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SOLO | Make Money by Going for "Stupid Goals" - Lessons from my Steve Sims interview
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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show. On this episode, it's just me, you and the mic and we're talking about the lessons and takeaways that I've had from previous guests here on the show. And today's episode is dedicated to a friend of mine, Steve Sims. Steve came on my show several times over the years. He was the first paid speaker that I ever paid for at an event actually. Well, to be fair, I didn't actually pay him a speaking fee. It's just that he spent a lot of time in Thailand in his professional career early on and loved Thailand. And so I was taking a group of people out to Thailand for like a mastermind retreat and asked Steve to come out to Thailand and he was like, okay, sure, you don't have to pay my speaking fee. Just pay for business class flights to Thailand for me and my wife, which ended up being like close to ten grand or something like that. So no speaking fee, but kind of his baking fee. But anyway, we got to hang out in Thailand for a few days and then that was sort of like the beginning of a really cool friendship. And since then, very unfortunately, Steve got cancer and passed away from it in the last few months. And so anytime I see his name, I try to take a, take a beat and remember Steve for all the good things that he put out into the world. And so this episode, it's might take me a second to get through it just because Steve was a good dude and, and genuinely, genuinely cared for the people around him led in a truly authentic way. And one of the people inside of the self help kind of coaching guru world who was his, he was one of the good eggs, you know, and I'm, I'm just, I miss the guy. So anyway, all right, hold together because if Steve saw me being like this, he'd be making fun of me for it. So anyway, here are a few of the lessons. Takeaways from my, from one of my conversations that I had with Steve Sims here on the podcast. And we don't know who Steve is. He was coined by Forbes as the real life wizard of Oz. He had a high level concierge business for quite some time called Blue Fishing. And basically he would put together the most insane experiences that you can imagine for the ultra wealthy. And I'm not talking about like a list celebrities type people, I'm talking about actually wealthy people. And he actually told me a couple stories where like he turned down that there was something the Kardashians wanted him to do something for, for something in their family and they were going to put it on the TV show and like that was how he was going to be paid for it or whatever. And he was just like, honestly don't want that type of publicity. Our firm, like your ideal audience does not match with the people who come to this firm for what we do. So like he turned down deals with multiple a list celebrities because they tried to get stuff for free. And he was just like, yeah, that's not how I do business. And what I do is so unique and specific that a lot of those people couldn't even afford the things that he did. So just to work with them, first of all, it was a six figure wire transfer, like just to engage his services, plus all of the amazing things that it on top of it. And so they would just put together crazy experiences for wealthy people. My favorite one probably was that they made this guy James Bond for a week. So they hired screenwriters from Hollywood to write a script to show what was exactly going to happen. They put a bunch of extras inside of a restaurant and a van came by, the restaurant barged in, kidnapped him and he had to escape and get the girl and drive an Aston Martin. It was just like, it was just such a cool thing that he was able to do for this person. And then there was one person who was like, oh, I would love to go to a Journey concert and get maybe backstage passes. So he's like, well, what can we do to wow them? So instead of just getting them backstage tickets to Journey, he got the person on stage and they actually got to sing two or three songs with the band. Then the one that he talks about a lot is this person wanted to impress his future in laws and take, take his fiance to a special dinner in the Vatican. And so instead of just finding a place for the dinner reservation, he found a way to have this couple eat a private dinner at the feet of the statue. Of David and brought in Andrea Bocelli to serenade them while they ate food. And the way he told the story was funny just because there was one time where Andrea Bocelli was singing, and then he stepped in and started singing with Andrea Bo. Because he was like, it's Andrea Bocelli, man. I'm like, of course I'm going to step in and sing with the guy. And then was politely asked to stop singing and ruin. Ruin the song. But, yeah, so he basically just made a living from doing stupid, crazy, impossible stuff for people who had a lot of money. And his clients were more like, you know, leaders of countries, like heads of state, multi billionaires. Like, it was not sort of the, you know, quote, unquote rich crowd. It was the ultra wealthy. And so really, really great at relationships, really easy guy to get along with. He would put on private events and, you know, in Mon Monaco, for