's a muscle, you know, use it or lose it. Yeah. Always try and strike up a conversation in a coffee shop. With a stranger. With a stranger. Just keep on doing it and you'll get better at it. You'll get looked like, you know, like you're a mugger or something

quite a few times, especially when you look like me. Yeah. But if you can suddenly address someone and strike up a conversation, it makes it a lot easier when you go out. And that's a skill set that carries over to everything. Absolutely everything. Yeah. We're in a situation now where we're being replicated. And I know people kind of love AI, hate AI, they're scared of it.

But what you said earlier, again, was absolutely perfect. We love instant gratification and we love the transaction. But we're pack animals. And for as much as advanced technology and how we've evolved and how we can now stand up straight and we're woke or whatever it is, we're pack animals. And at the core of that, we want to hang around with like-minded people. And believe it or not, innately in us is the consistent search for like-minded individuals.

Well, they say that tribal acceptance is a human need more than anything else. But my concern is this, right? It's interesting you just brought up AI. I think the movie Her that was out with Joaquin Phoenix. Okay. Where he fell in love and was dating his AI girlfriend. Right. I think that's going to become a thing. Oh, it is.

I think you're going to start to see people become shuttered. Connected. And completely disconnected from everything and plugged in to an emotional relationship with a robot. Yeah. I think that's going to become a thing. And I think that's terrible. Sadly, if we don't break it,

it's going to happen. And in some areas, people are going to find, find loving. I had someone saying with you a day that what if you lost a loved one, but you could have them replicated in some form of ai oh sure that well that's i mean that you know i had uh walter o'brien on here i don't know if you know walter or not you know walter uh had walter o'brien here we're talking about ai and and i

said we were talking about advances in medicine and just in this and that because you know with medicine and stem cells and all the stuff you know all of the rapid advancement and with AI being able to produce rapid advancement in medical treatment. I'm like, do you think, how long do you think humans are going to be living in the next 50 years? And his answer was, and Walter, somebody that would know this, he said indefinitely. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, what is living? What does it mean to be living? Well, you're, well, the body that you're concerned currently in maybe be living in 50 years.

No, but will your consciousness be projected onto the mainframe absolutely that'll be possible in 50 years oh god there was um and i'm thinking myself oh my god like oh my god that's and he and he said it without blinking like that so you heard of ray kurzweil yes ray kurzweil the martian chronicles uh yeah and uh transition man yes now the the movie was taken over and i think done by johnny depp okay okay there was an old documentary out there uh on transition by ray kurzweil where he literally talked about when do you stop being you and i had this i i actually had this conversation with him and peter diamandis and it scared me.

Yeah. And he turned around and he said, look, when, when do you stop becoming you? If you lost a leg and I've replaced your leg with a prosthetic limb, you know, I still you.

Yeah. What about both? They both arms, you know, we can now replace. Now you're Darth Vader. Now you're Darth Vader. All of these things can be replaced.

So when do you stop being you? If we can upload how you react, you know, your history, like, you know, if a dog bit you when you were younger, you don't like dogs,

you know, your experiences dictate how you react. Yeah. If you can upload that into something, there's not just disintegrating like a body. When do you stop being you? That's exactly right. And I think, like, I'm so torn with that level of thing. This is digressing into, like, such a weird conversation,

but it's fine. I don't care. But it's like with Alzheimer's, right, with dementia and those things, I see such a practical use for that, right? Like, let's download a virtual image of you, and then when this gets to a point where it's not there, we can maybe do a refresh on the software and get you going again.

Right. We can refresh this. So you're not losing those things, but then you think, do I want to be trapped in Tron for infinity? You know, do I want that? And then where does that cross?

It just, it's yeah. The one thing that came to me after that conversation, and I know you're very similar on this. We love experiences. Yeah. Okay. And we love experiences because we know that there is an end date.

We don't know when the end date is going to be. So we love our time. We value our time. Yes. We want to go to concerts with friends. We want to go out and have drinks. But if you've got an infinite life now, what are you going to,

what are you going to do? You know, people say, Hey, you know, life's for living. Well, what if it's infinite?

I'd probably rewatch the Sopranos. Probably do that. 20,000 times. You know, the whole point is that because we're losing it, that's what makes it valuable. There you go. And that's one of the concerns I've got.

If you know that you haven't got a problem now, and there's not going to be an end date, are you really going to worry about making the best of what you've got today? Probably not. No. Probably not. That would be detrimental. Well, man, we will leave you with that see that turned

to a cause like two guys completely not qualified to talk about anything we're talking about at the end of that we'll leave you with those thoughts deep thoughts today deep thoughts with steve sims on escaping the drift well dude i appreciate you coming in so much buddy it's always great to see always great to have you on the show if they want correction when they want to find you because you never that's another thing you said earlier does Does anybody have any questions? Don't ask an audience, do you have any questions? Ask the audience, what questions do you have? Make it okay to ask a question. Assume they ask questions. So I'm going to assume they want to find you, not in an aware's world away, but online so they can connect with you and check out all of the things you're

doing, including if you want to learn how to be a great speaker, this is the guy. So how do they find you, buddy? Steve D Sims. D for Dashing and there's only one M in Sims. Steve D Sims. You can find me on any social platform. I'm on that or you just go to stevedsims.com. That's it. Check it out.

Guys, listen, the drift can suck you in. Life can have you drifting along with its currents. But remember, it's up to you and and you've got to start taking a stand. And if you're going to get out of the drift, you've got to start swimming. So we'll see you next time with another guest. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.