[Susan Friedmann]
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
Today, my special guest is Steve Sims Sims. For more than two decades, he was the goo contact for the wealthiest people on the planet. As the founder of the world's leading experiential concierge firm, Steve Sims utilized his talent for connecting with people's passions and making things happen to develop a client list of the world's rich and famous, including Elon Musk and John Elton.
Quoted as the Real-life Wizard of Oz by Forbes and Entrepreneur magazine. Steve Sims is the bestselling author of Blue the Art of Making Things Happen. He's a sought-after coach, the top 30-rated speaker in the US. Keynoting at major conferences at the Pentagon and at Harvard. The topic Steve Sims enjoys talking about most is "Go for Stupid: what would you achieve if you weren't afraid of being laughed at?"
And in this age where people are terrified to do anything that might be laughed at, Steve Sims is the exact opposite. And that's the main reason I invited him here to be this week's guest, expert, and mentor.
So, Steve Sims, what a pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being here.
[Steve Sims]
Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor.
[Susan Friedmann]
Well, good one. Brit to another. I love it, Steve Sims. You teach people how to ignore what everyone else thinks about and go for big, stupid, ridiculous goals. I just love this. And so many of our authors, as I was telling you before we started recording, they want their books to be successful. They want to be successful, but somehow they stand in their own way of doing that. Talk to us about that and how we can think differently about promoting a book and ourselves.
[Steve Sims]
Sadly, we've always had imposter syndrome. We've always had this situation where people have been easily knocked, especially a first-time author or anyone first time doing anything. It's easy for them to go, well, I'm new at this. I'm not sure, and I've put my heart into it, but just maybe I'm not good enough. The problem is, we tend to recognize too many people's opinions that don't matter. The people that can't afford you, you shouldn't be listening to. The people that don't or won't be impacted by you. Why should you listen to them? And the downside is this listening to the wrong people is actually amplified. We've got social platforms now where people have nothing better to do all day than just to jump on the social and rant and shout and just blow out the toxicity that affects and upsets people.
And some people, I say some people are vulnerable to that. Now, me, and I'm not joking here, my wife actually said that one of my superpowers was ignorance. I'm very closed. I'll go and do something and I will just go ahead and I'll force my way through and I'll work my vision and my passion and I'm going for my end goal. And if there's a bunch of people down the side scoping and laughing and Jimmy, I literally don't see them. And the downside is it's not usually those people around us that is our biggest problem.
As you quite openly said it's ourselves. It's in those quiet moments when we're in the kitchen making a cup of coffee and that little self-doubt comes in, our head starts whispering and going, oh, maybe you shouldn't do that, or maybe you shouldn't be on that pocket or maybe you shouldn't be on stage, or maybe you shouldn't write that book. Don't finish it. What will happen if you believe it and we get that self-doubt? The danger today is there's too much noise. That really doesn't matter.
[Susan Friedmann]
And that's so true. I mean, there is so much noise out there and yes, this imposter syndrome and yes, we can talk about it, how do we release that? Yes, not noticing other people, but that's sometimes quite hard when you are surrounded by all this noise, as you rightly say. So first of all, yes, how can we sort of put the blinders on? How can we put the earplugs in our ears and just walk forward doing something audacious good, something really outstanding?
[Steve Sims]
Yeah, I'm glad you've actually focused on that because it's very easy to say, oh, don't listen to them when they're all gearing at you and sometimes when you're gearing at you. Let's get into the tactics of how you do this. What is the point of what you're writing? What is the point of what you're speaking about? What is the point of what you educate? Don't focus on yourself. That's where we get upset.
Focus on your message and then work out, okay, who am I trying to impact? And what will the outcome be if they don't hear it? If you've got a message, whether it be an expansion of business, dealing with trauma, dealing with relationships, dealing with abuse, or dealing with scale in your business, what is going to be the impact on the person if your message doesn't get to them? So stop worrying about yourself, stop worrying about what your hair looks like, stop worrying about what you sound like, and start worrying if your message doesn't reach the ears of the person, you can help.
