Go For Stupid: The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals | 380

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January 2, 2023

Steve Sims is a speaker, consultant, coach, author, brand designer, and podcast host. He founded Bluefish Concierge, the world’s first luxury concierge firm that delivers high-level personalized travel, transportation, and cutting-edge entertainment services to corporate executives, celebrities, and professional athletes. As a world-renowned speaker, Steve has spoken at Harvard, the Pentagon, and Fortune 500 companies, teaching entrepreneurs the art of communication. He also authored Go For Stupid and Bluefishing.


Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • Steve Sims’ inspiration for writing Go For Stupid
  • Steve talks about his entrepreneurial spirit
  • Common mistakes entrepreneurs make while achieving audacious goals
  • What is the framework for identifying and attaining ridiculous goals?
  • How Steve consults entrepreneurs to “go for stupid”
  • Key takeaways for entrepreneurs

In this episode…

When it comes to setting and achieving goals, do you find yourself settling for fewer than you originally wanted? What if you could attain even the most impractical goals?

According to keynote speaker Steve Sims, you can. In fact, the only thing stopping you from achieving your overly-ambitious goals is you. He encourages entrepreneurs to remain curious and converse with themselves regularly to replace self-doubt with confidence. By training your mind to stay open to every possibility and capitalizing on new opportunities, you can go for stupid and achieve comically insane goals.

In today’s episode of Growth to Freedom, Dan Kuschell hosts coach, author, and speaker Steve Sims, to talk about achieving ridiculously audacious goals. Steve shares his inspiration for writing Go For Stupid, how he coaches entrepreneurs to set and achieve ridiculous goals, and the common mistakes business owners make while achieving these goals.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03  

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership, we’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach a bigger impact and make a bigger contribution. 

Dan Kuschell  0:25  

Welcome to today’s show, we have got a very special guest for you today. And before we get into that, though, let me ask you this. What would achieving your biggest goals mean? And if you weren’t afraid to actually be able to go for it? Right? If you weren’t afraid to actually look? Well? A little stupid, for that matter? What would happen for you, if you ask the question? How far can I actually take what I’m doing? How far can I take this? What would actually make what you’re attempting to do something as a stupid achievement? And in fact, last but not least, but what if you if you could be in a situation and you could go for ridiculous instead of the norm? Well, if any of those questions are something that strikes your curiosity, get you inspired to look at things unique and different, then you’re gonna love today’s guests, because he has all of that. And more. Not only is he gone for stupid, he’s gone for insane. He’s gone for stretching the status quo, as most would call it. He’s been able to host some of the premier events in the world for some of the top experts, celebrities, he brings celebrities together, he connects people to celebrities with one of his businesses. And he also can help you Go For Stupid: The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals. Is that what you want? Well, if it is what you want, then you’re gonna love today’s guests. He’s counterintuitive. He somewhat I’ve gotten a chance to know what Steve 15 years gets to me over 15 years ago. He’s consistent. And he’s as genuine and real as they get. His name is Steve Sims. Steve, welcome to the show. How are you, brother?

Steve Sims  2:17  

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Dan Kuschell  2:19  

It saved here and I want to dive right into it. Because you have just a wealth of wisdom. We all have a limited amount of time, of course. Why did you write this book on the back of your previous book, Bluefishing?

