The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Stand Out and Succeed in Your Industry by Knowing Your ROE (Return on Energy)

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Steve Sims has been called “The Make-a-Wish Foundation for people with really big checkbooks.” As the founder and CEO of Bluefish Concierge, he is a master at granting requests and creating fulfilling and memorable experiences for his clients, no matter how big or small their wishes may be. He is a speaker, consultant, and author who has been featured in numerous publications (including Forbes and the Wall Street Journal), and has even spoken at the Pentagon and Harvard. In this episode, we talked about Entrepreneurship, Communication, Relationship Building...

See, the trouble is you can be working on very effective habits to operate a fax machine. When the fax machine is no longer relevant, your habits are irrelevant, but people still focus on them. So the key is the accountability and the ROE, return on energy, along with the habits that you're forming and knowing when to change them. You do this every day. You fine-tune this every day. For what reason? Nine times out of 10, people do what they do every day because they did it yesterday. Well, yesterday's problem may not be the problem that you've got today. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields,

like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. And today I have a very, very, very special guest. I've been trying to get this guy on the podcast for a long time. He's going to be a real treat for everybody. His name is Steve Sims. He's out of LA now, but you'll see that he didn't start in LA. He specializes in entrepreneurship, communication, relationship building. One of his websites is stevesims.com. He's a speaker and consultant.

He started that in 2014. There's another one, SDSIMS. That's S-D-S-I-M-S. He's the founder and CEO. And then he has Bluefish. And that's how I first heard about him was Bluefishing, the book, which if you guys haven't read that,

you've heard me recommend it a ton of times. He's the founder and CEO. That started in 1996. So Bluefish Concierge served as the official concierge of the 2004 LA and New York Fashion Weeks, as well as the 2005 to 2007 Kentucky Derby. I don't know if you guys have been to the Kentucky Derby, but it's not easy to get in there. Author of Bluefishing, The Art of Making Things Happen, host of The Art of Making Things Happen podcast. He's been featured in Ivy League publications, including Forbes, Wall Street Journal, the South China Post, and the London Times, as well as over 30 TV shows. He spoke at the Pentagon as well as Harvard twice. And he launched the Blue Club Cause Charity, a magazine and branded three credit cards. I mean, this is one of the best resumes I've ever read.

And you only hang out with like, you're like the Robin Leach of the modern era. So I'm excited to have you on. I'm just super excited for the listeners to get some exposure to you. Just tell us where you came from and where you are today, because it's an amazing story. Yeah, I don't want to pick first off, but I think you got one of my websites wrong. So the website is SteveDSims, S-I-M-S. So SteveDims.com is how you get a hold of me. Thank you very much for the compliments and pulling out my highlight reel there. But you're right.

I'm still the kid that finds it funny, the kind of stuff I do get up to. And as I was saying earlier, I've spoken at the Pentagon, I've spoken at Harvard twice. Yesterday, I spoke in a level four maximum security prison. So I get around the weirdest kind of places, but I'm still that Irish bricklayer that just kind of wants to get into places he shouldn't, get into shit stuff. But let's be blunt. As entrepreneurs, we share the same DNA.

We're all diseased, dysfunctional, curious people that want to get into things that challenge us. As a bricklayer growing up in London, I wasn't challenged. But I was an entrepreneur with this disease called ADD. We all have. And so raised up there, lack of education, not given a challenge, not given nurturing mentorship environment. I did what every person does. I bounced off the walls, got into trouble, we all the wrong places before things did start to challenge me. I actually wrote a resume and applied for a job as a trainee stockbroker when I was in London. And this resume I wrote, it was so, so far off of accurate that, you know, J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter couldn't have come up with this resume. I actually, and this is one of the funny things,

I wanted to make it so stupid that if you actually read it, you would see. I actually named one of the members of the royal family as my auntie. And I actually mentioned that the founder of Lloyd's of London was my uncle. It was just preposterous. But they obviously didn't read it very well. And they gave me the job. I went to Hong Kong on the Saturday, partied on the Saturday, partied on the Saturday, partied on the Sunday, did orientation on the Monday, and I was fired on the Tuesday. So, and then they read the resume. And I said, I said, look, you know, I wanted to, it was a case of, I didn't want to lie. I wanted it to kind of be out there. But

from that kind of wildness, I ended up working on the door of a nightclub, which I thought was obviously, being a big, ugly lad, I felt what I was built for. But it gave me a great platform to actually stare at these weird things called humans. And I started to notice things. And I started to notice traits. And I started to notice the difference between you wearing a suit and a suit wearing you. Now, look, I'm from a bricklayer background. Me and you were talking about garage doors earlier. You get to recognize those people that are kind of like faking it a little bit too much.

And I started to notice that. And there were people, t-shirt and jeans, don't want money written across it or his jeans bedazzled. Just a guy that was just humble in that jeans and T-shirt. He could afford to buy the club with his credit card and not notice. Yet the guy turning up being all that in his suit and kind of like giving all the attitude, you had to watch him that he wouldn't be able to afford his bar tab.

So you start to pick up on these things. I wanted to talk to those rich people. I wanted to talk to the successful, affluent people because I wasn't. And I wanted, just like you're using on this podcast, a podcast is a great platform now to be able to get to talk to people you never normally would talk to. I have a podcast for the exact same reason. Being on the door, I had the same reason.