If you're walking down the street and you see someone just about a step in front of a car, you don't pull out a mirror just to check your hair is okay.
You do whatever you can. You jump, you miss, scraping your knees, scraping your new shoes to save that person because you need to help that person. Then all of a sudden you don't matter. You need to focus on that. Your message is important, not you. You're nothing more than the carrier. You're nothing more than the vessel, but your message needs to reach that person that it can help, and you need to think, I'm saving that person.
[Susan Friedmann]
Yes. And books can save people's lives. People are writing books because they've experienced something and they've gotten healed or they were a drug addict, and they managed to overcome that addiction, and they want to share that experience with other people to help others who are in similar situations. So, yes, these important things that they've done and the message, they are the vessel to bring that message to the public. You talk about "Go for Stupid." You've done crazy things in your life. Why do we even think like that? You know, shooting for the moon, you're like, okay.
[Steve Sims]
So this is where I upset people, and I would apologize, but I'm not going to. Most of the reason that we stop going for stupid is because of our parents. Now, the book's called Go for Stupid because we always used to use that term in our office. I ran a very, very successful concierge firm for very, very wealthy individuals, and people would say, hey, I want to do this. And we'd be like, right, okay, I've heard you. But how can we make that request a stupid one? What we're going to do for this person? Ridiculous.
Do you want to go backstage and meet your favorite box staff? That's not good enough. Let's put you on stage and you can sing with them. Do you know you want to learn how to play the piano? Let's get Elton John. Do you want to learn how to play drums? Let's get Guns and Roses.
Do you want to go and see a movie? No, let's put you in the movie. We would always try and find a stupid audacious goal and go for that with the understanding that, hey, we may not achieve it, but it will always be far more in advance to what the original request would be. Now, we used to get mocked up, but of course, we ended up doing it.
We worked with Elon Muskelt and John, the Vatican. We've done all these things. But we noticed that as we got kids, a bear in mind, I've got kids. When the kids are four and five years old and they're running around the room with a pillowcase tied around their neck, pretending as though they are a superhero, as parents, we go, what are you doing? They go, hey, I'm a superhero. We go, yes, you are, and we encourage it. We don't encourage it. When they're 18 years old, we say, grow up. Act your age. Get in line. Settle. And if you look at all of the people that we revere today, we look at the rock stars of today, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Larry Page, the Richard Branson.
All of these people had stupid ideas and then tried to work out how to make them work. If you look at Elon Musk, he knew nothing about the banking world and all of a sudden disrupted it with PayPal. Larry Page said, "we need a common area to connect and then we need to take that information and expand." He invented Google and then he got Steve Jobs that couldn't even write programming and code and invented the Apple Computer because he needed to make an easy creative interface that we would work with.
All of these people had audacious goals and they went for that stupidity. I would say that their success and mine and all of the people that I know, we remained curious, aggravated five-year-olds. Now, if you're a curious, aggravated five-year-old, you don't know how the remote control works. So what do you do? You take it apart and you look inside. You may not be able to put it back together again, but hey, now you know what the inside of the remote control looks like. I think today what we need to do is we need to become, all of us, curious, aggravated five-year-olds. Can you imagine what if the entire planet existed of those, what we could achieve?
[Susan Friedmann]
I think it would be pretty scary because I'm not sure what it would achieve.
[Steve Sims]
But yes, I think it's different. You see today, and I understand what you're thinking. You're thinking of the mayhem, the chaos. But look at the planet today. We actually want to jeer people. There you go. I'll play a game with you, susan, do you have a car?
[Susan Friedmann]
I do.
[Steve Sims]
Do you have a truck?
[Susan Friedmann]
No.
[Steve Sims]
You don't want a truck?
[Susan Friedmann]
No. No desire to have a truck whatsoever? My girlfriend has got a truck.
[Steve Sims]
But you don't want a truck.
[Susan Friedmann]
I don't want a truck.
[Steve Sims]
OK. Do you remember when Elon Musk unveiled the cyber truck?
[Susan Friedmann]
I can't say I did, but I'll believe you that he did at some point in time.
