Gamifying Life, Making Things Stupid, & Playing to Win by Changing Your Algorithm with Steve D. Sims

“Son, if you don’t quit today, you’ll be me tomorrow.” ~ Steve D. Sims Grandad

Guest Bio: Do you know anyone that’s worked with Sir Elton John or Elon Musk, sent people down to see the wreck of the Titanic on the sea bed or closed museums in Florence for a private dinner party and then had Andrea Bocelli serenade them while they eat their pasta? You do now…   Quoted as “The Real Life Wizard of Oz” by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine, Steve D. Sims is a best selling Author with “BLUEFISHING – the art of making things happen” & “Go For Stupid – The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals.” He is a sought-after coach, top-rated speaker after keynoting at a variety of networks, groups and associations as well as the Pentagon and Harvard – twice!

SHOW NOTES: 

• Website: https://SteveDSims.com
• Distillery Website: https://www.stevedsims.com/simsdistillery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stevedsims/
• Takeaway Tips: Never use the word impossible. When dealing with the mega-rich, don’t pay them. Fund their charities and passion projects. 

REMARKABLE LISTENER SPECIAL OFFER(S):

• Free video eBook at https://GoForStupid.com

CORE THEMES, KEYWORDS, & MENTIONS:

• Trouble maker, high standards, raising the bar, entrepreneurs, pushing boundaries, creative disruptors, angry young man, Irish, toxicity, poor mindset, wealth, money, human interaction, asking questions, designing stories, creating memories, Sir Elton John, Elon Musk, defy ventures, people connecting, common thread, mindset, time, relationship with time, saturation, changing your algorithm, bricklayer

For more Remarkable Episodes, Inspiration, and Motivation, please visit https://davidpasqualone.com/remarkable-people-podcast/. Enjoy!

Transcript

Gamifying Life, Making Things Stupid, & Playing to Win by Changing Your Algorithm with Steve D. Sims

David Pasqualone: Hello my Remarkable Friend, this is David Pasqualone with the Remarkable People Podcast, and today we have Steve D. Sims with us. He has a remarkable journey you're going to hear about, from being in a family of bricklayers for generations, to transitioning into working with exclusive high end billionaires.

And then he ends up being an author, a speaker. He's a coach and he's taking just some of that knowledge and sharing it and parting with us today. So you are going to get a great episode for someone who on paper had no future other than what his generations of family had. And you're going to see how he left that, started anew, and you can too.

Before we go, I just want to say thank you for being here. We just broke the 1 percent podcast record for top 1 percent podcast in the world, so I was [00:01:00] shocked, but I'm just so proud and to be part of this and to be with you each week. So please continue to like the podcast, share it with your friends and family.

Put blips about episodes if you think it'll help people on social media. And man, it just, it's just an honor to be with you today and to bring our guest. Also, we want to thank our sponsors. This season's sponsor. is MyPillow. MyPillow is not just great products, but they give to people all over the world.

They're fighting to keep the Constitution, the United States Constitution, and they have over 250 kick butt products to choose from, and I seriously use many of them, and they're so generous to us. They're not only an affiliate sponsor of the show, but with promo code REMARKABLE, You go to their website, mypillow.

com forward slash remarkable or pop in promo code remarkable or call up and use promo code remarkable and you get up to 80 [00:02:00] percent off everything you order. So they literally have adjustable beds, they have pillows, they have toppers, they have slippers, they have coffee, they have sheets, they have towels, they have a ton of wonderful products and when you use promo code remarkable, You get up to 80 percent off your entire order every time you order.

So for this Christmas and for all holidays and birthdays, and just for comforting yourself, go shop at MyPillow. com. Now at this time, our friend, Steve D. Sims is going to share with us his journey, his wisdom, his insight.

So get out your pens and papers, be ready to take notes and more than anything, be ready to apply them when it's over. I'm David Pasqualone. This is our friend, Steve D. Sims. Enjoy the episode now.

Narrator: The Remarkable People Podcast. Check it out.

The Remarkable People Podcast. [00:03:00] Listen. Do. Repeat. For Life!.

The Remarkable People Podcast.

David Pasqualone: Hey, Steve, how are you today,

Steve D. Sims: brother? I'm doing good. Thanks. Thanks for having

David Pasqualone: me. Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. I just told our listeners a little bit about you and just got their attention. The show's called the Remarkable People Podcast and you truly are a remarkable guy. So I know that I'm interested in hearing your story.

They're interested in hearing your story, but what we're going to do is along the way, we're going to break down your successes and what you're able to achieve in overcoming life. And to practical steps so our listeners can too.

Steve D. Sims: Sound good? Sounds fair. All right, brother.

David Pasqualone: Then let's do this. Where did Steve's life start out?

Good, bad, or ugly? Where were you born? What was your upbringing like? Let's start with the foundation of you.

Steve D. Sims: I'm very concerned [00:04:00] about dictating something as good, bad, or ugly because, you know, if we always focus on the successes, then we, we miss out on the lessons. So, some of the shittiest times of my life have actually ended up being some of the best.

But I was born in East London son of a bricklaying family, and basically left school at the age of 15 with no hope, no future, no idea, to end up working on my dad's building site. That was it. I didn't have Instagram to point out how inadequate my life was, I didn't have any Tony Robbins videos or cassettes at that time to kind of like rile me up and motivate me, but all entrepreneurs were born with this kind of gene, the one that doesn't accept what's going on, that aggravation, I call it, where we go, hang on, something's not right here, and I had that, I didn't know what to use it with, I didn't know how to kind of like, I utilize it, benefit from it, [00:05:00] profit from it, but I knew something wasn't right and I knew the building site wasn't where I was supposed to be.

So it was that aggravated gene in me that decided that I had to go out and find out for myself.