They had to get past me, so they had to engage in conversation. So to give them another reason, I would tell them about the best clubs to go to, the best bars. Then I would start throwing my own parties. And then people would start saying, I'm doing a product launch. Can you throw the party? And I would throw that party. I'd get into that market. I went off on a trajectory that you never, ever, ever could have built into a business plan. And I went from bricklayer to doorman in a very seedy area of Wan Chai, Hong Kong, to literally working with Elton John, Elon Musk, the Pope. And now I brand major organizations as well as entrepreneurs. I told you I took a whole bunch of entrepreneurs

into a level four maximum prison yesterday to talk about communication with lifers. So I'm getting to play in different people's sandpit because I've never changed from being that curious little Irish kid that just wants to go, oh, I wonder what's behind that door. And that's how it's been. So what he does is he basically, the audience, is he makes anybody's dream possible. If you want to go to the moon, he'll figure out a way to get you there. Yeah, we didn't actually explain what I did, did we? Someone actually said to me once that I'm the make-a-wish foundation for people with really big checkbooks.

So I've sent people down to the Titanic. I've sent them to every major award show you can think of. I've closed down museums. I closed down a museum in Italy because someone wanted to have a really cool restaurant. I closed down an entire museum, set up a table of six at the feet of Michelangelo's David. And then while they were eating pasta, I had Andrea Bocelli come in and serenade them. So I am the guy that if you can afford me, I'll give you really interesting cocktail stories. There's a lot of power here and I've only got a window. So I've got a few main, main, main questions. And the first one is the power of no, because being ADHD, like all of us are, is we tend to shiny light district. We go off and we,

we don't know how to say no, but sometimes we can't distinguish to the things we should say yes to. And how do you really break that down to an entrepreneur to really get them to focus and stay down that hallway of thinking till the one thing's accomplished and you can move on to the next?

Do you know, that is probably one of the best questions I've ever been asked. And I think maybe only the second time I've ever been asked it. The easiest way to make an entrepreneur go bankrupt is turn around and go, oh, I bet you couldn't do that for $10. And you know, as the entrepreneur, we're not focusing on the $10. We're focusing on the challenge. And we do have a horrible illness to say yes to absolutely everything.

My greatest growth was from learning the power of the word no. And to do it, if you say no, then it's killing something. It's ending something. And as a lot of entrepreneurs, we want to keep that window open. So I found the best way to do it is when someone gives me an offer, I put it down onto a piece of paper and I have three columns. I have the hell yeah, I have the yes, and I have the not now column. And in my head, if it's the hell yeah, it's something I can easily do. It's low friction. It makes a lot of money. The ROI is obvious. It's obvious why it works for me to do it for you. That's the hell yeah. Also, that column is based on excitement. Does it excite? Does it arouse? Does it terrify? Does it have all those attributes? That's the hell yeah. I'm into that. The yeah is something

that you can do. It doesn't take too much time. It's within your wheelhouse. You can do it. Maybe it challenges you a little bit, but you know, the kind of regular stuff. Okay. Yeah, I'll do that. And then you get those that you're not too sure about. Now those you might not want to kill, but you put in the not now or the not yet column. What you tend to find out is you need to prioritize your yeses. And by doing the hell yeah, the yeah and the not now you haven't killed it but you finally find a way of going hey i understand the request but you know i don't think it's right for me at this moment now in doing that you kind of open yourself up a little bit more to close people out. And then eventually, you will get to the position where you go,

hey, I would love to help you because I'm a helpful person, but this isn't my specialist. This isn't where I work well. So for that reason, let me introduce you to three other people that it will work for. And that's when I start shuttling off. As entrepreneurs, we like to please people. A lot of us are quite antisocial because we're focused on the challenge, but we want people to get what they wanted.

But by having those three columns, I tend to find that the not yet actually gets sent off in different directions. I'm still there for being the good guy. I'm there still not closing it. I'm therefore still keeping the relationship open, but I ain't playing in my Sampit anymore. I love that. Because you're right. It's hard to say no, because we see an opportunity to make money, even though, you know, how much is your

time worth? Nobody really realizes that. I think the biggest question I have, and this is a monster question. This is like the gold. Ready. So being who you are, number one, people come to you for these amazing dreams or just what they could do outside of their normal self. So what you need to be able to do, what you do amazingly, the best I've ever heard of, is you could get ahold of this person, the Pope,

to get ahold of this museum, to give them an offer that's a win-win for them. Now, the question is, you weren't always Steve Simms that makes dreams happen. You were a lot smaller at one point. And you didn't have this title, this amazing amount of money, and I make dreams. So when you were smaller, if I want to get into a big builder, or I want to make a dream happen, or if I want to just get a hold of this person, how do you build that bridge and connect with those people? Great question. And you actually rubbed on it within your question.

You've got to create a win-win. Now, here's the bottom line. I phone you up at 8 o'clock tonight, okay? For a start, you're really surprised because I don't have your phone number. But let's say for a second I phone you up at eight o'clock at night. You can guarantee one thing. I want to talk to you. Okay. Before you've answered the phone, you know, I want to talk to you. Why do you know that? Because I phoned you. So you're prepared for me to need something, to want something, to ask for something. If I open up that phone call with hey I was

listening to your podcast earlier and I would like to get you in this show because it'll get you four million downloads would that be I'm now bringing you a win whenever I'm going to ask for now you're going to be a lot more open to because I'm bringing a win to you first so whenever I communicate with anyone the first thing I do is go, hey, thanks for taking the call. I noticed you're working on this. I noticed you're actually building this development. I noticed that you are very successful in that arena. I found a way that I could expose you to other clients, other platforms, other prospects, potentials. I hope that's of interest. But I also want to let you know that I want to ask you about doing this with me. How would you feel about that? Okay. Now, two things in here. One, always bring them

a benefit first before you tell them what you want. Two, it's obvious you want something, so get it out in the open first. Get the elephant out of the room and say, hey, I know you've got a book coming out. I actually want to be in that book, but I've got a way that I can get your book into more hands. Would this be of interest? You're making it very clear. People are nervous when they don't know. You're always nervous about what's coming around the corner, what's happening. If I make it crystal clear to you, hey, I want your museum to shut down on this date between two o'clock in the afternoon and midnight. Now, I know that's a long ask, but I'm aware that you're doing a gala to raise money for your roof because you've got a leaky roof at the moment. Before throwing the gala, how would you feel if

I actually paid for half of the budget? Would that be of interest to you? Yeah, it would. Great. Now let's get back to my request about you closing down. You see where it's coming from? So there's two points to this. One, hit the person with value to them first before you get the asking. Two, never ask a question that they can answer with a yes or no. When you rewind this, you'll see I said, hey, would that be of interest to you? Or how can we get this going? How can we make this work for you? And three, here's where it's really sexy and very easy.