[Steve Sims]
So he unveiled a cyber truck, this weird-looking vehicle, to the planet. And here's the weird thing. I've spoken to people all over the planet and I'm going to pay you an honor here. You are the only person that I've ever spoken to that don't recall him doing the unveiling online of his cyber truck. And I did a podcast the other day with a girl, she was a student in Korea. And I said to her, do you have a truck? And she said, no, I have a push bike. I said, do you want a truck? She said, we'd have nowhere to park it and we could never afford a truck. And I said to her, did you see the unveiling of the cyber truck? And she said, My whole family did. We watched it on TV. So the point is, Elon Musk unveiled a cyber truck and he unveiled it, that even people in different countries that could never be his client don't have any interest in the truck. They saw the unveiling before the end of the webinar, before the end of the live stream he had sold out of every single cyber truck that he did. Do you remember seeing anything in the newspaper about the glass breaking when someone threw a rock at it?
[Susan Friedmann]
I do not. But then you see, I'm ignorant about these things.
[Steve Sims]
He actually did a thing in the cyber truck that they were bulletproof glass windows.
[Susan Friedmann]
Okay.
[Steve Sims]
And to test it on stage, he actually had a rock thrown at the window and it pierced the window. It went through the window the following day in the newspapers worldwide. It wasn't honoring him for inventing something so strange, so new, so revolutionary. It wasn't honoring that he actually managed to captivate the planet, apart from you, of this new truck. It wasn't to honor him or revere him. These sold out of every available slot before the end of the two-hour window. They had the headlines laughing at him because his bulletproof glass didn't work. You see, on today's planet, society would rather laugh at you than support you. Rather than challenge you and revere you and encourage you. We'd rather mock you. Let's be serious.
The British are Olympic champions at it. We love to put people up on pedestals and then we like to knock them down. That causes a lot of people to fear to even try anything because they don't want to be attacked. And as a five-year-old, you wouldn't care. As a five-year-old, if someone is laughing at you, you wouldn't pay them attention for 3 seconds, and then you'd move on and you'll forget about it. I think we'd have a happier place if we all start focusing like that.
[Susan Friedmann]
I love the idea. I love the concept, just thinking so differently about this. But yes, the idea is that people find something to market. I even said to my husband the other day, I wish they would say something good in the news. It's like we can only hear negative things. Everything is negative, as you say. It's laughing at somebody, making fun of them. Yeah. And it's overcoming that. And I'm thinking of a few of my authors who come to me and they say, I want to sell a million books. And I say, okay, well, how do you plan on doing that? How many people do you have on your list? And they don't have anybody, but they haven't any idea. They just feel, okay, a million books sounds like that's what I want to do. But they have no idea how to go about it. I'm not even sure that they even want to actually try it, but they think about it.
[Steve Sims]
I kind of think the opposite there. I'd argue with you on that. If someone's got a goal of a million, great, we've now got a goalpost. Now let's work in reverse. You see, it's the people that don't have goals and then go out trying that they don't know what they're going for. And you're never going to achieve it. If you don't know what you're going for, if you know that you're going for a million books to be sold and you have no followers, then your problem is your community. So focus on your community. The good thing about having an end goal is you can reverse engineer yourself into it.
[Susan Friedmann]
That's beautiful. Yes. I'm going to look at all these crazy things. When people come to me with, you know, I want to sell a million books or I'm going to sell a thousand books in a few months, I'm like, okay, great. Yes. And you stay reverse engineer it.
[Steve Sims]
Yeah.
[Susan Friedmann]
What would it take to do that? I got an author currently, she's talking about 1000 books in a few months and she's talking about making a call every day to an influencer who can help her sell those books. She's looking at who does she know who can influence? A large group of people who, if they say, buy this, they're going to buy it?
[Steve Sims]
Yep.
[Susan Friedmann]
Your Go for Stupid book is coming out shortly.
[Steve Sims]
Yes, 18 October.
