Brevity! (You Need It)

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

1:59Who is Steve Sims? Well, Steve Sims has a couple answers to that. Here's the first one. My name's Steve Sims. I've been referred to as the real-life Wizard of Oz by making things happen. Which is pretty good, right? Really snappy. You want to know. Make what happen, Steve Sims? So here's the second way he can explain himself. I was the guy that the most powerful people in the planet came to to give them basically better cocktail stories, meeting up with Elton John, hanging out backstage, on stage, playing games with different people, hanging out with the Pope, Elon Musk. And I was basically the Make-A-Wish Foundation for people with imagination and really large checkbooks.

2:41And he'll explain how he actually did that, how he even got into that business in a little bit. he had really no business being in that kind of business. Steve Sims did not start as a well connected guy. But anyway, there's a reason I'm doing all this. You'll hear about it in just a moment. But first, we're going to do the third way, the third way that Steve Sims can explain himself. So we went from a one liner to unpacking a little more to this. So I went from fulfilling the fantasies of the most powerful people in the planet, releasing a book called Bluefish in the of making things happen, which I seriously wholeheartedly felt would never sell a single copy, only to realize that people avoid the most simple but most impactful things.

3:25So now what I do is I train, I coach, and I teach all over the planet how to create impact, how to create a wow, how to go from a reaction and an emotion and avoid a transaction and really work on getting a relationship capital because I firmly believe today, more than ever, we need relationships. Okay. So three ways to explain Steve Sims by Steve Sims. Why did I just play that for you? Why did I just unpack that for you? Because I got introduced to Steve through a mutual friend and we started talking and he's a really interesting, fun guy. He looks like he's going to beat you up at a bar. He looks like he's going to beat you up at a bar, but he actually is a really thoughtful business guy who talks in this incredibly straightforward, punchy way, basically all the time.

4:18And that is because one of the things that Steve learned about business, being a guy who had, like I said, no connections at all, was that brevity and punchiness really matter, like way more than people think it does. In a world of noise, confusion, and a whole lot of information, a lot of people today are going over the top explaining what it is they do, and we don't have time. We have a great deal of lack of attention today. So the focus today should always be on making sure that you are crystal clear on what you do and be impossible to misunderstand. And it's astonishing how many people actually seem to breed confusion in their brand and in their company voice and tongue.

5:10And I will tell you, I experience that all the time because I am a guy who is sort of in the business of having people explain themselves. And sometimes they go on forever. Oh my gosh, you would not believe the amount of stuff that I have to cut out of podcasts when I'm editing these things. You know, sometimes me producing the top of this show, as I always do every episode. I like to do that because I like to set the tone for the episode, but sometimes it's really helpful because the person who I interviewed just did a really bad job of explaining themselves. They went on for like five, seven minutes, and I just had to tighten that because I knew nobody wanted to hear that.

5:49And so I would have to summarize it myself. Not Steve Sims. Not Steve Sims. That guy just gets right to the point. Today on Problem Solvers, We're going to talk about Steve's incredible, very unique journey into business coming from, again, I keep hinting at this, but he'll tell you, kind of absolutely out of nowhere. And what he advises entrepreneurs for how to be clearer and punchier and get people's attention with the words that you use, and very importantly, the words you don't use. Because sometimes you just have to stop talking, as I'm going to do right now, because we're going to go to a short break.

6:25But when we come back, Steve Sims. All right, we're back talking to Steve Sims, author, coach, guy who used to make incredible experiences for very wealthy people. And we're talking about brevity. How to just get to the point, how to be really clear about who you are and what you do and why you are useful to other people. And well, I started by just asking Steve to diagnose the problem. Why do people struggle so much with this? Yeah, absolutely. It's a fishing net. Everyone goes out there on a turkey shoot. They think to themselves, if they've got 30 ,000 products, they'll make one sale. But everyone's got one problem and they want to know what that problem can be solved, how fast it can be solved, where they go to solve it.

7:14Today, it may be a headache. Tomorrow, it may be launching a company. The following day, it may be writing a book. So everyone has multiple playing projects, but there's always one that's the priority. There's always the one that they need fixed now. So when they go out to try and go, okay, how do I solve this? How do I get that resolved? When you're throwing 50 million things at them, they go, well, I don't need that. I just don't need you. And so in today's world, when you try to capture everyone, you end up capturing no one. So what is the first step to the solution to that? A brevity. Brevity is king in a loud market.

7:53You want to go out and you go, I do this, I do this. And it's a single response. I solve your entertainment problems. I help build companies. I get you speaking on stages. I get you need to be brief and to the point of what it is you do. The classic, have a Coke, have a smile. You need to wonder, can you replicate that in your business and in your slogans when you're advertising what it is you do? Can you be that brief? Because quite simply, if you can't explain it to an eighth grader, you can't explain it. Steve, did you have trouble doing this yourself? Tell me your origin story for understanding this.