Don't be the one to introduce yourself. Now, let's play a little game to get a visual for you. I walk into the bar and you're in the bar, okay? And I walk up to you and I say, hey man, how are you doing? My name's Steve Sims. I know Elon Musk, Richard Branson, the Pope. I've worked with Ferrari, the Grammys, the New York Fashion Week. I'm a big deal. How are you doing? Not much credibility, right? But why? I've just told you everything, okay? Now, let's play another game. And I don't know if this is being, I don't know if the people are going to see this video, but you're uncomfortable with that

introduction. And everyone bloody is when I do it. Okay. Because it's self-promoting, it's precocious, it's arrogant. There's no proof. There's no sign. Everything's wrong with it. Even though it was all true. Okay. Now let's play another game. I walk into the pub and I ignore you. Why? Because I don't bloody know who you are. I walked to the end of the bar and I order my old fashioned and your best mate nudges you in the ribs. It says, Hey, you see that guy over there? He knows Richard Branson, Elon Musk, the Pope. He sent people down to the Titanic. That guy's a big deal. Says the exact same thing that I did. But now what is your feeling? It's a lot more credible.

Why is it credible? Look, there's a lot of people that embellish, but now I want to meet you. Now you just built up momentum too. We need to focus on the source of the connection, the source of the information. When you hear about something from a salesman, you don't listen. If your dad phones up and says, hey, I used this on my car this weekend and it bloody worked, it's now gospel.

So anytime I've gone to anyone, whether it be the museum, whether it be major award shows, whether, and here's a perfect example. Someone said to me about speaking engagement for a real estate convention. And I said to them, I said, okay. And they went, here's the number. All you got to do is contact, this is the person putting it on. I went, I thank you very much, but I want to buy you dinner.

And he said, well, I'm not in LA anytime soon. I said, no, you don't have to be. I'm actually going to pick the restaurant. I'm going to pay for the dinner for you and your wife to go to. But this is what I need you to do. I need you to contact them and introduce me. And he turned around and went, I would have done that for free. I know you would have, but I want to show you how grateful I am for it. And so then he contacted the person. That was the kind of thing, like I just talked to you about the example in a bar, that person texted me saying, we need to talk. I phoned the person this morning and he went, John contacted me and told me, you did what with Elton John? Now, wasn't that the best way to kind of like start a conversation?

So the point is, I always look at people and I look at who is in that sandpit that can bring me in as a credible person. And so I get, and you can use this for getting speaking gigs. You can use this for getting into local attorneys. I had a girl that was trying to work with a school and I said to her, okay, contact the school, find out when the next gala is. Okay. And then do something for the gala. And then whoever you're doing that with the gala, get them to introduce you to the person in the school that you want to meet. And they did. So come through as a credible source every single time. So I've never made the first phone call in anything I've ever done. So a follow-up question, when you're doing this,

what's the best way to... So you said they were redoing their roof, right? Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your research process to figure out what motivates that person, what's going to make them tick. Yeah. It's really easy. It's the image category of a Google search. Okay. And then secondly to that, it's Facebook. You'll find out after three seconds with me, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm just as impactful. So I will actually go into Google and I will Google the person. Now, the website for that person, like yours, if I looked up your website, it's going to show me pretty pictures. It's going to show me everything you want me to see. It's going to be all your

highlights. But then if you click on images, it's going to show you out with your mates, your family. It's going to show you playing games. It'll show you maybe a couple of holiday snaps from a social feed. And then I'm going to go to your social feed and find out that you actually love collecting mid-mod century chairs and that you collect wine and you love growing mushrooms in your back garden. It's going to show me these kind of quirky little bits about you that I go, all right. And then what I can do is I can look on your friends, find out if we got any mutual ones, and then I can go and I go, hey, I like that. And then you start doing that. And so when you actually get to know the person, I can go, look, I got to tell you, do you know this guy? I wanted to do some business. I know he runs one of the best

garage stores around. He does so much business. He's a cool guy. I really want to get... Can you tell me any more about him? And then as they're telling me about you, and they may turn around and go, well, I'm actually not that close. So you may have to go through three or four of the mutual friends for them to be able to turn around and go, yeah, I know him. We go out drinking a lot. He's a good guy because I want to talk to him about one of his products. So yeah, can you do me a favor, mate? And that's how you get in. But I Google them first. Never have I ever looked at anyone's website. Okay. I go straight to images. And then if you look at my website, I'm going to

look like an intelligent person, you know, hangs around with a lot of celebrities. If you go to my Facebook page, you'll see me doing trips in a prison with entrepreneurs and drinking way too many old fashions for my health, tearing up the highway on motorbikes and enjoying life. So look at the images, look at the social, check out mutual friends, get their reference on you, and then get them to refer you in. That's what I was looking for. I'm just going to keep speeding through these because, look, you need to sleep at one point here. Yeah, I've had a tough day yesterday. But yeah, carry on because I'm enjoying this. These are good questions. I'm liking them. So I listened to this excerpt from Tony Robbins. And Tony Robbins said, look, I've had family work for me. I fired family.