Formula one, for Ferrari, and all this just crazy, crazy stuff. So really cool guy, really awesome career. Wrote a couple of great books. One's Blue Fishing, then the other one is Go for Stupid. And so this conversation was after he wrote the second book and we talked a little bit more about going for stupid goals. So number one, first takeaway, first lesson. Stupid goals are the strategy. Stupid goals are the strategy. Most people aim small because they're afraid of looking foolish. Steve's whole philosophy and the book that he wrote during COVID Go for stupid, is built on the opposite truth. The bigger and more ridiculous the goal, the more it forces, forces you to think differently, build new systems, find the right people, and unlock outcomes that a modest goal never would. And this is sort of the same conversation as the 10x is greater than 2x that the book from Ben Hardy, where it's just like, if you build bigger things, if you do crazy stuff, then the competition removes itself along the way because you're doing stuff that most people just initially check off the box and just go, well, that's impossible. No way that's going to happen. And then Steve did it. And so when he did do the impossible things, he got paid very, very well to do, quote, unquote, impossible things. So stupid goals are the strategy. Aiming for 1000% growth isn't reckless. It's the. It's the frame that forces genuine reinvention that gets you to think wildly differently than thinking about, like, oh, how do we go from 1 million to 1.2 million? It's like, okay, well, how do we go from 1 million to 10 million? Thought processes are totally different. Strategy is going to be totally different products and services might even change. Hiring strategy changes. Everything changes when you start thinking about how do we pursue this like massive stupid goal rather than just like doing the acceptance, you know, goal that most people are expecting us to
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number two when you love what you're doing, you're more magnetic, not just happier. So it's like, yeah, of course you're happier, of course you're more fulfilled in your personal work, but you're actually more magnetic as well. Like people will want to do business with you more. So Steve didn't he shut down Bluefish, his company, because the money dried up. He shut it down because the soul was gone. His point wasn't about following passion for its own sake. It was a strategic decision that he made. Because when you're doing the work that energizes you, you just show up differently. You're more present, you're more compelling, you're more magnetic to the right clients and relationships. And especially in that context that he was operating in, you kind of have to be that way in order to be able to get these massive people as clients of yours. So when heart isn't in it, people can feel that too. So the work of clearing out what you don't want creates room to do more of what you do want. And so that's why he ended up shutting down his concierge business, Bluefish, a few years before we had this conversation or a couple years before we had this convers conversation was actually pretty recent because it was just like, it's not like there were no people who were wanting his services anymore. He just got fed up with the work, didn't want to do it anymore, which became more difficult to attract more people into the business. And then, you know, became a drag on him instead of something that really fired him up. So he changed what he was doing. And it made him happier and that it made him as a brand more magnetic. And he had a great career as a public speaker and sort of authority within the personal branding space and stuff like that. Number three, alone time isn't rest, it's maintenance for your operating system. So Steve talks about this in the context of riding motorcycles. He loved to ride motorcycles. He didn't look at them like for him it wasn't about a vacation. It's like a mandatory recalibration. And he argues that entrepreneurs especially need deliberate time where nobody can reach them. No phone, no team, no input, no podcast, no music. Just the quiet where you have the honest conversation with yourself about, you know, whether you actually like what you're doing, whether you're moving toward what really matters to you, what needs to change in your life. So the inability to sit with yourself for 30 minutes with no distractions, as he put it, is a red flag. It tells you something's off. It's feedback that's telling you that something needs to change. You've got to be will. You got to be able and willing to take 30 minutes an hour, just you by yourself, reflecting, thinking and allowing room for growth and change. Number four, real relationships are two way. Everything else is just managing transactions. So real relationships are two way streets. Steve has met more famous and powerful people than almost anyone alive. And his whole model was never about collecting access. It was about earning a seat at the table through offering genuine value and real interest. And this is what, this is. What made him so unique and valuable is he grew up like the son of a bricklayer in, in England. So he has this like, you know, deep English accent and wears a black T shirt and bald as a goatee and walks into rooms with billionaires and you