Steve Sims  2:32  

So Bluefishing came out five years ago, and I thought to myself, no one’s gonna buy it. It’s too bloody obvious. You know, it’s the simple, most impactful things in order to get to the people and relationships you want. Everyone must be doing it. And they weren’t. And it took off. And as you know, I’ve ended up speaking, training, coaching literally all over the planet, because of this. And I’ve noticed that people try to, you know, pay their pain away, you know, someone can do this over here. And it’s free. But they’ve got to do it. And over here is 10 grand dash striking a check straightaway. There just seems to be this desire to not do shit and get someone else to do it. So the first book came out, I did very well out of it. And yeah, it launched my life in a different different angle. And then all of a sudden, COVID came across. And as a joint friend of ours, Sean Stephenson, the light but always great Sean Stephenson, and he used to say, hey, as you’ve been done to me or for me, and entrepreneurs, we’re very opportunist. You know, we see, we like to matrix we see things that other people don’t see. That’s why we’re entrepreneurs. That’s why we’re the weird kids in Hogwarts. So when when COVID came across, I was literally on a plane, every single month somewhere, Poland, Korea, Japan, you know, me, I was always flying around the planet COVID came across, and I couldn’t leave my home. All of a sudden, I was spending all day with my family all day with my wife. And also any of the people that I was trying to get ahold of. They were at home. So no one could not take my call. Because they weren’t in a business meeting and they weren’t flying. They weren’t planning so nothing could be done. So I suddenly went, Wow, this COVID thing is brilliant. Now, before you all start hating on me for one, I don’t care if you do, but I appreciate there was a lot of pain and loss during this period that I am not trying to trivialize that affected some people that didn’t affect everybody how it affected you. I apologize. But for me, it was fantastic. I had like a nine day week. And I was like, Well, I can make more money. I can do anything but we can’t make more time. And I thought this is great. So I started looking literally just started cleaning out my garage cleaning up my house, cleaning out my life cleaning up, what worked, what didn’t work. And then I would hit Facebook just a little bit of fun. And I would see people on there going, Hey, I finished sopranos today, what else can I binge watch tomorrow? You know, how else can I waste my life? I’ll talk to you kidding, you’ve been given a gift that it’s not like you die at the age of 81. And someone upstairs comes down and go, Whoa, hang on a minute. You were supposed to die at one. But remember, COVID You know, we kind of took those two and a half years. So you’ve got another tour to start the clock again. You’ve got another two? No, it’s gone. It’s done. How well did you waste it? And so for me, I started again, a little bit agitated and a little bit borderline violent, and how people were. And I started doing memes and comments and blogs, and all these kind of things. And then I noticed a wound COVID During the period where people were bitching that they couldn’t connect and communicate. Now, okay, I couldn’t hug. Yeah. The Zoom became my best friend. And also this really weird invention that came up this phone. I was absolutely blown in people and FaceTime. And you know what? I was not intruding. People were like, Oh, hey, stadia, they wanted to talk to you said it was already people going, Oh, God, connect, I can’t go to the gym. Your fat ass wasn’t going to the gym before COVID. Now, it’s just a very beautiful excuse for you. And it started to aggravate me. So we were losing the ability as a species to communicate and rationalize. And then what happened halfway through COVID We got aggravated. I think every conspiracy theory known to man has come out of the woodwork. We’ve also started coming out with protests and march me to Asian hate black lives matter. All of these conversations we had to have. But oh, there was something else in the air, canceled culture. I dare not say anything about black lives matter. I better not question me too. I better ask what’s going on with Asian Hey, I better not be curious about any of these things, my God, someone to take one of my sound bites, and cancel my career. So rather than having those conversations that we still need to have, we ran away from them. Now the only thing that makes humans humans is our desire and our ability to connect. I always get to the place most of everything machinery is going to replace the rest of it. taboos can have a place. We as human beings were pack animals. We congregate around those groups that match our thoughts, our ethos, and culture. But when we lose our ability to communicate what that is, we end up being alone. And then alone becomes depression. So I started writing meme started my blog started writing just what I was thinking, and people weren’t wanting to put it into, into like blogs and stuff and maybe long form. And it just started going. And then I thought to myself, well, we know what the danger is today. We know what the big evil is today. It’s the media, fake news media. It’s terrible. Well, you know, we all have that ability to push the button. We can all turn it off. We don’t have to listen, they don’t knock on our door and go, Hey, listen to this for 30 minutes. We don’t need to do that. So is media the problem? Or is the fact that we can just distribute fake and negative news faster and wider. So I started looking back in history, and this was all just for shits and giggles. There was no idea of a book. But I just thought where is the problem? Is it media? Is it us? And I started noticing all the way through history. Henry Ford, Edison coffee. They tried banning coffee for the hallucinogenic properties. You know, there were so many things that were literally called fads, or tried to be protested Walt Disney, Elon Nastya, all these people were thought of as idiots, until they actually concluded what our vision was. And then we’ve evade them as geniuses but along the way, we gave him shit. And I suddenly realized the problem wasn’t the media. The problem wasn’t today, the problem has always been with us. We as a species love to rip people apart, because 85% of the planet works for 15% but that 85 is bloody noisy. And they shout things whether or not they’re educated or not. Whether or not they can afford you on Oh, they love to shout. And the stupid people, yeah, I’m calling you guys out there and go stupid, you’re stupid if you listen to them, the person that can’t afford you does moaning about your pricing structure, who’s got the problem. So that’s where I really kind of came out. And in the end, I thought, Okay, I’ve got to put it out there, I’ve actually got to put a book out there with my feelings, my tactics, my stories, my ideas, some of the wealthy people, I know what they get up to how they change that culture, mindset and focus, and try to be as they say, part of the solution, I wanted to become part of the solution, rather than adding to the problem. That’s why the book came out just over a month ago.