David Pasqualone: And when this is going on, how old were you before you first felt that itch or that, that, I'm different. There's something different here.

Steve D. Sims: Well, I don't know if it was like a, a superhero cape, but as a kid, as a kid, I got really pissed off.

And I remember, and we all know this, the classic thing, you're in school, the teacher's talking to you, either they're not holding your attention, we now call it ADHD or whatever, but the teacher's not holding your attention, you can't get a grasp of what you're being taught, you put your hand up, only to have every other kid look at you and go, oh you're doing your stop asking questions, and now You're just aggravated, you're not [00:06:00] captivated, you're not engaged, so you start creating trouble.

So, I remember as a kid There was this fine line between, Hey, the teacher's not grabbing my attention. Now I'm disrupting the class and I'm being sent off to the headmaster. So I knew from a very early age that something wasn't right. And usually you come up with the bad assumption or the bad decision that, well, it must be me.

I must just be a troublemaker. I just may be dumb. As you get older, you suddenly start realizing you just wasn't challenged. And how can they? You know, a teacher has to captivate. 40 kids in the class! You know, and teach each one of them at that, at the, at the correct training speed. You know, teachers, my God bless you, I don't know how you managed to do it, but for me I, I learned from a very early age that something wasn't right, but thankfully I realized it wasn't me, there was just something that I had to adjust.

David Pasqualone: Now, did you have any brothers and [00:07:00] sisters, and did they have the same itch, or was it just you?

Steve D. Sims: No, I didn't, and we were in a family of settlers. I've noticed that as I grew up. Standards play a great deal in my life. I have incredibly high standards and when I meet them, I raise them. But I noticed I was in an Irish bricklaying family where you were taught, hey, and we've all heard these lines, you know, you know, know your place, stick to your lane, you know, go, you know, go at the right speed, you know, don't, don't overstretch, don't overreach.

And all of those things are settler phrases. Entrepreneurs, we've always overreached and overcome. We've always pushed our boundaries. We've always pushed ourselves. We can't see the box, you know? Color within the box. Where is the box? You know, we, we're those kind of people. And so, I realized growing up that there was something that was different about me at school, and there was something different about me in the family.

And I think the first thing you have to do as a successful [00:08:00] entrepreneur is realize that You spend so much time trying to fit in, you have to realize you were never built to. And the first thing you have to do is try and go and find those other creative disruptors to suddenly realize that you're one of them, not one of those.

And as you're,

David Pasqualone: so now you're growing up and you finish school and your family is kind of like, you know, they're wired, say, differently. Where does your life go

Steve D. Sims: from there? Well, I believe life is, if you're lucky, a series of pivotal moments. And as a young lad, I was big, I was a big fella when I was at school, riding around on motorcycles, you know, so I'm this big, Biker guy that's aggravated and pissed off.

It wasn't, it wasn't a great cocktail. You know, people look to me, oh, he's a troublemaker. He's going to end up in jail. Oh, he's, [00:09:00] he's one of those, you know, that kind of thing. But I was constantly kind of, why does my life have to be like this? Why do I have to get up at five o'clock in the morning, go to a building site, come home at eight o'clock and I've still got no money and I've still got no hope.

And I've still got no direction. So I was a very. Angry young man, but not because I wanted to be violent, but because I wanted the answers. I wanted something. I wanted to be engaged in something. And I remember one day I got to the building site and I was, I was a trainee bricklayer. And I got to the building site and my dad said, Look, you can't do the bricks today.

We're low on labourers. You've got to do all the donkey work. You've got to, you know, look after us for the day. So I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm a young kid. You know, why not? Probably like 16, 17 by now. And I remember one day going up the ladder. I got a pile of bricks on my shoulder to drop off to the bricklayers on the scaffolding.

So I climb up this ladder and I get [00:10:00] to the top. My dad's there at the top. Next to him is his brother. So, my uncle. His sons, so my cousins. One of my cousins I think was 19, the other one was like 26. And then my grandad. Now my grandad was like late 70s, and he's on the build track. Now my grandad was a big fella, and I'm talking about 6'9 6'10 He was a big mammoth of an Irish guy.

I'm nearly six foot, I'm like 5'11 5'11 and a half. My dad is like 5'6 So my dad was the smallest fellow of this tribe. And the funny thing was, I remember, during the break, and it had been raining, so we're all shoehorned into this old caravan, trying to get out of the rain, trying to keep warm, all trying to drink some tea out of our thermos.

I squeezed through to my granddad, because what I'd seen was my entire family direction. From like, being 15 and [00:11:00] 16, my cousin at 19, my cousin at 26, my uncle, my dad, my grand There was my future! And so I, I squeezed through to Grandad and I, I, I knelt down in front of him and I remember this vividly with the colors, the smells, everything.

I said, Grandad, did you ever think you'd be doing this at your age? Now, of course, let's be honest, when you're on the building site at the age of 70 because you can't afford not to be, it's not a nice question. You know, my granddad didn't even look at me. He just blew into his team. He said, son, if you don't quit today, you'll be me tomorrow.

Wow. Damn. So I came out of that caravan and I jumped all over my dad and I was like, dad, dad, dad, you go. And my dad hated being called dad on the building site. So he's like, what? And I went, I gotta quit. I don't know why, but I went up the scaffolding and I saw that, I saw you, I saw that, I saw [00:12:00] Grandad. I went in to see Grandad in the car and he said, if you don't quit today, you'll be out.

I gotta quit! And he looked at my Grandad, and he looked at me, and he went, alright, you finish up Friday. Now, here's the funny thing. I don't know what look my Grandad gave my Dad, but they both understood that I had to get out. For my mum, whoa, that's where I first suddenly started to feel toxicity. She hated the fact that I was leaving the building trade and she was, she was from that moment on that night when she heard I was leaving, she was like, oh, you think you're better than us?