I had friends work for me because they had the virtues, but they didn't have the skills. Then I found people that had the skills but didn't have the virtues. And what he said was, it's not about the people you hire. It's about the people you don't fire. And you said you had a woman that worked for you for five years. She was your top salesperson. But she was the disease in the company. And talk to me about, and all of us, especially in the blue collar industry, I think, we don't get rid of people. We need them. Yeah. That's the myth that's on our shoulders. And again, forget the stories. We're all the bloody same. This girl would always make a point.

She was very successful. She worked very hard. She made a lot of money for me and the company and for her. She made a point of always being late for the meetings. Made a point of arguing with me just to strengthen her position as the top dog. She stood on a lot of people. She selected the clients she wanted. The arrogance started to come in. And this is the rot, the rust, the cancer of any business because it doesn't affect your relationship with them as much as it affects the relationship with everyone in between. And so this got too much and she started to do stuff

that she shouldn't have done and overstepped her mark with the ignorance that she was irreplaceable. Now, she was my top earner. Firing her literally the day after when she starts sending out all the emails for the other staff going, and this is how it's funny, you fire someone and then the following day, they send out an email going, I've decided to move on. There's always the bullshit there. And I'm like, yeah, knock yourself out. They knew and I knew. And I started to get these emails from my team going, thank you. I don't understand how you waited so long. And I started to get this. And what happened was this person was making

singularly the biggest bucks for the company and everyone else filled that space real, real fast. I think I noticed a downtick for maybe my first month. And then after that, I was 25% up because everyone was happier. Everyone was more in it. Everyone was more motivated, more engaged. There was no cloud.

There was no darkness. There was no being spoken down to, trodden on, walked over. So you've sometimes got to look at what is directing the traffic. And is that a good director? Is that a good way you want to be going? And where is the cancer in my business? Sometimes cancer can come from friends. It can come from family members. It can come from clients. And experience makes us a genius. Let's be honest. Experience comes two seconds after you needed it most.

But I noticed that if I can control who sits to my table and who walks through the front door, I can control just those two elements. I'm talking about stuff, vendors, clients. I remove 99.9% of my problems. Wow. You know, we do get those. We get these vendors sometimes and you never know where the cancer... Sometimes it's not obvious, but they're there. And I get a lot of that by... So I have 40 people in the call center. If I walk out there, I might not be as connected as I used to be, which isn't a bad thing. But for the most part, it's really hard. I used to say, whoever could, I used to have a fog test. If you could breathe into a fog or a mirror and cause fog, because we're desperate a lot of the times. We hire, we're never looking.

See, I always say, people say always be closing. I say always be recruiting. And I always, if I find a great person, a great busboy or a server, the hospitality industry is the best to find the people. Totally. But here's something super cool that you said. My favorite word is accountability. And you know, I'm trying to break certain habits, but you say habits with accountability. And I love this because there's so many people that focus in their business. They work every day and they never get the things done to stop from the madness because they got to change those habits of coming in and taking on all the fires. Their firefighters never learned to put out those fires and not to stop those from happening. So talk to me about habits with accountability because it's genius.

So I don't know if it's genius or it's just through the education of screwing up a lot. And that's one of the keys to our consulting program that we actually work with. See, the trouble is you can be working on very effective habits to operate a fax machine. When the fax machine is no longer relevant, your habits are irrelevant, but people still focus on them. So the key is the accountability and the ROE, return on energy, along with the habits that you're forming and knowing when to change them. You do this every day. You fine tune this every day. For what reason? Nine times out of 10, people do what they do every day because they did it yesterday. Well, yesterday's problem may

not be the problem that you've got today. There's a time, and you were quoting figures to me earlier, you mentioned a couple of figures and I won't repeat those. Do you remember a time in your life when you wanted to make $100,000? Or a time in your life when you made $100,000 and you went, I ain't retiring now. That time when there was this ceiling, this vision of this will make me. Once I'm here, oh yeah, that's it. And you arrive, there's no fanfare, there's no confetti, there's no balloons. And you go, shit, the day's still going to start again tomorrow. And even worse, which is better, when you get there, and then a couple of months later, you lose it again.

And you go, oh crap. But you know the good thing about making money and even better losing money is you knew how to make money. I've never trusted anyone that's never had a failure in their life because I don't know what the color they are. I don't know how their spots are. I don't know how they react to things. But when shit's not going right, that's when you meet the real transparent person. And so I very much focus when I'm working on our clients is what are your habits now? What's the ROE on them? What are you trying to answer them? Now, I'm very honored to know very smart people,

which hopefully increases my slight education. But I've often said I've got a greater eye can than an IQ. And when I was with Elon Musk in SpaceX, big name drop there, but this is for our benefit here. He said to me, I don't look at the problem. I look at the point. What are we doing? What's the end goal? Screw what the bottleneck is in the middle. Is there a different way to get to point B than going A to B? And he will look at the point, not the problem, the point. Where's the bottleneck? Who cares? What's the point? And sometimes they can invent a different structure that will not fix it. It's like these people that are fixated on improving the wheel. Screw the wheel. The wheel's got

friction. The wheel's got burn. You lose tire tread. You lose brakes. So what are we doing now? We've got electric. Soon after electric, how far after electric do you think that we will be hovering? And once we've removed all the friction, and again, same guy when we were in Tesla, he said, what's the point of friction? Friction stops things happening. That's why friction is what is a break. Friction brakes things. That's why engines brake. We need things to keep them lubricated. But sooner or later, they brake, they wear down. The first thing to do is not to look at ways of alleviating the friction or making it work better by building better silicon oils that can work in the engine. Screw the engine. What's the point? The point is power, something to power something