Dan Kuschell  10:46  

And that’s so amazing. See, and there’s so many layers of this, because, you know, you’ve been able to hang out with Elon Musk, you’ve been able to be, you know, in some of the most, I mean, some of the most amazing places and with the most amazing people in the world to be able to take all this stuff and compile it down into a simple format. And I think, you know, one of the things I love near the end of the book that you you speak about, that I think ties us together, right? And it’s this idea, like, what if What would you go achieve if you knew you couldn’t fail, and you weren’t gonna get laughed at? Yeah, at the end of the day. And you say, dare to be that five year old. Speak to that a little bit.

Steve Sims  11:31  

So my wife always used to called me a five year old 55 year old. And while the, the actual statement was I was a 55 year old, five year old, and I remember when she said that, to me, I was like, Well, what what do you mean by that? You know, you just be nasty to me again. You know, we’ve been together since we were 1617. So I just thought she was taking a stab at me. But she said, No, you always curious, the five year old doesn’t care. The five year old wants to know how to remote control work. So he takes her back off, doesn’t ask permission, just unscrews it, you know, Can I Can I ride my push bike with no hands until you fall off and scrape your chin. The five year old tries things. And I realized that was me. Now you’ve met me, you know me. You’ve known me for many, many years. And I’ve never overthought anything. I just gonna go well, I wonder what happened to one I pushed up on I wonder if I lick my finger here. I wonder if I do this. And then I become educated. Now we want to become educated without the pain. But for some people like me, and here, I need to find out where my edge is and where the pain is. And then I go, Whoa, not doing that, again. La vie, just going to three inches to the left, I’ll be able to pull that off. So I would always get going and then get good. That was the classic RV Moselle statement. And so I always had that childlike curiosity. And again, I started my whole journey to try and hang around with rich people. That’s how the whole concierge firm came about. Having care about being front row at the Milan Fashion Week or hanging out with Ferrari and Monaco really didn’t care. You know me, I drink too much whiskey, wear a black T shirt, ride motorcycles. That’s it. I’m pretty dull. But I wanted to have conversations with powerful people go, Hey, how come you’re so powerful, because all the people we were there weren’t always powerful. You know, they started nine times out of 10. Living in their parents house or working out our garage or your bunk and I want a bunch of mates. They didn’t come from a lot of cash. So how did they suddenly adapt? And I realized they all had these visions, the classic ones, Walt Disney, you know, he vision the Epcot Center. And then he got Elon Musk going. I don’t like the way banking works, I’m going to disrupt it. And he did. And then he’s got to disrupt cars to adapt to now, we if Elon Musk suddenly turned around and said, Hey, I’m gonna make a tablet. That’s kind of turning the entire ocean into drinkable water. Everyone would go gay probably is. Now you get all the haters. Oh, what’s that going to do to the fish and stuff. But the bottom line of it is, he’s done it so many times now that you don’t contradict him. But I want to give you an example mean, you have avoided that by making sure we’re in the right rooms. But before you start hanging out in the right rooms, then do you remember when you would sit at the coffee table and this could be with your family, this could be with your friends. This could be with just like a group that you just met. And you start talking about your business and the ideas you’ve got for it and how you’re going to scale it and you’re gonna do this and you’re gonna do a podcast and you got to do that. And then I’m gonna move it over to here. And then I’m going to channel out and you start outlining what it is you’re going to do and the crowd you’re with. They start to glaze over and they suddenly start laughing Dan, are you mad? No, we’re faced with two choices at that time one, dial down our dreams. Oh, God. Sorry about that someone must have spiked my coffee. I don’t know what I was doing. I’m back. Don’t be silly. I’m gonna carry on what I was talking about, but I’m gonna go okay, then all we get out, we leave the table and we move to another room, a room where people challenge us where people support us. And I know you’ve done that because we’ve been in those same rooms. But the sad thing is 99% of us go with option number one. And I know for a fact I’ve had conversations and then dulled down my, my goals just to fit in with the table and then gone home hating myself going hang on. No one’s at a gas station. The other one’s gonna give me my burger on the drive thru tomorrow. Why? Why did I delve down Now bear in mind, I was a bricklayer riding around on a crappy motorcycle. But I openly said, I want to talk to bench people. And they will Oh no, I’m not gonna talk to you. Well, just therefore got to find a way or give them a reason why they would. You know, you’re stupid, steep, no one’s gonna told you, you’re an idiot, hang around with us. And I suddenly realized, these weren’t my people. These were my crabs. And I had to step away from it. And that’s a tough thing. I talk about it in the book. And I talk about surrounding yourself with people that are going to challenge you to do more. And as Elon Musk and I will name drop. I was I was with Elon Musk and SpaceX. I know six years ago, and he turned around he said, you know, they’ll always laugh at you. Just before they applaud. Yes, I thought that’s it. And it’s not laughing at me, then I’m not ready to be applauded.