And I went, no, no, no, I think I'm better. I think I can do something. Let me try. She was like, Oh yeah, yeah, we're, we're not good enough for you. Whoa. She gave me shit from then on. And I realized very early on, they say you can't pick your family. But I realized very early on that, [00:13:00] that toxicity that's holding you back may actually be in your house.

The things that are stopping you go forward may actually be your family. And one of the toughest things in the planet is you've got to recognize that, realize it, and act accordingly.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, to draw those boundaries between, you know, you don't necessarily have to cut off your family, but at the same time you don't want to be abused by them.

So how did you, this is one of the parts of the show, how did you find that boundary? Did you go too far left or too far right and have an extreme or were you able to find a

Steve D. Sims: balance? I think I was able to find a tolerance. I realized that, you know, those people that are talking to you may not have your best intentions at heart.

So I realized that I had to kind of live a little bit of a lie when I was communicating with my mum. I remember I went off, I would jump forward, I don't know, five, six [00:14:00] years, and I started to make good money. And I came back and I told them that, you know, I'm making good monies. Everything's good. You know, I'm doing this, I'm doing that.

My dad was all good for me. But my mom, and I'm not kidding you, you can't make this shit up. My dad went off to get a beer, a can of beer for me. And my mum came in and she said, are you selling drugs? And I said, well, why would you think I'm selling drugs? She said, well, I can't believe that, you know, you're just traveling the world doing this, you know, there must be something else.

And she could have believed, she wanted, she would have been much happier if I'd have said, yes, mum, I am, I'm a drug dealer. She'd have been like, I knew it. And she'd have been happier. Because of that, but because I had worked my way through, again, both those downsides, those upsides, and those downsides again to get where I was, she couldn't believe I was where I was.

And so I had to then, whenever I was with her, I didn't tell her what I was up to. [00:15:00] Whenever I was traveling the planet, I wouldn't let her know. You know, I just had to handle my mum and that was, that was a tough thing, but I realized I had to tolerate and handle the relationship I had with her if I was to have any relationship with her at all.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, it's tough too because it affects your relationship with the rest of your family as well. So, between the moment on the roof and that moment with your mom, what happened? What did you end up doing? What did you, what lane did you land in?

Steve D. Sims: Well, we didn't have, we didn't have podcasts. We didn't have YouTube.

This was you know, a period before Google. So, I knew that there was an aggravation. I knew there was an itch that needed to be scratched. And I knew that I was poor. And I use the word poor a lot, and I use the word poor a lot in my coaching and my speaking, because poor isn't necessarily financially, it could be the mindset, a poor mindset.

So, but I noticed I was surrounded by poor people. And so, I wanted to get out and, you know, as a young kid, you ask a 15 year old what [00:16:00] does he want to be, he wants to be rich. And what is rich? Well, I want a million dollars in a bank account, you know? Fast forward now, if you've got a million dollars in a bank account and you're living in Manhattan, you're still poor.

So, you know, you suddenly start realizing that wealth and, and money are two different things. But as I was growing up, I realized that, or I thought, I wanted to hang around with rich people. So I tried getting jobs that would put me in that sandpit. And I was a bouncer, I was a security guard, I was a chauffeur, I sold jets, sold yachts, sold insurance, sold all these things trying to get into that environment.

And I could never connect. I was nothing more than a supplier. You know, if you were selling insurance, you know, they would buy what they wanted to buy, but you weren't building up a relationship. And I even ended up getting a job as a stockbroker in Hong Kong and I was living in London at [00:17:00] the time. So this was a big gamble on me, but I was all about taking risks.

If I wanted it, I knew I had to go for it. I ended up lasting in Hong Kong for about 24 hours. No word of a lie, I just, they realized I wasn't built for it, I couldn't cut it, I had no licenses, I didn't know what I was doing, how the bloody hell they had taken me on they don't know, but I ended up a couple of days later getting a job at a nightclub, and I was the doorman of this nightclub.

Now, entrepreneurs, We see things differently, you know, we're wired differently. First thing you got to realize is you're not like other people. Now on the door, I was with two other meat heads. They wanted to basically save as much blood as they could off of that shirt and go home with whoever the hot girl was with the night, you know, on that night, me, I now got a PhD in human psychology and interaction.

I was actually [00:18:00] seeing how people interacted with each other, and you've got those people that pretended they had money, but didn't really, those people that had money, and how they interacted, the girls trying to find the guys that had money, the people going out celebrating a job, celebrating a reunion on their first date, if I could recognize that human interaction, I'm My people skills was getting a doctorate overnight.

So I really liked being on the door because it was giving me that education. And I suddenly tried to find a way to get in with those people that had money. Now, if you're going out for the night, you want to know where the next night's going to be good. As a doorman, and with no Google around, I knew where the hot nightclubs were, I knew where the celebrities were showing up, I knew where the opening of some gala or gallery, all of a sudden I became the oracle of good nightlife, but I would only disperse that to those people with money, [00:19:00] and I would charge them.

Hey, you know, what are you doing Thursday night? Are you going to the yacht party? They were like, oh, I don't know how we can get in. We make a few phone calls, you know, I didn't even have a phone, but you know, I would try and make ways to make, and they'd be like, hey. I can get you, it's gonna cost you a couple of hundred bucks, but I can make it happen.

And I suddenly started becoming, you know, we've always got this, the man that can, you know, I know a guy. I became the guy of the nightlife and it went from nightlife to getting them hotels to getting them villas before Airbnb and, you know, all of a sudden, hey, you know, I want to go to Hollywood. Do you know anyone in Hollywood?