from A to B. You're doing it with something that's a lot of friction and also is a bomb. You're igniting fuel in your engine. You are creating an explosion. If we can remove that, we're still getting to B, but in a different method. So when I meet people like this that think differently, it creates a point for me to think differently. And within my membership, when I'm speaking with my clients, it's a case of, okay, what are your habits? What are they accountable for? And what's the ROE on them? Because nine times out of 10, you need to change the habits to get to the point you're trying to get to? Oh, I got all this stuff coming. So I had a girl I dated for a long time

and she said to me, you know, I used to say, this is when I'm going to hit 100 million and I'm a year off from where I wanted to be. But she said, well, what the hell is the difference when you hit 100 million? You're just going to want a billion. And then when you hit a billion,

it's never going to stop. And because you're young, you think you could go forever and there's not going to want a billion. And then when you hit a billion, it's never going to stop. And because you're young, you think you could go forever and there's not going to be a time. And I said, okay, fair enough. I was talking to a client the other day and he said, am I crazy for wanting more? And when I hit my goal, it's like that goal was never there. It just becomes higher. And this happens for fitness. This happens for everything in our lives. Sometimes religion, we can be the most spiritual person, go to church every day and it's not enough. But I just want to hear your take on that and how we get around that, because I agree with that concept.

Yeah, we don't. Because we're the dysfunctional entrepreneurs that when everything's going well, we find a way to fuck it up. We are those people that look at the $20,000 Audemars Piguet watch, want it until we've got it, and then we start looking at the Patek Philippe and everything else. We constantly go forward. We constantly strive to better ourselves. We constantly strive to experience more. The problem comes, and I don't want to change that disease that we have.

I want you to hit $100 million, and then I want that to not be good enough for you. And I want you to strive for the 110, the 200, the billion. I want you to continue that, but I don't want it to define who you are. And I don't want it to dictate the difference between being rich and being wealthy. You see, I know a lot of poor rich people. I lived in Palm Beach for my sins. I met a lot of people that were incredibly rich, massive houses, all the cars, no friends they could trust, no love of their life, no one that they could phone on a Friday night and go, Jim, let's go and have a beer. You know, they never had any of that. Why?

Because they had focused on the dollar symbols. And then I know a lot of people that make $1 million a year, $250,000 a year, $100,000 a year, and now wealthy. They've got a tribe around them. They've got a community. They give back. They've got a tribe around them. They've got a community. They give back. They feel fulfilled. So what I would want to do with you is to shake you up, redefine your definition, reallocate your focus on rich and wealthy. And while the rich should be strived for,

we should be starting to focus on your wealth and what that gives you. Because what's the point of you getting to a billion and then being dead, being single, being alone, having no one to talk to? That's why I would refocus on your rich and wealthy. Have both and don't change the disease that we've all got. I'm sitting here now in my garage. I can't turn it around, but this is where my studio is. And I bought a beautiful motorcycle. And then I got home and I bought another motorcycle. I'm in my garage here and I got 12 motorbikes. And I'm really good at buying motorbikes and I'm terrible at selling them. And I've already got my eye on a few others. And now we're actually having a new garage built at the end of our land so that I can have bigger... I'm doing a four double garage door garage and studio above. So I've worked out in there, I can get about 75 motorcycles because I want to open up a mini

museum for me. Okay? We should always want to do that. But wealth is being able to go to the restaurant on a Friday night with your family, buying dinner, having food, and not counting the price for everything on the menu for that night. And knowing that when your kids go to bed that night, that's safe. And knowing that your mortgage at the end of that month is paid for. I'm a great believer in being selfish. And I beg you to argue with me on this, but do you fly on planes a lot? Oh, yeah. Right. So when was the last time you got on a plane and the stewardess comes out and does, doors here, lights here. And in the case of an emergency, an oxygen mask will fall from the

ceiling. Okay. We've all been there. We've all seen it. We all ignore it. When was the last time she said, take that oxygen mask and put it on someone else before you put it on yourself? They never do that, do they? Look after yourself first. Understand what is good enough for you, and then anything above that, start becoming fulfilled by looking after others. This could be quite simply you mentoring young entrepreneurs. You'll be amazed. As I said to you yesterday, about $30,000 I raised. I went to jail yesterday, prison yesterday, got no money out of it. I lost an entire day. I'm going to be sleeping for most of the afternoon after this podcast with you. But I got so fulfilled from seeing other entrepreneurs

grow. Now, half of those groups want to do consulting with me. So I'll make money out of it. But yesterday was about fulfilling that moment. 12 hours with no cell phone in a level four maximum security prison. Okay. I got them uncomfortable and they've all come out today telling me how they can now grow from that. So I would definitely mess around with your rich, your wealth. I would recreate your habits to give you a greater ROE and I would start looking at how we could fulfill rather than populate your bank account. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that's really the nail on the head. But I like what you said

about having it both because we don't want to detract people from having that as well as there's one thing I can't do. I'm like, when I get an idea in my head, I got a whiteboard in my kitchen. I got a whiteboard right here, a whiteboard right here. I'm a whiteboard and I can't help myself. I'm like, if I don't get to whiteboard right now, a whiteboard right here. Yep. I'm a whiteboarder and I can't help myself. I'm like, if I don't get to whiteboard right now, it's a bad thing. But people around me understand that.

That's you. And don't ever change it. Anyone that turns around and moans at the draft because it's got a long neck is an idiot. You know, we are who we are.

I like that expression. Actually, I just made it up. I think I may, you know what I mean? Because it's got a long neck. Yeah, I just made it up. I think I may... Because it's got a long neck. Yeah, I may stick it in a meme or something this afternoon for Instagram.

They actually, the award for our company is the giraffe award because they have long necks. Oh, really? Neck out for the company. And they've also, the animal that has the biggest heart because they got to pump all that blood to their head. So...

I never knew. But there you go. Too bad. That's suspicious. All right. Spooky. So there's a story you tell about a guy that you were getting into the Playboy Mansion, which I think would be pretty cool. I'm sad that Hugh died.