Dan Kuschell  16:54  

And it’s so, so interesting, Steve, right, because we have all these influences over time. You know, as a kid, you know, I remember when I, you know, just gotten my driver’s license. And one of my friends that I grew up with him in the inner city, he had moved to Columbus, Ohio. And so now that I had my license, I could go visit him in Columbus. So I’d literally drive from where I lived in in the city. And he was in Columbus. And it was fascinating to me that he was, you know, living where he did, and I remember he introduced me. Well, my dad introduced me to print but he introduced me to boardroom, you know, the newsletter. And he introduced me to Denis Waitley, personal development tapes from Nightingale Conant. And it helped open so those influences, you know, have a direct and indirect impact that sometimes we don’t even recognize for so many years, you talk about getting in the right rooms, right? As a key strata, and you talk a lot about the influences we get, or we have and Go For Stupid. Yeah, see are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to? Well, I guess I’ll just leave it open ended because you can take this a lot of different ways. I know. So I’m going to let you dictate it. biggest mistakes people make when they’re considering going for stupid achieving big, unreasonable goals.

Steve Sims  18:11  

Okay, so I spoke about COVID and how we were really bad at having conversations. And we all know that that’s happened. Everyone out there is scared. Yeah, if I stand here, and I say, Elon, Musk, Twitter, Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter me to COVID by say any of those things, there’s going to be these little triggers that suddenly start going around, and you’re not gonna want to get into a conversation with it. Because Oh, you may say something that I record, and then I can boomerang you’re on Tik Tok, and you’re done. Those aren’t the worst conversations. We’re avoiding the conversation with ourselves. How many times did the people listening? Say, Hey, I’m gonna let let me let’s try and do this. Oh, hang on. No, I couldn’t do that. They start answering themselves. Yeah, they will literally go right. I’m gonna I’m gonna do this with that, that that and that. Oh, hang on. I don’t know how to do. I don’t know how to do that one. Oh, hang on. Let’s do what we’ve always done. And we listen to the wrong side of our head. There’s that little devil that every now and then pops up and goes, You can’t do that. We have the mistake instead of confronting and going on. Why can I? Why shouldn’t it be me? Why shouldn’t I be in opposition? Why can’t I achieve that? Why am I not capable, willing or able to walk in that circle? And instead of confronting our little devil we go, yeah, you’re right. Because we think they’re on our side. That not. So the first mistake people have is they listen to the wrong person. And they don’t converse with themselves. Now. I read Can I can be locked up a lot, because I physically talk to myself. Now, I ride motorcycles, six days a week. And I use that time to converse with myself, I’ll be rehearsing the speech that’s coming up, I’ll be talking to myself about what my clients goals are, and how we can be doing it. Well, why don’t we look at doing this? Steve. So if we did this, what would be the aspect and I will literally be at hands on handlebars, talking, not in our head, talking to myself. And I’ll be walking down the beach. And I literally converse with myself a lot, because I need me on my side. So I think the first mistake you’ve got is listening to the wrong person. And that wrong person, nine times out of 10 is you is the person or when you’re about to put your hand up and ask a question, that little devil goes dumb, stupid, and you put your hand down again, you know, being stupid, is putting your hand down in Smart is keeping out there and getting your your curiosity satisfied. That’s what you got to do. So that’s the biggest mistake is listening to the wrong person. And nine times out of 10. That’s you, if you can converse with you and get you on your side and start adding the why not? Or why can’t add in the y into those statements. You’ll edit the way you conceive and perceive things and it’ll push you forward. And then eventually, your little devil just sit down and go, I’ve got nothing. You know, you go for it, you just go, you know, and they will shut up. I haven’t heard my little devil for I don’t know, 15 years.