Yeah, sure I do. And then I'd work it out afterwards. So I, I just wanted. So, if I can do this, I can have your attention, and I can ask you, just like you are in podcasts, How do you handle relationships? How do you handle time? How do you handle stress? How do you employ people? How do you fire people? And all of a sudden, I was interviewing people [00:20:00] before podcasts existed.

And I was taking that information, adapting it to my lifestyle, and obviously benefiting from it. So, by default, I ended up opening up this luxury concierge firm that I only worked with billionaires and serious millionaires but I was really just trying to get this education and Lo and behold it released two books on a coaching and an event and you know where I am now.

David Pasqualone: Now talk about that So what did your company offer? Like you're billionaires, you're working with high end executives You know, CEOs, cop Fortune 100 companies. Why would they hire you? And what did you do for them? And I know it's a vast, vast array of

Steve D. Sims: things. Yeah, so, someone actually asked me once at a, at one of these parties, you know, what do you do?

And I said, I'll make your next cocktail story more interesting. And it was a flippant little statement, but that became it. [00:21:00] I gave you greater stories. You see, a lot of people, and especially entrepreneurs, and this was also a good thing, you know, the guy that's got money that's maybe inherited it, you know, wants to buy toys to show off.

Entrepreneurs, we want triggers, we want stories, we want memories. You know, most entrepreneurs never had money. So when they've got money and they can now have a villa in Tuscany and have a pizza making course with their family. They never had that when they were kids. So for them, it's that memory. It's that trigger.

And that's what I was able to create. I was able to, I was able to arrange access. I was able to create memories. I was able to design stories for you to live through. And that's why I became very well known for. You know, people loved, I had a client of mine that loved the rock band Journey. And he wanted front row access of Journey and to possibly meet them.

I thought that was too, [00:22:00] too small. So I actually got him on stage and he actually sang live with the rock band Journey, five tunes. And he's now recognized as the shortest term lead singer. of the rock band when they did a concert in San Diego. I had another client that wanted an amazing dining experience when he was going to meet his mother in law and father in law.

He was engaged and this was going to be the first time he was going to meet them, and he wanted an amazing dining experience in Florence. I shut down the Accademia de Galleria, which is the the museum that houses Michelangelo's David. I set up a dining table at the feet of David. Nine o'clock at night, they didn't go to a restaurant, they went into a museum at the feet of the most iconic statue in the planet.

And then when they hit that main course, I brought in Andrea Bocelli to serenade them. So I was known for creating these magical, oh my god I can't believe that, send you down to the Titanic, let you drive a Formula One car, let you hang out in the Vatican. I was the guy that suddenly created [00:23:00] these amazing experiences and that's how I got called the real life Wizard of Oz by Forbes.

David Pasqualone: So now when people are listening to this like that's awesome and most people think they can't do it But they can't but there's a wiring difference between your brain and theirs, right? So if you reverse engineer to help people out, what are the things that you you know, every situation is different Every human is different, but what are some practical fundamental steps that you're like, hey, try this you think something's impossible But try it, but where would you tell them to start?

Steve D. Sims: Beautiful. Beautiful. And I'm glad you're giving them the steps. For a start, you know, let's play the old Harry Potter thing. You never say Voldemort. Never, ever, ever, you use the word impossible in your vocabulary. Okay? The second that you mention that word, you've given yourself an escape. You know? Hey, I'm gonna go for it.

I know it's impossible, but hey, I'm gonna break through it. Bullshit, are you? You've just given it some legitimacy. Okay, so never use [00:24:00] that word. You know, I, I'm a great believer in gamifying anything. If you've got a goal, just like the name of my book, go for Stupid. Make it Ridiculous. Make it Laughable when you start.

Actually, let's play a game here. All right, I'm gonna pick on you. All right? All right. If I say to you, you know, what's your business goal for next year? And you tell me. Okay, and I go, well that's great, you know, it sounds impossible, but let's break through it. Let's make the impossible, IMPOSSIBLE. Let's, let's break through it.

That's very feisty talk, isn't it? It's very angry. I'm very kind of like rigid. I'm very grit in my teeth. But if I say to you, what's your business goal for next year? And you go, it's to make five mil. And I go, great. That's, that's a beautiful goal, but let's make it stupid. Let's make it 35 mil. You know, let's, let's, let's basically [00:25:00] go ridiculous with it and be stupid.

Now, when you start making things stupid, you gamify it. You make it a game. And in that sense, it makes you a child. Now you're playing with this goal. You may not hit 35, you may fail and hit 20. But when you gamify things, you have more energy. Who doesn't want to play? You're a lot more jovial, a lot more happy, a lot more of a child.

And that's the first problem. A lot of people try to, and here's the word in, Attack the impossible goal. I don't want you to attack anything. I want you to replay. When you're attacking, there's a reason when you do MMA and you're boxing that two or three minute bounce, okay? Because you're attacking each other.

But how long is play time? It's 30 [00:26:00] minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, two hours? Because when you're playing, You can do that for longer. So I don't want you to attack a goal, I want you to play with it. That's the first thing. That context alone will change the way you look at your goals and your objectives. And also the stress!

I remember I was working with Elon Musk, there you go, name drop. And he had, he bought out this plant in Fremont and it needed this massive great print machine that basically pressed the doors for his Teslas. But this thing was like tonnage. And he needed to change an element of it, the price of the item was actually less expensive than the transportation, and he didn't know how to get it here.

So what he did was he put out this game. You tell me how I can get that from there to there, saving me the money, you get one of the first cars to come off the [00:27:00] press. And he made a game out of it. What he also did Was he group he, he grouped the ideas. He basically was able to find a way of getting all of this crowd sourcing of, of ideas while only paying for one of them.