But at the same time, dude, talk about a 10-year-old's dream. Okay. That one to me, when I was listening to that, I was like, what in the hell? But obviously, for other reasons, I get it. And so you figured out some other stuff. But what do you do? Other than obviously, you told us how to do this, but when somebody's internal, your internal customers, your internal clients, what we call them, how do you figure out what makes them tick and really go out of your way? It could be the smallest thing. It doesn't need to be my money. It doesn't need to

be baseball tickets. It could be something else. What do you do to really figure that stuff out and make sure that you act on those impulses? Well, first off, I can guarantee anybody that's not read my book has got the complete wrong end of the stick when you mentioned the playboy mansion when they read that we're not going to tell it but when they read that story they couldn't be further off what's probably going through their head at the moment um well well seeded on that okay so i have this uh we talking in our team about you're in a sherlock and we say that you know you've got to ask why three times and you've got to delve into the reason, not the question. You see, people will come to you

and most people don't know what they don't know. That's your job. Okay. You know, you'll come up to somebody and go, hey, I want to go in store. You go, okay, great. You know everything there is. They just want to know the door. They don't know all great. You know everything there is. They just want to know

the door. They don't know all the alternatives. They don't know all the options. They shouldn't. They're not the expert. You are. So when someone comes to us nine times out of 10, actually 10 out of 10, they will tell us what they want to make themselves sound smarter, make themselves sound a little bit more cooler. Oh, yeah, I'd really like to do this. Can you make this happen? Actually, you know I can. But before we go into that, I want to know, why is this so important to you? And we start digging. And I often talk... You pull the layers away.

You pull it away. I will give you a story. There was a guy that contacted us through a referral and the referral was, you know, Richard Branson. So pretty good referral to take seriously. And the guy that was referred to me through him said, Hey, I want to meet the rock band journey. And I said, Oh, really? I said, Oh, that sounds fantastic. I said, you like that music? Yeah, I love that music. Oh, brilliant. And what do you want to do? Oh, I want to go backstage and shake their hand. Okay, brilliant. Yeah. Why?

Why is that so important? Oh, I think they're a brilliant band. I said, yeah, but what about Queen? Are there any other bands that would be equivalent? Yeah, but Journey. I said, okay, talk to me more. Why is Journey the one? And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it starts to chip away. And you start getting close. And you start getting close. And then he reveals this story to me that when he was at college, he was the lead singer of a Journey cover band in the local pub. And then as he got into financing and as he got into relationships and the relationships failed and sickness, health, you're rich, poor, divorce, screwed over, lawsuits, this thing that we call life of an entrepreneur happened. But all the way through it,

what would get him through on his dark days and on his happy days was journey music. And he said he's now at a position in his life, he wants to say thank you to them for his theme tune. And I said to him, that's brilliant. Now we know why. Now we know the depth. Let me ask you this. They've come off stage singing to a sold out 20,000 person arena. They're hot sweaty. They see you there. They shake your hand. They get the photograph with you.

And then they get to that changing room and they forgot your name by the time they got there. Is that going to do it? And then he's like, no. As it turned out we spoke to the band and I said to him

look we can't we can't let this go this is a super fan there's a reason behind it and I gave them a win-win I gave him a win-win what we ended up doing

with that client is we stuck him on stage in San Diego live during a concert and he sang four tunes and is now registered as the shortest term lead singer of the rock band journey he didn't meet them he performed with them he was the lead singer

we took what he asked for ignored it gave him what he needed to close that chapter and he actually this was about seven years ago. He texted me a few days ago and it was like three o'clock in the morning. And he said, I just woke up remembering what I did. Thank you. So if it wakes him up at two o'clock in the morning, that's the reaction you want. Yeah. I read that story. I believe that was, you found a way to give to the charity and yeah we bought we bought in the win-wins again nothing we can name drop you know forever but the format never stops when i contacted journey i gave them a reason to want to have me in that conversation they were just about to start a new tour when all these older groups were doing their revival tours they were doing one it gave me They were doing one. It gave me the

chance to do that. It gave me a chance. We took some guitars signed and put them up on eBay, which again brought that trend appeal back up, brought that notoriety and brought them back up into the visual space. And the drummer's son has autism. And my client's brother's son has autism and my client's brother's son has autism. So we were managed to raise the whole thing around autism speaks. So we raised the profile of autism while announcing Journey were on stage and now going in concert. And all the while doing that, the only reason for doing it was to get my client on stage, which we did. No one was unhappy with that relationship. Yeah. I'm a mind map type guy. And what I do, you've heard a whiff on what's in it for me. Yep. And I just spoke about that in front of like 800.

It was pretty cool. I reversed it. I said, what's in it for them? Yeah. What I want to do is I whiteboard and then I will, whether this is business or not, you find out all the things and you start writing them down and point out how to get there from one spot to the next. And it really works is I found out where this guy worked. Obviously, I know where he worked, but I found out who his boss was and how he gets a pay raise and how he gets accredited in the awards. He's one of our DCs, our distribution centers. And man, I went in there and I had everything lined up to make him look like the most amazing freaking person and his boss, because it's owned by a company in Sweden who's hundreds and hundreds of billions. I mean, it's a massive,

they own $140 billion companies in themselves. But when you go about that and you actually learn how to do it, it's almost contagious. It's like you can't wait to help people. And you're in a situation now that you put yourself into over the years that all you get to do is make people's dreams come true. So it's exciting. I got to tell you. We got another 12 minutes here. So, see, I'm going to use every minute. I love it. One of the problems we have in the home service business,