Dan Kuschell  21:44  

And you know, as you’re listening, or you’re watching right now, like what would happen if you can embrace what that little devil is saying and literally follow, going for stupid, going for unrealistic, unreasonable type goals, going for bigger achievements, going for greatness going for excellent growing for those things. You know, Steve, in the book, I think it was near the end of the book, you had a simple framework, I think kind of ties us together a little bit, which is, you know, when you and your family go out, you make it a game on us and you you gamify your life, which is something I really am fascinated by by getting a chance to observe you to get to know you to watch you all these different that you didn’t know I was watching that closely with you. But you just life is a game to you in many cases, right? But you talk about ordering, we go out we order off the menu. And our game is that we’re going to order something off the menu we’ve never ordered before, which I think really in a simple way kind of summarizes this mindset of don’t let that little devil keep you comfortable, stretch, stretch, go for ridiculous goals. Talk about that a little bit.

Steve Sims  23:10  

There’s a lot to unpack there. So let’s break let’s break it down into little bits and pieces. Have you ever been walking through the car park, you know, through a dealership or whatever. And you’ve seen this car. And it’s a strange color? It could be mustard yellow, it could be like pale blue, whatever. It’s just a strange color. And you look at it and you go well as some weird color. I’ve never seen that color before. When you’re driving down the highway the following day, what’s the only color you can see, they only have the same one. It’s that color everywhere. Why? Because your mind has been introduced to it now has entrepreneurs if your mind gets introduced to opportunities and difference, that’s all it can see. They go hey, I’ve met Steve has an opportunity over here. I know you like those. I know you look for those. So over here. So you’ve got to train your mind not to be closed and blinkered. But to be open and search and when you’re not. Okay, it’s us. That’s the first thing you got to do. And there’s different ways of doing it. And I’ll get into the to the end game in a second. But when you say if I say to you, hey, I want you to think of throwing a party. Okay? And I want you to make the most, you know, impossible thing possible. Think of it like that, Dan, go, go for that impossible goal. I want you to really grasp and go for it. And then I change and I go Hey Dan, you know that party, you’re gonna throw how can we make that stupid? How can we make something ridiculous? How can we just go all out nuts on that? Now, here’s a little test that I was setting you up for when you passed. I want to be Want to now we wind 30 seconds, and watch Dan’s face as I offered him those options. Because when someone says, Hey, we’re gonna go for the impossible, you close your lips, and you kind of focus as though you know, you’re gonna get a punch in their head because hey, you’ve already said it’s impossible, but I’m gonna go for and you’re like, let’s make the impossible possible. But the second I said, stupid, Dan’s face lit up, because now he’s a child. And a child doesn’t think with reasonable parameters or ceilings or constraints. It’s okay, well, let’s get dancing fairies in here on blue elephants. Now the vision that take a step back, how do you make it happen? Okay, so the whole point is, when you think of something stupid, different parts of your head come in, and you become that curious five year old, this sets out to do something just magical. And that’s what all of the people we revere, do. Steve Jobs couldn’t run code. Elon Musk knew nothing about banking Gulf and space. Larry Page, just one of the single place that a one could communicate. All of these people had ideas, Henry Ford, the car, Walt Disney Epcot Center in the DC Center, you know, it just everyone went for a goal, a magical idea. And then just reverse engineering how to do it. Now again, people say go for stupid. And that little devil in the back, your head may be going, Oh, he’s talking about selling your house and gambling it all on black. Now, I’m all about opening your mind to stupid, unforeseen possibilities. And one of the ways that I do that is as you hinted at the beginning, as I’m now going to answer after a really long way, how we go out and eat, and I talk about it in the book, but I used to annoy the shit out of the kids, we would go into a restaurant. And I would go right, okay, appetizer is not the main meal. I don’t want to waste money on a bad meal. So I know I want a steak tonight. I’m not going to miss it. But these appetizers, these little Five buck things. What is the craziest thing on there that we’ve never tried before? Well, I liked the asparagus. I liked the crab cakes, ya know, you do? What is on here that you don’t know? Well, there’s this thickness of it. But you don’t know what it is. But I will do once I’ve had it on No, and it would have cost me $5. And at that point, I will be able to tell you as an educated person, if that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten, or the worst. And we’ve done that for years, and my kids used to hate it. Now whenever we go to a restaurant, my kids, oh, God, I’ll do it. I’ll do the appetizers. And they will pick the weirdest things. Now, when you want a sushi restaurant, this can be a bit dangerous. Sometimes this can be a bit scary. And I will openly tell you we went to Japan. And I can’t believe some of the things that actually entered my mouth. And I pray they never do again. But it opens your mind to receive difference. And again, I become an educated individual. The second I have something that even if I dislike it, I’m not educated to that. So it doesn’t have to be expensive to get your mind open to different opportunities.