The winner. Peter Diamandis did the exact same thing with the X Prize when he said, you throw a a rocket up in space, have it go up into orbit, come down, refuel, go back again, I'll give you 10 million. He gamified something that NASA couldn't do. Bert Vatan won it through Scale Composites. Richard Branson stuck his sticker on the side.

It became Virgin Galactic. Bert Vatan said, I spent 120 million to win 10. We don't think logically when we're [00:28:00] playing. And sometimes when we're reducing ourselves to logic, it's only the logic that we understand. Yet when you gamify something, you can do more with it. So you want a practical procedure for you to be able to achieve more?

Stop attacking it and start playing with it. Very

David Pasqualone: good advice. I think that's great advice. And especially when you're in the, when you're having fun and playing a game, you get in the zone and you're not all clenched up. You can flow, right? The energy can just flow through you.

Steve D. Sims: Absolutely. And you know, if I said to you, Hey, we're going to attack something tomorrow.

How long are you going to want to do that? How long's your stamina going to be to attack anything? But you will play all day, every day. Yeah.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. Very true. So now you're working, you're having fun, you're playing games, you're teaching people to play games. And then when you got Bocelli, it's [00:29:00] amazing.

Like to hear him live is amazing. Let alone to get him in a private room.

Steve D. Sims: Yeah.

David Pasqualone: So I couldn't imagine what that would be like, but did you end up having to pay him a ridiculous amount of money, but your client didn't care? How did you work

Steve D. Sims: that out? So the first way to lose on a conversation with affluent and powerful people is to bring money into it.

It's like me selling you a car and then you being gobsmacked that you've got to put fuel in it, you know? You know you've got to do that, you know? And I know I've got to pay, but I remember, big name drop number two coming up, Elton John. I was working with Elton John, worked with them for eight years. And I remember someone coming up to him going, Hey, I'm having a barbecue event.

It's a big lavish event. How much will it cost me to have you work at the to perform at my barbecue? And Elton just turned around and he said I can't make that. I'm busy. Thank you. And walked away. He didn't give a date. He [00:30:00] didn't give a month. He didn't give a year. But because he had tried to buy Elton and was asking for a number, Out and didn't want to play with it when you're dealing with people like this to make more money than you're gonna make in a year Just on interest in maybe the next hour Money's the last conversation they ever want to have they want a reason they want a purpose.

They want to mend me They want a story when I spoke to Andrea Bocelli. I said to him I want to talk to you about a dinner I want to talk to you about my client waking up in seven years time in a cold sweat at 2 a. m. in the morning going, Hang on, I can't believe I did this! And this is what I want to create.

And when I told him that I'd been challenged to create the most amazing dining experience in Florence, and I was going to do it by taking over this museum, setting up a table of six at the [00:31:00] feet of Michelangelo's David! And then, but when they hit that main course, having the maestro himself sing in that surrounding, can you imagine any more ultimate of a dining experience in Italy than what I've just come up with?

And can we have you be part of that story? See, I was selling the emotion. I was selling the experience. I was selling the participation. I knew I was going to have to make pay some money. And what I did was, on top of that, I went, Hey, I know this is going to benefit my client. And again, this is when you're dealing with really powerful people, don't pay them, pay their charities.

Okay? So to me, how would this be that if not only this event, this night, benefited my client in an experience. But also benefited something that you are passionate about. [00:32:00] I know you have the Boncelli Foundation that looks after cancer and AIDS. We would like to make a donation to this. So more than just my client benefits from this night and that's what happened, but you've got to sell.

You've got to basically get the buy in. Beforehand, you've got to get the commitment and that's what I was going for. I was getting the commitment that he wanted to be part of this. I was making sure that you were buying the car and therefore it'd be no surprise he just had to gas it up.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, that's beautiful and very wise.

So now you're working with all these players and you are, like you said, you get a PhD in, in human nature and you're, whether it's someone who has no wealth or huge wealth, someone who's mentally wealthy or someone else mentally poor, you're learning and watching, observing, you make a whole business model [00:33:00] out of it.

And it sounds like it's fun. You're making life a game. So between then and today, take us through your journey,

Steve D. Sims: Steve. Lots of surprises and lots of pivotal steps. I got to the point and again, my, my business. I had always said that my business was a Trojan horse. I didn't want to be like hanging out on every red carpet or hanging out backstage with a celebrity.

I had no care about doing that. You know, I'm a, I'm quite an introvert. You know, I like to ride motorcycles, be left alone with me, my wife, my family, my dogs. You know, I just, that's my world. So I was doing this. In order to come in on one route, get you a piano lesson with Elton John, to light the Trojan horse, drop out of the belly, get your attention, have a meal with you the following night.

After doing this for like 25 years, I kind of got, I won't say bored, but there was like a bit of a monotony, a bit of a routine coming in. And I got shock horrendly surprised [00:34:00] asked to write a book. And my book, they wanted me to name names. You know, who's the richest, powerful people I was dealing with and what's the celebrities, what did, what did they want?

And I openly said, look, if I wrote a book where I named names, I'd be dead before cocktail hour. So no, I'm not doing that. And then they went away, came back and they went, hang on a minute. We would like to know how a bricklayer from East London has worked with Elton John and the Vatican. You know, let's, let's have it as a how to book.

That I accepted, but I'll be blunt with you, I didn't think anyone was gonna buy it, because I've always been about the most impact. Ain't gonna be pretty. The hammer. It ain't pretty, but it's damn well effective. So I wanted to just kind of like come along and be able to go, look, This is what I did, this is how I did it, you're gonna come up with an excuse not to try it, or you're gonna try and pay your pain away by trying to buy a course that will solve it for you.

This is how I did it. So I wanted to [00:35:00] work on that kind of basis, and they released a book, Blue Fishing, eight years ago, and I thought, well, there you go, that's a book, I'm done. That's it, I'll, you know, I'll never write another book. Lo and behold, it became a bestseller. It then got translated into I think it was eight other languages, of which it became a bestseller then.