[Susan Friedmann]
The 18 October. It will be out by the time this podcast goes out. Talk to us about the premise of that book. Are there lessons in that book since I wasn't able to look at that book beforehand? Talk to us about what could we find if we buy a copy of that book, what's it going to help us do?
[Steve Sims]
So there's a lot of tactics in there on how you need to market, connect, communicate, and build and focus on your relationships. There's also a lot of humorous stories of what I did with some of the greatest people on the planet, how I did it, and hoping that you're looking at and go, Hang on a minute. If he can do it, I can. There's also an underlying aggravation that we are a society that is growing and bellowing intoxicity.
And you said quite openly, the news never shows us any good news. Can you imagine if we woke up tomorrow morning, we turned the news on, and for the hour that the news was on, it was only good news? Can you imagine how motivated and driven you would be to go out into the world if all you ever saw was positivity on the news? But you won't. You'll see doom and gloom and disaster and recession. The news is the first place in the morning that will depress you. I had a friend of mine, Peter Diamandis, he said to me, I never watched the news in the morning. Why should I wake up fresh, spend 2 hours getting depressed, and then the next rest of the day trying to get back up to a positive mental state? It just made no sense. He said, I never watch the news if it's important, someone to contact me. I started doing that. I never watched the news in the morning. I never listened to the news. It'll come to me I'll get an alert, I'll see it pop up on social, I'll get an email. I don't need to be depressed for 2 hours. So the book's going to give you all the tactics on how to start focusing on a positive mindset, how to communicate, how to actually be able to go for ridiculous and stupid goals, and how to identify those people around you that can actually challenge you to be able to achieve them.
[Susan Friedmann]
It sounds really exciting. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Because you're right. I went through a stage where I wouldn't watch any news at all and then all of a sudden I've got sucked back into watching it. And you're right, it's doom and gloom and first thing in the morning isn't exactly what you want to fill your mind with. Rather something that's creative and something that's going to allow you to think outside the box.
[Steve Sims]
Isn't it sad, though, that doing good, supporting, challenging, all of those things are classes out of the box? Isn't that kind of ridiculous when they should be? When someone says, hey, I want to do this, I want to make a million, I want to sell a million books, rather than everyone around going, but you've got no followers. Wouldn't it be really good if we all got together to see how we can achieve that goal and challenge each other? If we could find a solution for that person to sell a million books, we can find a solution for anybody to sell a million books. That is what we should be focusing on.
[Susan Friedmann]
Yes. I sold half a million books to one company, and that wasn't necessarily my goal, but it turned out it was like I didn't even realize that that was possible, but it happened. You just have to look at who can support you in doing what you want to do. And as you rightly said earlier, is that reverse engineering? And wouldn't it be nice if we could collaborate? And I'm doing this with some of my authors. It's like, how can they all help each other promote each other's books? And everybody's got their own lists and you help them get it out in the world because they've got an important message. And the more people who can see and know about this message, the better. There's another thing, too, that is standing, I believe, in front of the book that you, the author, are what's really important. You're the vessel. The book yes. Is also the vessel. But the book doesn't have the same energy, or life as you sharing your message. Yes, I'm going to buy your book. Yes. I'm going to be excited to read it. And now having interviewed you, even more so because your energy is going to come out for me in that book. That's what the author is all about, I believe, is giving real life to your book and your message.
[Steve Sims]
I agree with you, but I don't want people to think that this is a tough prospect. I do a lot of podcasts. Obviously, I'm doing a lot of things at the moment on stage. I'm speaking literally all over the planet at the moment because of the book launch. But you've got to roll this snowball down the hill and it will build its momentum. See, the beautiful thing is, I'm doing this podcast with you now, okay? There are people that are going to hear it now. Let's say, for sake, 100 people hear it. In six months' time, this podcast is still there. In a year's time, this podcast is still there. So when people go, oh, I've heard about this book, I don't know anything about this guy, and they look me up, they may listen to your podcast and they may go, wow, I've got to get this podcast. He's so dynamic, it's so great. But this stays there. So all you've got to do is you've got to put the effort and energy in at the beginning and create that momentum. I did Blue Fishing five years ago, and I put some momentum behind it, and I'm still reaping the rewards off of that, still making the retainers off of that. And now there's a second one coming in, so you don't have to think, oh, my God, this is going to consume my world. No, but you do have to be an integral part if you want it to be successful, because you're right, if you were reading my book to somebody, they wouldn't get the same energy as me reading my book to somebody. So you have to be the voice, you have to be the mouth of your message to get that out there.