Dan Kuschell  28:31  

And in fact, one of your great quotes that I love is expensive beats worth. I’m sorry, don’t ask for it to be

Steve Sims  28:41  

Oh, does it impact impact doesn’t matter. Impact is not relevant to the price tag.

Dan Kuschell  28:47  

That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Sims  28:49  

People think they have to throw money at something for it to be wonderful. Now, you for a couple of bucks, you can just try something different. Just Just listen. One of the other things I do, which I don’t have I put in the book, every now and then I have this a world Tuner app, this radio station app on my phone. And what I’ll do is every now and then I will just go into country, do one quick flick and then stop it and then pick like the tense radio station down. And I’ll play it for an hour. Now it may be World News in Polish, you know at three o’clock in the morning, but I listen to him for an hour just to listen to the attitude and the style. I listened to one a while ago and it was Norwegian EDM, electronic dance music. I’d like two o’clock in the morning in the acid hours. And it was like and I listened to that all the music for an hour. Now a lot of people will go well Why’d you do that? Because are now educated that I hate Norwegian electronic dance music. It didn’t cost me anything. But it allowed me Do I open up my mind to receive different things. And when your minds open the way you interact with someone, you open to that if I can be open to Norwegian dance music, I can be open to your viewpoint on marketing, or religion, or relationships. It opens your mind to more

Dan Kuschell  30:18  

and opening your mind tomorrow, what would happen for you, as you’re listening, or you’re watching right now, if you became more thoughtful, to go for stupid to go for achieving ridiculous goals, to look at? The impossible is possible. Go for stupid, right. And Steve is mentioned in our previous episode, you can go check that out a growthtofreedom.com thoughtful, beats expensive, thoughtful, is what we’re talking about thoughtful ways of looking at your life and stretching the status quo stretching than our What if you started taking a simple approach like ordering something new off the menu every single time start looking for stupid in what you’re doing to go big, to have a bigger impact to have a bigger reach. Now, Steve, not only have you done this yourself, not only have you connected people to you know what many would call impossible experiences in their life, and made them possible you help them go for stupid and made them real. On top of that you help founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, be able to do the same type of things. What are a couple of stories of how you’ve helped a couple, you know, maybe one or two quick stories of how you’ve helped some of your clients go for stupid? Sure.

Steve Sims  31:39  

What is the classic story of Michelangelo when he was making David and people used to say to him, you know, you had this big lump of marble. How did you manage to get David out of that, and he retorted with David was always in there, I just had to let him out. A lot of businesses, the first thing they do is clutter the hell out of themselves. They make themselves sound too articulate. They make their copy sound a little bit too woolly woozy fancy, Paul, the bottom line of it is you your company falls into two categories, your aspirational, or your solution based, you know, a plumber, cleans the toilet, I don’t want to turn up all tied up in a Tiffany blue bow. We don’t care about that. But if I’m buying a handbag, I want to feel as though I made it by that wonderful Italian handbag in that box and the precocious sales associate that sold it to me. So those are the two angles you move into. So we work with a lot of companies to actually remove that confusion. And focus on the clarity and focus on the impact not with what you do for your clients. But also focused on the cloudy of the relationship you have with your clients, with your team, with your family. And with yourself. Now we can get rid of the confusion, focus on the cloudy and make you impossible to misunderstand. You ended up paying that scalpel you ended up being that fine tuned knife to can actually cut through all the crap, this constantly distracting us on a day to day basis.