And I was like, holy shit, you know, people really do ignore the basic stuff. And they did! And they do! So, then they asked me, Hey, will you speak on our stage? So now I become a speaker. Then I got asked to coach people and I started coaching corporations and groups on how to communicate better. And then I was coaching and I couldn't believe it.

It just turned my life around. But then I realized I love a challenge. You know, getting the Vatican to work with me, getting out on John or Bocelli or Elon Musk or those were challenges. But now I'm actually getting to work with people on how they can challenge their world, their life, how they [00:36:00] can challenge their potential.

So now I teach, I, I coach all over the planet. I have my own community, Sims Distillery, and lo and behold, my second book came out last year, which I really didn't think there would ever be a second book, but it came out last October, Go For Stupid, and that's what I do now.

David Pasqualone: Beautiful. And tell our listeners a little bit, what's the premise of the second book?

Steve D. Sims: It sounds if I'm pissed off a lot, but I tend to work when I'm aggravated and entrepreneurs, we're all like that. You know, something doesn't work. We're aggravated. We nine times out of 10 will solve the problem and then find out who else has got the problem and sell them that solution. You know, Elon did that with PayPal.

So COVID came across. And I loved COVID. I'm sorry if people got hurt during COVID, but for me, I got two years where no longer was I traveling, no longer was I out. [00:37:00] I got to spend two years with my wife and family. Now, along the years, I knew I loved them, but I'd forgotten how much I liked them. And that was a Tucker Maxx saying, I really liked just hanging out with my wife and kids and dogs.

But so many people were going online going, well I finished watching The Sopranos, what else can I binge watch and waste my life with? Yet I noticed that the, I suppose the successful wealthy people, they were using this time that they had been given to do more. And I was like, hang on a minute, is are we just stupid today because we've got so much internet?

We're at a point in time where we could have been more connected, we'd never been more connected at any other point in our history, but we'd also never been more disconnected. And I found this greatly annoying me. And then during COVID, a period of time where we couldn't go out and hang out with each other.[00:38:00]

We, as idiots. Divine actually designed and gave birth to two more societies, the gotcha society and the canceled culture. During a period where we couldn't get together, we were naturally trolling through the internet and go, hang on. In 1993 you dressed up as a penguin. How dare you be that disrespectful to penguins.

And we were calling each other out now. Look, I'm 57 years old, and I am grateful there weren't so many cameras around when I was growing up. Because to think that we weren't doing stupid shit, it's, it's an understatement. You know, we did stupid shit on a nightly basis. We just didn't have some prick with a camera holding us hostage 30 years later.

I couldn't understand why we were so hell bent. On hurting each other and tearing people's industries down, or just trying to find a soundbite [00:39:00] and ruining your industry about it. So this started annoying me. I started writing blogs and articles and memes about, you know, surely we should be those remarkable people to each other, shouldn't we?

Rather than trying to hurt each other. And then someone said, you should put everything that you're saying In a book. And I did. I spent the second half of the COVID period writing this book, praying that it would never actually come out. It's the dumbest thing in the world to actually write a book hoping that as we get closer to the end of COVID, people will wake up and go, hang on a minute, we shouldn't be hurting each other.

We should be loving each other. We should be helping each other. We should be reaching out. And I was phoning up people. That's the first thing. I was phoning up people. I'm not gonna send you an email going, Hey, how are you doing? I'm gonna phone you up because I know you're at home. I know you're not flying.

I know you can't go anywhere because it's COVID. And I'll be like, Hey, Brian, how you doing? [00:40:00] Just thought I'd reach out. The amount of people that were stunned. I actually phoned them during COVID. I met up with someone. And I sort of digress. I met up with someone, it was maybe six months ago, and they had a ri like a lot of people, their businesses got affected, they lost a lot during COVID.

He was on my list! I phoned him up along with a couple of hundred other people, maybe near a thousand, during those two years, and just went, hey! And I won't mention his name, but I went, hey, Billy, making it up, how you doing? And he wasn't doing well. And we spent maybe 40 minutes on the phone. And then I think I phoned him up again, like a couple of months later saying, Hey, has it changed?

Cause I had taken notes of the conversation, put them in my phone notes and then made a note. In my phone to call him to follow up, like a month and a half later, whatever. And I went, how is it going? Yeah. Were you able to do it? Did the connection I give you [00:41:00] work? Were you able to come? And he was like, it's a lot better, but it's done.

I'm like, well, you know, hey, it's a shitty period, but it also may be the period that we're being tested. You know, how good is our message? How good is our copy? How good is our solution? Maybe you're going to look back and go, maybe this was the best time of my life. And I met up with him and his wife. I met up with his wife first and she came over to me and she said, you know, during COVID, one person called my husband and changed his world.

And I went, Oh, that's great. And she went, it was you. And she said, do you know what's even scarier? She said, not only were you the one person that phoned up and changed his life, you were the only person that phoned up. Now, how sad is it? During COVID, I didn't know him very well, but I, you know, I knew him well enough that I wanted to have that conversation and just to stretch out.

But what did it cost me? It cost me a phone call. Yet, [00:42:00] as far as I'm concerned, I impacted their life. And so I was really hoping that the book wouldn't come out. I was really hoping that by the time it was ready to print, people would have smartened up. But no, they were pricks all the way through to the end.

So I wanted to put a book out there that would get people to change the way they acted not only with other people, but also with themselves. You see, we love having a conversation with people, but how many times do we have a conversation with ourselves and actually dare to ask us, what do I want? For my time on this earth.

What do I want for my relationship? What do I demand of my style, my lifestyle, my standards, what I will accept? Have that conversation with yourself, have that conversation with other people, and then dare to do something about it. Sadly, the book did come out. Usual Shit became a bestseller, got translated.