it's not quite as much as probably your business, is we don't depend on returning clients, even though they're 10 times cheaper than they keep and exist. It's 10 times more expensive to go out and get one. And, you know, you were at a bar one time and took 5,000 or 500 napkins and sent out letters. And that was really personal. You're a smaller, you know,

we, we service 6,000 people last month. So it's hard to have that connection, but what can you teach us about connecting with people that we've already have a relationship with versus going out and trying to always replace them? Because I coach a lot of people and they all say the same thing. Like I'm having a hard time getting new people. I'm like, let's find a reason for them to use you more and get in there. What else can you do for them? Yeah, it's always astonished me. Now, bear in mind, you're talking to a guy that doesn't have any way to contact him on his websites. So there were some people that called themselves referral-based businesses. And I go, hey, do you have an email and phone number on your website? And they go, yeah, I do. And I said, well, you're not a referral-based business. You just happen to get a lot of

referrals. And again, based on that pub story that I gave you, if I go and spend $1,000 on Facebook ads, I'm going to get cold people that have never heard from me. I'm going to get a turkey shoot. You may as well go on the top of the highest building in your town and throw a bunch of leaflets off the roof and pray to shit, one guy that needs something is going to grab one of those flights. That's unfocused, erratic marketing. Even as well as Facebook targeting is, it's still a turkey shoot. Okay. What is the most credible person that could ever recommend you? It's the person that spent money with you. If I come up to you and I go, oh, you know, you should listen to, you should buy this product. And you go, did you buy that product? And I go, oh no, I didn't buy it, but it looked good. Is that credible? No.

But if I say to you, hey, you need to deal with this company. They took two grand of my money. You know, they took 10 cents of my money. The bottom line of it is, go for the most credible source. I would say that if you've got 6,000 clients, you need to, and I do this with real estate investors, real estate estate realtors and mortgage officers I say about taking your clients into fans into fanatics into your front line of marketing go to them

this is the first thing you do so let's give it really specific for your people okay I should freaking invoice you for a bottle of whiskey for this but I will you owe me my next whiskey.

Okay, done. Good. I'm going to hold you to that, you bugger. So here's the thing. Go to every single one of the people you've done business with over the last year. You know, you'll thank me for this later. You look at it and go, bloody hell, that's a big list. Good.

I hope it is. Go back to them and write up an email first. What did we do wrong? Now, that sounds very challenging. But if I turn around and I go, hey, what did I do? You know, are you happy? What did I do right? That's when people go, oh, yeah, you were great.

You were on time. It was lovely. Thank you very much. If you ask them what you did wrong, it changes the dynamic of the question and the feedback. You can't lose here. If the person turns around and goes, well, your team were actually shoddy. They wore bad shirts. They had their ass hanging out. Oh, they swore while they were there. One of them brought that girlfriend along while they were doing the job. If you get all of that, you can go back and say, thank you very much. We demanding ourselves to be the best we could possibly be in our industry.

I'm taking that feedback inside and I'm going to action it. And as a thank you, please take this code that I've made up and you now get 25% off of your future service. You can use that for yourself or a friend, but I want to say thank you. And you give them a code, a certificate, a piece of paper, whatever. Okay. That's great. On the other side, you get the people go, you guys are fantastic. You guys are the best. I didn't realize you could do such a good job. You are so informative. I love the people to talk to me. You're on time. You came away. You're clean. I love it.

Fantastic. Who do you think that you know that should know that? And as a way of saying thank you, here's a code for you to be able to share for 25%. You are getting these people to be your frontline marketing. Now, I have people come back. They spend, like yesterday, let's do two things. From my concierge side, I have people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to do stuff with me. Okay? And I contact them. Hey, I realized you just came back from South Africa off of the safari. What did I do wrong? You didn't, Steve. I got into here.

I couldn't believe that was going to happen. They were waiting for me here. That's fantastic. Can you think of five friends that need to know that? And that came off. Yesterday, I took 30 plus entrepreneurs into a prison, shook them up, turned them inside out, spat them out, got them uncomfortable, but they were there because of me. I contacted them. I had it prepared before they went to prison, but I had an email generated going, how are you feeling? That was it. This morning, it was sent out at seven o'clock. I sure as shit weren't up at seven o'clock this morning. I was still wiped from yesterday, but it went out. I got people coming back to me with the answers of that very, very simple question. And then I had it all set up to go, thank you.

Who do you think should know this? And who do you think deserves to have their life changed courtesy of Steve Sims? Okay. They've been referring, they've been marketing for me and will do for the next two days there are people on facebook now promoting what they did yesterday that i got them into putting referrals up i actually sent out an email the other day and i want to be a bit careful about how much i give away my secrets because i'm probably listening to this going, oh, you bastard. I sent out a video text from a mass texting service I use saying, hey, I need you to do me a favor. In fact, you may have seen it on Facebook. If I've ever inspired you, motivated you, coached you, you've seen me speak on stage, and you like any of it, I want you to do a 30-second video testimonial and send it to me.

Now, I ended up getting about 115 of these video testimonials. I don't know what I'm going to do with them. I'll probably chop them up and make a lovely little ego promo video out of it. But what also happened is a lot of them started posting it on their own Facebook page, going, Steve Sims asked me for a testimonial. I read his book and this is what I got. And they gave me the testimonial, but they posted it on there. I've ended up with like about 30 Facebook pages where people are going, hey, you're Steve Sims. How did you hear about it? Billy did a testimonial and stuck it on his page. So you're using those that have done business with you to do your own marketing. And my question is,

why wouldn't you? Why would you not focus on those people that have spent money with you on being your front line of marketing? Hey, if you want to throw money at a scattergun, then I've got a gold mine in Nigeria that's just waiting for you to invest in it. Focus on your inner circle as your most credible resource to get your name out there. Does that help? Genius, genius. And there's tools out there that really help. So I use Scipio for my voice tech.