Dan Kuschell  33:11  

And with that, you know what, what is an example of someone you’ve been able to help get more clarity in their business to go out and have a bigger, bigger impact. In other words, they’ve applied to go for stupid principles and set those ridiculous goals

Steve Sims  33:25  

with the classic one is the people with making half a million dollars, they want to make a million dollars. Okay, well, we’ve actually ended up building strategies where they’ve gone for five, or they’ve gone for 10. And they failed and they’ve hit four or they’ve hit six, you see, you’ve got to push your goals to the point that even a failure for you is going to be 20 times higher than what you would have settled on. So we focus on your goals actually understanding what they are, and then challenge you to think a bigger game, key word game, and then go for it. And then we focus on making sure that all the peripheral crap around you does really not important towards your end goal is removed so you’re not carrying weight. A lot of people whenever they want to make, you know, an engine more powerful, they, you know, they tune in, they put bigger exhausts bigger heads, they chew this engine to me more powerful. If you reduce the white, then there’s less stress on that engine, and it becomes more powerful. Nine times out of 10 You are that thoroughbred, but you’re actually towing a cart. And we’ve got to find out what’s important in your life to make the most impact out of you. So it’s reducing a lot of clutter, getting you to think bigger with your goals, and it’s getting a focus on your trajectory and how you’re actually working on it. And if you’re not in the right angle,

Dan Kuschell  34:46  

give it quick. And as you’re listening or you’re watching right now like what would happen think about your your a million dollar thoroughbred racehorse and you’re pulling something. You’re either pulling something aspirational or solution oriented all Are you’re carrying the weight that’s holding you back, you’re overburden, you’re overstressed. You don’t have clarity. In other words, you don’t have wheels on the cart that you’re pulling behind you. In fact, not only are you pulling a cart with no wheels on it, maybe you’re in a place where there’s 1000 pounds in the back of it, call it, you know, false beliefs, limiting beliefs, lack of clarity, uncertainty, you know, the the lack of having confidence in the market having lack of understanding the data behind what you’re doing. Well, just imagine what would happen if you could work with Steve, you could get ultimate clarity to go for stupid, not just to set goals. But notice this key word here, achieve I don’t believe in goal setting, I believe in goal achieving. So Go For Stupid: The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals. Right, and put wheels on the car, it makes it go a hole when you get clarity. When you get a plan when you get a system like you get working with Steve, right? And starting with something as simple as the idea of go for stupid. What would happen for you. Imagine what would happen if Steve got you to reshift to get ultimate clarity on really what’s important. And then also put wheels on your cart to allow you to run faster, better and more. And not only put wheels on it, but maybe he was able to put some Mach three in the back of it to help you get there in a shorter period of time. What would that do for you? Now, Steve, if people want to learn more about your book, about your programs, how to connect with you? Where can they go to get more information? Where do you want them to go?

Steve Sims  36:42  

Well, they could go to goforstupid.com That’s the website for the actual book, they can jump on Amazon and just typing Go For Stupid, and the book will come up or they can visit me at Steve D Sims D for dashing and only one mn Sims, SteveDsims.com. Or anywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok. I’m Steve D Sims on every single one of those social platforms. So just Google SteveDsimms.com, you’ll find me.

Dan Kuschell  37:13  

So if you’re looking for a way to be able to go out and achieve ridiculous goals, I’d encourage you go get Steve’s book, man, go Go For Stupid: The Art of Achieving Ridiculous Goals, you can go to goforstupid.com That’s goforstupid.com. take that first step, checkout. If you’re intrigued by how Steve can help you, maybe your company helped you as a founder help you achieve a whole lot more and do it in a lot less time. Right? Do more with less? Then go to Steve dsims.com. That’s SteveDsims.com. Steve, as we wrap this up here, brother, what’s something I should have asked you that I didn’t?

Steve Sims  37:51  

Wow. God as long isn’t it? I don’t know. God, that’s a tough one. When you’re interviewing yourself. I think you know, you’ve done it, you’ve done it, right. I just were aggravated enough. We know what the problem is today. And I want people to change it. You know, I’m 55 years old, my life’s pretty rosy. I’m quite happy. I’m quite lucky, quite fortunate. And I just want to I want to be able to push people to just dare to go for something different dad go for something stupid.

Dan Kuschell  38:30  

So that being the case, what would you hope 123 ACTION STEPS someone would take from today.