It's actually just hit India in three different dialects, which I think is [00:43:00] pretty cool. But it's daring people to go for ridiculous goals and then achieve them. And it brings up people that, you know, I've worked with Elon Musk, Swell, and John, people like that, and people that I never have, Edison, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, people that had ridiculous goals, and didn't listen to the poor people, but challenged them to go forward with their goals and dreams, and actually pull it off.

You imagine, If Henry Ford had listened to the masses, we wouldn't have a car. If Walt Disney had not listened to the people, he was called a cult leader, you know, and he was called the devil worshipper. We'd never have had Walt Disney if it hadn't been for that guy. Edison! Was that, there were actually people that used to picket Edison saying that it was dangerous.

This was the Candle Society, and I'm not making this shit up, the Candle Society used to protest against Edison saying that light bulbs were dangerous. [00:44:00] There's never been a city fire that was done because of a freaking bulb burst, yet every major city in the planet burnt down because of candles.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, people don't like change and when they're ignorant,

Steve D. Sims: they attack.

And that's it. It's always down to ignorance. It's always that we don't like new things. We love them once we've got them, but we don't like new things. And I've always said that poor people are very noisy. You know, that poor mindset. They love to hate. And, and again, the downside about today's world, we can very easily wake up in the morning, look on the internet, see someone wearing a shirt, go, Oh, you look fat.

Turn the phone off, go about our day without realizing how much we upset that person. Now, the other sad thing is there's a lot of people that will put that picture of themselves in that shirt on the, on the internet, not looking for feedback, but for looking for approval. [00:45:00] You know, I search for a conversation.

I don't give a fuck about your approval. I don't care how many likes I got, and until likes can pay my bar tab, I couldn't give a shit. I want to enter into a conversation. If what I say evokes a conversation, I quickly get it off there, get it onto a DM and go, hey, I like your opinion on it. And nine times out of ten, they're arguing against something I've just said.

And I've gone, do you know, I like that. I really want to understand where you got it from though. Or sometimes, Someone will be saying something and I will totally disagree and I'll be like, why do you think what you've just said is right? Where did it come from? I give, and I apologize, it's your show, shut me up any second you like.

But one of the things I really like doing, and I got into it through a friend of mine called Jason Gaynard years ago, was I ended up joining a group called Defy Ventures. And Defy Ventures are a group to run [00:46:00] educational programs for inmates in level four prisons. And so, you know, you're not getting a parking ticket when you're in a level four maximum security prison.

You're in there because, you know, shit went down. But they actually take inmates into what's called EITs, Entrepreneurs in Training. And I go to prison with this group, and I bring about 40 entrepreneurs every time I do. They pay about 500 to the charity direct for the privilege of going in and training people that have turned around and gone, hey, That's what I did, but it's not who I am.

And with a little bit of help, I can take my street hustle into a productive industry for when I come out and I'm with my family again. And I've been going there for like five years. My son goes with me and I love to be able to sit down in front of someone that made some [00:47:00] bad choices. And did some bad things and have a conversation.

And nine times out of 10, they made those bad decisions because of the environment they were in. When you've got an 11 year old boy being raised in a drug infested ghetto, what does he think his future is going to be? That's not related to drugs or vandalism or, you know, being in a gang. So being able to find people and understand and relate, it allows you to connect.

And that's what I want people to do today. I want people to connect with two people as human beings, because as woke and as privileged and as open as we have become, we've also become stupid. And really, at the end of the day, as human beings, all we want to do is connect with each other. That's the only thing we want to do.

We want to mate with someone that we find attractive. I don't care if it's male, female, trans, whatever! Two people [00:48:00] want to connect with each other and feel safe and feel loved. And as people, we want to be part of a community where we're challenged and we feel secure. Secure enough to make mistakes in order to become better people.

And that's what I want.

David Pasqualone: Beautiful. Yeah, I think love is the key to everything and just that connection, that relationship. There's nothing more important than a relationship with God, be at peace with ourselves, and then one another. So I couldn't agree more, Steve. Let's do this. You're a man who's had a remarkable life, been around remarkable humans.

I could be missing a huge opportunity as a host of this show, responsible not for, but to people all over the world, 120 plus countries, and you know, who knows how many tens of thousands of people, right? What question should I be asking you right now that's going to be able to translate from [00:49:00] you to our listeners ears and impact their lives?

Steve D. Sims: Wow, you're putting me on the spot. Um, so I went out on a journey to meet remarkable people because the people that I was surrounding myself were not. aNd I found a few things that it didn't matter whether I was in Japan or Hawaii, Los Angeles, London, Frankfurt Vietnam, wherever. I've, I've traveled the planet several times and want to keep doing it.

And I've noticed that there's been a common thread within all of these successful people. For one, It's the mindset. They view time differently to poor people. When you are given an abundance of time, like COVID gave us, a lot of poor people wasted it by binge watching on Netflix. The successful [00:50:00] people wanted to see, okay, how can I take this time and grow with it?

How can I use this for me, not to me? So they have a relationship with time that poor people don't. They know that they can make more impact. They know they can make more money. They know they can buy anything. It may just be a matter of time for them to earn more money, but they know the one thing that they can't get is more time.

So their relationship with time is different to poor people. And then the other thing was saturation, which I found a really interesting thing, which is one of the things I actually talk about whenever I, when I ride travel, and I'll give it to you as an example. You know, what, what do you drive? Do you drive a, drive a car?

Do you drive a truck? What do you drive?

David Pasqualone: I have an old 1987 Ford F 150.