know, like, but he just doesn't care because he's so uniquely him and he was, he was just so genuine of a dude that, that ability to show up like that allowed him to walk into those rooms with confidence and to understand the, the position that he was in. And that, that, that self awareness and just confidence to show up the way that he was, especially for rooms like that is unique. It's different. It's not something that everybody's willing to do. So he would show up looking for, how do I offer genuine value here? How do I, how do I put out genuine interest? And he draws a sharp line between a connection, which is a one way transaction triggered by utility, and relationship, which requires constant give and take over time. And I think there's a, there's a great contrast between these two things. A connection being a one way transaction triggered by utility and a relationship which requires constant give and take. So I have thousands of connections at this point from doing the podcast, from, from being around events and businesses and masterminds and all that kind of stuff. Lots of connections and lots of transactions triggered by utility. Things that are like, hey, you're good at what you do, here's some money, let me have that thing. And vice versa, I'm good at what I do, here's how much I charge, I'll help you to that thing. These are transactional connections that are triggered by the utility that we each have of each other because we're good at the thing that we do. And those are necessary, by the way. It's, it's not to say that you should not have any of those or that's a bad thing to have. You should have a lot of those because you can't have real relationships, like what he's saying here, that require this give and take and require a lot of time. You can't have that many relationships and, and like over, like, over, like you just, you physically cannot have a thousand of those types of relationships, but you can't have a thousand connection that are just based on mutual, you know, utility. So he's just saying that there, that real relationships, if you want to develop more of those, it's a two way street, it's going to take time. And there's constant give and take on both sides. The people who think that a business card, a LinkedIn request, or, you know, seeing someone at the same conference every year constitutes a relationship are just living in fantasy, fantasy land. It's not a real relationship. So think about the connections and the relationships that you have in your life, understand where those things fit into other things and then see like, hey, is there a connection that I want to turn in a relationship? Is there a relationship, relationship that I want to just maybe move back into a connection? How do I, how do I navigate these things and how do I actually build real relationships beyond just more connections? Number five, the people laughing at you are the leading indicator that you're on the right track. If nobody's laughing at you, if nobody's making fun of you, if nobody's talking shit about you, you're probably not doing anything worth talking about, worth talking shit about. So when Steve spent some personal time with Elon Musk While walking through SpaceX, Elon said, They'll always laugh at you just before they applaud. And every name we hold up as a visionary, whether it's Musk or Jobs or, you know, Henry Ford or Richard Branson or Walt Disney were. Every single one of those people was publicly mocked while they were building the thing. Steve's argument is that ridicule is actually a form of market validation. If your idea is safe enough that nobody thinks it's crazy, it's probably just not interesting enough to change anything. So go for the goal that makes people look at you like you just got possessed with something. Like, they're always going to talk crap and anything new is going to be perceived as a threat. So people are going to say it's not going to work and then they'll. And then as soon as it works, then they applaud you and go like, wow, you're such a genius. And I knew all along you were going to make it. It's just like, okay, well, save that for somebody who cares because that's not how you were along the way. But I like the idea of ridicule being a form of market validation. To say that, like, you're. If you're receiving a lot of ridicule, if you have a lot of polarizing conversations, discussions, or people have hard opinions about the thing that you're doing, it probably means that you're on the, on the right track, that this is a form of market validation here. You should not use this as something to say that you're, you're not doing the right thing. Is. This is actually something to say that you are doing the right thing, that you're on the right track here. So, man, I miss Steve. Love Steve. Such a good dude. Somebody who I never regretted spending any time with. So, you know, let his legacy live on and go pick up a copy of his books, listen to his podcasts, listen to his episode on my show. He's got a lot of great wisdom and knowledge to share and he's one of the best people, like just human beings that I've ever met through the industry that I've been in. And not everybody's that way. So go, go check out anything that you can from Steve Sims. He's the man. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
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