Steve Sims  38:38  

I’m gonna give you one. I’m gonna give you a system and a structure that I use with all of my coaching clients when we start to get to this subject. All right, and this is what you do. Follow this. I need you to get a fat Sharpie or I need you to get a crayon. Not a big pen. Not a biovault not a pencil, something playful, maybe even a really funny color. At the top of this piece of paper. I want you to take the year that you’re listening to this podcast and add five so we’re doing this in late 2020 to add five so just at the top just go to zero to seven I that’s what I want you to do put in big bold letters, big numbers that year, five years from the year of you listen to this and then underneath that I want you to go 12345 And then on the first goal without thinking what something q1 Don’t listen to your devil just throw it down I want a new car what car a Ferrari 527 You know GSS whatever I don’t like cars much but put down whatever car it is a be as exact as possible. Goal number two, I want a beach house in Malibu, three bedroom, single story beach house in Alaba number three, I want to spend a month in Tuscany. Yo write down your goals and hit them down. They’re not listening to the devil in your back your head, why should you, you’re just puking up your goals now, put all five goals down there. And then look at it. Don’t talk, don’t speak, don’t listen to the devil. let it percolate. Let it saturate because the next bit gets fun, get your Sharpie go up to where it says 2027, cross it out and put one year from now. And then what I want you to do is go okay, what needs to happen in 11 months, for me to hit that 12 month goal, what needs to happen in 10 months, nine months, eight months, seven months next week, start moving towards that goal now, are you gonna get all five goes, I really hope you will. You may fail and get full. But I guarantee you’ll be far further ahead than if you’d have just gone for what you could achieve or what you would settle out. That’s

Dan Kuschell  41:08  

amazing, Steve, Hey, Steve says I encourage you to go get the book, Go For Stupid, go to goforstupid.com. If something Steve shared with you, resonates with you, if you’re looking for a way to go for stupid to set ridiculous goals, to have a ridiculous impact to have a ridiculous contribution in the world, then I encourage you check out what Steve’s got available at SteveDsims.com. That SteveDsims.com. Now, I got a couple of personal questions before we wrap up, Steve, that you just made me think of as you shared that that was so powerful, I encourage you, by the way, take action with that one simple step and transform these ridiculous goals into something that happens in the next 12 months. You work your sundial works with you. Yeah, and you take a lot of it seems pride and joy. And I mean, it looks like you two are having a blast together he’s you know brings a certain aspect of the table. What what do you hope to instill in your your kids, right, including your son in values? Wow, as he’s grown up,

Steve Sims  42:28  

values, we went for that one. I don’t think my son works with me. And I think he would argue that if you said that, we both definitely have skill sets that complement each other. And we are learning to work with each other. And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s not easy. And then sometimes it’s spectacular. So there’s always that. But I think any parent only has one goal that that child is better than them. And that’s that’s the only goal I have. I want them to try more. I want them to be more, I want them to have high standards. I want them to have high ethics. If you say you’re going to do something, and you just realize you priced it wrong, gives a shit. Your Word is more important than your invoice. I want people to be ethical, strong, powerful, and I want them to turn up and show up. So those are the PowerPoints I always push with Henry. And he does very well. And of course what happens, his standards go up which makes me want to hire my standards. So it’s a constant goal of gain. You know, if you’re both looking to be better, and better and better and better. You only end up being better.

Dan Kuschell  43:48  

Isn’t that the truth? And again, Steve’s given you an inside view of his family life as well as his business again, go check out the book at goforstupid.com. Check out what Steve’s doing at SteveDsimmons.com One last question, Steve, as we wrap up, I promise your wife, you guys, but seems to be a very deep, rich relationship. And I can’t help but wonder what do you think her for? Like if you’re going to turn to her tonight and say hey, thank you for what would you fill in the blank as far as how she has helped show up for you to encourage not hold back but champion you for you to actually go for your stupid? Well,

Steve Sims  44:34  

as you know, because I actually I acknowledged the book to her right at the beginning. I can’t. The pivots, the moments, the highs, the lows, where she’s been eight, don’t get above yourself or Hey, pick yourself up. There’s too much if we were to go over any of those. I don’t nowhere we would start with ended up with like a 15 year podcast. I think, I think quite simply never thought of it like this, but I probably think she’s the Michelangelo, I think I was just a big ugly piece of marble that could have fallen over and crushed anybody or her anybody. And she sculpted, maybe something a little bit half decent, that you know can help people. So she’s she’s far more responsible for this beast than she realizes. So pretty much everything. What again

Dan Kuschell  45:48  

he Steve says go get his work, go for stupid.com SteveDsims.com. If you’re looking for a way to work with someone who’s you know, just one of the most authentic genuine and in an overused world where that’s used, what you see is what you get with Steve, and he makes no excuses for it. And you’ll be better for it not only as a human being as a parent, as a spouse, but also running your business to go achieve ridiculous goals. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, take action with what we’ve shared with you. We’ll see you next time on growthtofreedom.com. 

Outro  46:25  

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com and activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com

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