Steve D. Sims: There you go. All right. So you like the F 150, you like the truck. How many times have you been walking through [00:51:00] a car park and you've seen a car And it's a strange color. Maybe, I don't know, it's yellow. And you look at this color and you go, well that's a weird color.

You know, I have never seen that color on a car before. When you're driving home on the highway, What is the only color car you can see on the highway? Yeah, that

David Pasqualone: lime green or yellow or whatever.

Steve D. Sims: It's that color, isn't it? Why? Because your, your mind has been opened to that. And when your mind's opened to something, that's all it can see.

And as entrepreneurs, we see opportunity. So then when something happens like COVID, like the stock market crash, like the tech bubbles, like a recession, a distraction, a political, we can only see opportunity while everyone else sees distortion [00:52:00] and noise. And I noticed that that was a common theme, but it's how you feed it.

And again, it's back to that saturation. If you stick a sponge in a bucket of water. Innately, the only thing that it can saturate itself with, just out of habit because it was built to do that, is water. You pull that sponge out, without doing anything to it, it would have sucked up as much water as it could.

Now, you stick that same sponge in a bucket of old, used engine oil, that's shitty and grimy and got all the crap, what's the only thing it's gonna saturate? It's going to be that oil. As human beings, when we saturate ourselves with distortion, distraction, distress, negativity, it will do the same thing to us.

It'll be the only thing that [00:53:00] we will look for and therefore consume. So you have to be in control. Now the trouble is when you're feeling through your Instagram profile and you suddenly see a fight on the street in one of those little videos, If you stick too long on it, the algorithm is going to give you that the following day, tenfold.

And all of a sudden you're going, whoa, the world is only street fights. You have to change that algorithm. You have to be forceful by feeding it with positivity. Learning to grow. Change the room you're with. Change the podcast you listen to. Change the environment you're in. You want to make sure that you train your mind to only get saturated.

By what is acceptable to your growth.

I think that's

David Pasqualone: excellent advice. And [00:54:00] I think I was thinking, well, you're speaking about the Bible verse, you reap what you sow. You know, 100%. It's the same thing. You reap what you sow. Some people call it the law of attraction. Some people call it different names. But the Bible makes it simple. You reap what you sow.

If you sponge in clean water, you get clean water. If you're on good people. If you're in shit, you're gonna get shit, right?

Steve D. Sims: Yeah. And that's the thing, just to point it out there. This is not new. As much as we think we have grown, as much as we think we have advanced, The basic principles are there. Stick to good.

Focus on good. Read positivity by only saturating yourself with positivity. This is nothing new here. We're not changing people's minds here. We're trying to get them to go back to the basics of what will work for them. And then, from looking after yourself, it will knock on to others. The [00:55:00] more positive you are, the more positive you will be with those around you.

Beautiful.

David Pasqualone: Well, Steve, I thank you for being a guest on the show. You have a remarkable story. It's been engaging and fun. Just great to hang out with you, brother. If our listeners want to continue the conversation, get to know you, reach out to you, ask questions, maybe hire you for coaching. What is the best way for them to reach you?

And we'll put all the links in the show notes, but what's the best way for them to

Steve D. Sims: connect? What the easiest thing is Steve d Sims, D for Dashen in there and there's only one M in Sims, Steve d Sims anywhere. I'm at steve d sims.com, but I'm at Steve d Sims on all social platforms. TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you consume your media, Steve D Sims, but it is a little freebie for you.

If you head over to the website GoForStupid. com, you can actually get this book free of charge. I actually ended up doing videos to [00:56:00] scrub the audio off it for the audiobook. Didn't know what to do with the videos, so I gave them away free. If you don't want to buy the book but you still want to consume it, GoForStupid.

com and get it for free. Wow,

David Pasqualone: thank you so much for offering our listeners that. I will be checking it out myself. And then before we go, is there anything else, Steve, we missed from the beginning to today? Anything we missed in your life before we transition to where is Steve today and where are you heading next?

So how can we maybe help you get

Steve D. Sims: there? Well. You realize that, that you are the, the effect of your actions. So you don't get slim by buying a diet book. You get slim by taking the action from that diet book. If you really want a successful mindset, you start, you need to start taking the actions of successful people.

Think of others. Have that conversation with yourself, be positive, the [00:57:00] consumption of positivity and opportunity, but you are the effect that you actually action. Beautiful.

David Pasqualone: And where are you heading next? I know you just wrote in this second book, but where's Steve going next? What's on your, on your there's no such thing as impossible list?

Steve D. Sims: Yeah, I want to change the way people talk and interact with each other. You know, I'm an introvert because I don't like most people I meet because they're out there for themselves. When you're out there for yourselves by making sure everyone else does good first, then you all win. You know, we know that one on one we may be able to I know, win the occasional fight, but when we're with the right kind of people, we can win a battle.

We can win a war. And I want that war to be giving people positivity rather than anguish and anger. I want to give them a reason to be happy.

David Pasqualone: Beautiful. Well, thank you for being here today, Steve. We really appreciate you. Ladies and gentlemen, like our slogan says, and like [00:58:00] Steve said throughout this entire episode, don't just listen to great content, but do it.

Repeat it each day. Take actions. You can have a great life in this world, but most importantly, an eternity to come. So I'm David Pasqualone. This is our remarkable friend, Steve D. Sims. Steve, thank you again, brother. Thank you very much. Bye. Alright, and we will catch you in the next episode, ladies and gentlemen, share this to your friends and family, reach out to Steve, connect with him, shop at our sponsor MyPillow.

com, use promo code REMARKABLE for up to 80 percent off all your orders, and that's it. Let's go love God, love ourselves, love other people, and make the world a better place. Ciao.

Narrator: The Remarkable People Podcast. Check it out.

The Remarkable People Podcast. Listen. Do. [00:59:00] Repeat. For Life!.

The Remarkable People Podcast.