[Susan Friedmann]
Are you going to do an audio version of your book?
[Steve Sims]
I am. I did the audio version for Blue Fishing, and it was the most painful experience of my life. I love daylight. I live in Los Angeles. I love natural light. I love air. So being stuck in a recording studio for two days, with no windows, no air, and no natural light, was a very painful experience for me. But it did so well for me that I've got to do an audiobook. But don't expect to hear that until 2023. At the moment. It's going to be hardback only six months' time. We'll pull out the paperback. In between that, we'll do the audio.
[Susan Friedmann]
Excellent. Yes, your energy will come through and it's contagious. So that's always so important when your message is out there. People buy based on passion and excitement. And if you're excited and passionate about your message, it's like that is it's contagious. Whereas if you're not excited, why should anybody else be?
[Steve Sims]
And the key is, my excitement for my story is going to be different from your excitement to your story. But it's your story, so it gives it authenticity. If someone gave me one of their books and said, I read this because you're more exciting, it wouldn't come across as authentic. You have to do your story and if you do, it will work better for you.
[Susan Friedmann]
Yes, I think it would be hard to do you.
[Steve Sims]
Have the accident?
[Susan Friedmann]
I was just going to say you have the company accent. I love it. It's beautiful. You've been quoted and I said this in the intro. The real-life wizard of ours.
[Steve Sims]
Yep.
[Susan Friedmann]
How come Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine said this about you?
[Steve Sims]
They started to find out about this guy, that all the billionaires were going to make him interesting. And as I always used to say, I give billionaires interesting cocktail stories. And that was always my pitch. And people suddenly started finding out about me and started interviewing me and talking about me. And all of a sudden I got a lot of press all over the planet.
I was in the South China Morning Post. I was on Australian sunrise TV, which is like the equivalent of the BBC and the Today Show in Europe and America. I was literally all over the planet. And I had gone from being completely unknown to all of a sudden people knew who I was.
And then Entrepreneur did an article on me and then so did Forbes, and it was a massive article they did, and for a big part of it, it actually ruined part of my business because a lot of the billionaires would pretend it was their connections that got them access when it wasn't. It was just me. So all of a sudden they couldn't use me anymore because they didn't want to look like they needed my help. So I actually lost a lot of business out of it from that side of the business. But once the book came out, I was happy. And now I teach and train other people how they can do miraculous stupid goals. And it's worked very well for me. But the articles and I was just saying earlier, when you've got that kind of media and that kind of press, it doesn't go away. So that article came out, I don't know, ten years ago, maybe twelve years ago, and people still talk about it.
[Susan Friedmann]
Well, it's something to talk about because not too many people would give that kind of quote to, even though, as you said, it might have lost your business in the short term. In the long term, it sounds as if it made you a lot more business, potentially. I don't know.
[Steve Sims]
Yeah, it did. Let's not lie. We're friends. It did very well for me. And I'm thrilled, I will be honest with you. The first day, a true story. I was in bed and a friend of mine from the East Coast phoned me up and woke me up at about 07:00 in the morning. And he's like, hey, wizard the boss? And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? He's like, hey, you're the wizard. He kept on repeating it. I was like, what are you talking about?
And he went, you don't know. And I went, no. And then he sent me the article and told me that I was being quoted as the real-life Wizard of Oz. And I was like, oh, my god. And I was mortified that I suddenly had that attention. This was before a book and everything. I was really upset. And that day I was very depressed because I was thinking to myself, oh, dear, I'm being called to real-life Wizard of Oz. This is not good. And of course, within the month, some of my clients started dropping off, and I'm thinking, this is terrible. This is the worst thing that could have happened. But of course, someone read it. I got a book deal. I started doing more TV, more stages, so, yeah, it paid off well for me. But the first day, I was a little bit depressed.