Scipio is brilliant. Scipio is fantastic. Scipio is a sophisticated one. I use a thing called Hootsuite. I use another thing called BirdEye. We've built systems that we require our technicians to get customers. So if I see you in your Harley, I'm going to say, Steve, hey, let me get a great

picture of your Harley. And then that automatically is a thank you card. But I put in there a little thing. Steve, I love that you're traveling across the Colorado Springs next week. Safe luck on your trip. And then there's a little letter from the owner, but then that goes through, it's complex, but you're a hundred percent. We all should do better at the follow-up and taking advantage of our current relationships. And if there's, I got, well, you don't want to see how much I got out of this, but. I got a bottle of whiskey's worth. Exactly. I'll find out that bottle of whiskey. I wanted to ask you, we always ask this at the end of the podcast, three books that you really think would inspire, and it doesn't need to be, it could be anything related, but- Three books.

Three books. All right. So this one. Blue Fishing, of course. Of course. Blue Fishing, the art of making things happen. I'll be honest with you. I like to read a lot. And if it doesn't engage me quick, I turn it off. I love reading Jay Abraham's stuff. Jay Abraham's stuff, and he's a close friend of mine, so I'm not giving him a personal plug. Oh, he's going to hate me for the next statement, but it'll make sense why he's out of date. Okay. And this is why his stuff is so good. His business was from an era where communication and sales were everything. And we've gone through a world of automation to the point that we're now

starting to lose connectivity with our clients. By bringing his old school stuff back, you actually end up standing out as unique. So a lot of the things like postcards and things like that. Now, he didn't talk about text, but you spoke about Scipio. I use Scipio. I also use one called Textiful. Oh, yeah. Concepts that he has, you can use today's technology

to appear more connected and build relationships from. So I like Jay Abraham's stuff. Tim Ferriss, he has some good little nuggets to listen to. I like Ryan Holiday. Trust me, I'm lying and that stuff. These are good friends of mine. So I absolutely love these boys. But I will say, on all of the things that you should read, you should read stories and fantasy. Why? Because you need to enhance your ability to dream and create. The dragon tattoo books, for argument's sake. I love the dragon tattoo books, the whole trilogy and even the new set they've done. I love conspiracy theory books. I love whodunit books. Why? Because it's that ability,

like you were talking about the whiteboard, it's our ability to conjure up, create, and dream that makes us different from Amazon. Reading a book and going, oh yeah, I see I should do that. I'm going to do that. You're following a guide. You need to be the one that thinks of it before you read it. So I want you to continue to learn to create. I want you to continue to dream. Read Dr. Zeus, read Dragon Tattoos, read any kind of spy movie where the last person did it and you go, oh my God. Those kinds of things boost our ability to dream and create. The Game of Thrones, I was not into it. And I recorded the entire series

and I'm about halfway through now. But those are so good because they bring in things you never would have thought of, you know? And dynamics and you're like, oh yeah. It's that ability for us to dream that will always keep us one step above AI. Oh, okay. And this is the last question

because you got to get some sleep and then stay on for a minute so I can figure out what kind of bottle you want. I like to close it out and let you do whatever you want. You could have one last, just whatever your vision or just something that they could take away,

an actionable item or just something completely off the wall. But this is all you. I was 14 years old. I was walking through London with my dad. My dad was a big, thick Irish bricklayer, definitely similar to me, not the sharpest tool in the shed. Smoked about 300 cigarettes per hour, or it appeared.

We're walking down the road. I'm next to him. He's literally got a cigarette in his left hand, and he's just finishing it off on the right hand side so he could quickly change so there would be no interruption into his lung cancer. And we're walking down the road and he pulls his cigarette out of his mouth without looking at me while we're still walking, puts his hand on my shoulder, doesn't look at me, but just says, son, no one ever drowned by falling in the water. They drowned by staying there. Takes his hand off my shoulder, puts his cigarette back in his mouth and carries on walking. I was 14 years old and I

stopped. And as he's walking away, he never looked back. I was, what the was that? And I was just, where did that come from? Did he just read a fortune cookie or something? I had no idea where it came from. It was totally out of the blue. There wasn't a warmup. There wasn't a follow-up. There was just bang that. And I thought that was the stupidest, most absurd thing he could have ever said until I started falling in the water. And I realized that we drown when we stay there and it's our option. And there's a few times, more than a few, where I've fallen over on my face and we wallow in it and we're like, oh my God, I lost that contract. Oh my God, I'm getting sued. Oh my God, someone just left with my client back. Oh, my email just got hacked. Yeah. Cry, pour yourself a whiskey and then stand up. And I realized it's

my choice as to whether I drown in that pool of water. So for any of you out there, any of you like-minded dysfunctional entrepreneurs, remember, it's your choice whether or not you stay in that water and drown. Yours and yours alone. I love it. Okay, guys. Well, Steve is out. This guy travels the world. You guys should definitely buy that book. Steve, I really appreciate you coming on. I think it's most people we could take a lesson or two from, but there's the fact that the people that you've been around and you've watched them make or break certain things happen i think makes you a lot more experienced and this just it's a great story of success your whole story and just everything you've done so thank you once more for being on the home service expert i appreciate it thanks buddy it's been fun great questions thank

you hey guys i really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I wanted to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com. Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the book. I poured two years of knowledge into this book and I had 12 contributors everybody from the COO at home advisor to the CEO of Alpac and of course Aura the CEO of service Titan it tells you how to have the right mindset and become

a millionaire and think like a millionaire it goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you want to be calling, where you can make money and get great reviews. It also goes into simple things like how to attract A players. Listen, if you want a great apple pie, you need to buy good apples and you need to know where to buy those apples. And it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score. You should have your financial check every week. You should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might

have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope you pick up the book and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day. Tune in next week. Thank you.