[Susan Friedmann]
As one door closes, another one opens.
[Steve Sims]
I believe they say yes, and that's it.
[Susan Friedmann]
So that's interesting that you actually admitted and thank you for doing that, being so honest, saying you got down and you're like, oh, my goodness, this is not what I wanted. But yet it turned out differently, even though, first of all, you didn't enjoy the fact to be known as the real-life Wizard of Oz, which I think is a great compliment, it sounds as if something scared you about that. Is that the case? What actually was going through your mind at that time?
[Steve Sims]
I didn't think I wanted that attention. I'd always been a guy that just kind of, like, rolled around and did my own stuff, and I've lived around a lot of celebrity status and a lot of fame and a lot of power, and people treat you differently. They talk to you differently. They want things, and I never ever wanted that, and still don't want it. And so whenever I saw that, I was like because I would be with people that couldn't even leave their house to get a coffee.
There were paparazzi outside their house or people that hated them, and I would be able to just leave their mansion or their penthouse, and go and get a coffee. I used to bring them back a cup of coffee. Now they'll have a coffee machine in there, but sometimes you just want a McDonald's hamburger or you just want an ice cream from the local ice cream store. There's something about just being able to do that that these people can't do. And they were like, can you get me a coffee at the bottom of the street? I'm like, really? I just like coffee. I don't want it to be made from a barista machine in a china cup. I just want a cup of coffee and a little paper cup, and I would go down and get it, and of course, no one would bother me when I'm going back. Someone who can't even leave his house just to get a coffee. So when I started getting that kind of notoriety, it concerned me how far it would go.
[Susan Friedmann]
Yeah, I totally get that. And I've told the story to the fact that I've held myself back many times because I saw so many of my speaker colleagues having family issues because they were on the road the whole time and they were making a lot of money and being famous. Speaking all over the world. And yet they came home. Their family life was a wreck between the kids and the spouse. And I was like. I don't want that. My family is far too important to me. So I sort of held myself back because I didn't want that kind of fame and notoriety for myself because I thought that it would actually ruin what I treasured, what my core values are. So, yes, it's sad in a way. It's really sad. They have all this money and this fame, this notoriety, and yet they have put themselves in a sort of like a glass box. They can't get it.
[Steve Sims]
It is tough.
[Susan Friedmann]
Steve Sims, if people wanted to get hold of you, the book, talk to us about what you would like them to do as a result of listening to you here.
[Steve Sims]
Well, you can find me at Steve Sims Sims anywhere. D for Dashing and one M in Sims. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. I'm the same everywhere. If you want to visit my website, I'm at SteveSims..com. Or you can just type in Goforstupid.com. If you visit any of those websites, you'll hear about the book when it comes out and when it's there, you'll get to see about blue fishing and there's quite a lot of ways of getting me, but just Google Steve Sims.
[Susan Friedmann]
And I'll put that in the show notes. It's easy for people to just click a link.
[Steve Sims]
Perfect.
[Susan Friedmann]
Steve Sims, if you could leave our listeners with a golden nugget, what would that be?
[Steve Sims]
No one cares about you. They care about your message. And as soon as you realize that, you're really not going to care how your hair looks that day, I love that.
[Susan Friedmann]
Next time I think about looking in the mirror, how do I look? Do I have lipstick on? Is my hair okay?
[Steve Sims]
Perfect.
[Susan Friedmann]
No. Nobody cares. And you're absolutely right, they really do. They don't care what you're wearing. They care more about themselves than about you. So thank you. I really appreciate you sharing your wisdom so generously.
And by the way listeners If your book isn’t selling the way you wanted or expected it to, let’s jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales. You’ve invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy and it’s time you got the return you were hoping for.
Go to BrainstormwithSusan.com to schedule your free call.
In the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success!
Click here to find out more about Steve's book "Go For Stupid"
Go to BrainstormwithSusan.com to schedule your free call.