8:33Because the work that you did creating incredible experiences for very wealthy people, I mean, in a way, I guess it's simple to say, I just said it in just a few words. But I can imagine that when you were in that world and you had so many ways to provide value to people and so many connections and so many ideas and whatever, it was probably tempting to explain what you did in a 10-minute Shakespearean soliloquy instead of something really short and simple. So maybe, could you take me into how you learned to do this in a personal way? Yeah. So I came from East London. I came from a bricklaying firm.

9:16So I never came from any kind of airs and graces and long-winded, Shakespearean, thespian training. I literally went, well, okay, there's a hammer, there's a nail, end of problem. And I always had that kind of mentality. And I was also very aggravated because I was broke. I never had any options. I never had any friends that were successful. So I was quite aggravated, but hellishly curious. And so I went out to try and find out, how come you've got money? How come you've got a good job? And quite simply, how come you're in a dry office driving a new car to work, wearing a nice suit? You know, these kind of things astonished me.

9:55So I went out there with also the ignorance that I had nothing to lose. So I was going out there going, hey, how do you want this? What do you want to do about that? Why is that a problem to you? Who do you want to meet? Where do you want to go? I was very, very abrupt. And for a lot of the time, people would run away from me. Now, you're seeing me on this podcast, but God didn't make me or build me to be warm and fuzzy. I'm 240 pounder biker ugly. Back then, I was also quite, should we say direct? You know, I've got better over the years. But yeah, back then I'll be like, how come you're rich?

10:33And I wanted an answer. And I would stare you down for that answer. not because I wanted to intimidate you, but my thirst for that information. We didn't have YouTube then. We didn't have any of these things, but I wanted to know. And I found that if I asked a direct question, I also discovered that if I asked you three questions, you wouldn't answer any. If I asked you one, where'd you buy that shirt? Anyone will answer that question. So I realized very early on, if you want an answer, ask one question. And as Jay Abraham always says, if you want a great answer, focus on a great question. So I really started focusing as I was getting declined or as I was getting rejected, my question's not good.

11:17My delivery, it was always my fault. It was never the other person, but it was like, I didn't ask that question right. Oh, I got an answer, but it didn't solve my problem. So I learned that I had to get better at asking questions. And then I realized in order to keep you captivated in my world, I had to give you something. So if you wanted a guitar lesson with Aerosmith or Billy Gibbons, or if you wanted a drum lesson with Guns of Moses or piano lesson with Elton John, if you wanted to attend a major gala in Monaco, I just had to make that happen. And I was so simply ignorant to it being difficult.

11:55I ended up pulling it off. and I would go out to people and go, look, I've got three people. They need to come into this event. And I would never ask a question that someone could say no to. So I would never say to you, hey, can I come in? Because the automatic response is no. Even if you're like me, your knee-jerk reaction is no. No, of course you can't. Hey, what needs to happen for me to get three people at the front table? You know, what time do you want us here? Do you want us here at seven or 10? Asking those kind of questions, people would go, um, nine. Are you on the list? Oh, I don't know.

12:27Put me, my name's Steve Sims. Check. Oh, I'm not? Well, put me on there then. You know, it was those kind of things. They're funny enough. I managed through that directness to get over the obstacles. And I've just taken it further and further. And it's got me from, you know, getting into clubs in Wanchai, Hong Kong, to literally working with Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and the Vatican. All right. So in that telling, you attribute your directness. And look, we're taking a bit of a circuitous route here because we started by how do you explain what you do? But we've gone into direct questions, which really is one and the same in a way, because to speak directly and to solicit information directly is to understand how to explain directly.

13:14So I think that's the path that we're going to take here. And I'm curious, you just described being direct as an outcome of being an outsider, right? You did not come from this world of business, of success. You wanted to know what people were doing, but you also didn't have, I suppose, the training is maybe the wrong word, but the cultural way of talking that a lot of people in business do, which is to talk in circles and to try to kind of be a little bit of everything to everyone. You didn't have that. So you just kind of bulldozed your way in. And then you discovered that this actually is something of a differentiator in a positive way in a world of people who are not always direct.

14:04So talk to someone who's listening right now, who is maybe stuck being a little less direct, maybe doesn't have it as intuitively as you do, and help them become more direct? It's a tough one to teach. It can be taught. It certainly can be practiced and it can certainly be honed. But you've got to be prepared that a lot of people don't like it. I would often get involved in a situation, and I remember being involved where I would be brought into a team, and they'd be like, oh, Steve, we want your assistance with doing this, because I ended up working for a lot of companies and startups, but there'd be like five people over here and oh yeah, they're heading this.

14:43And I would literally walk into an event and I'd be like, why are you doing that? Why is that happening? How has that worked? Can you show me any proof of concept that that's actually working? And I wanted to know, and it wasn't trying to be blunt, but I wanted to save time. I wanted to get to the core. And a lot of people, I've had many, many, probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of people over my lifetime complain. Oh, he's so aggressive. He's so intimidating. No, I just want to know how come you've got a job. You know, why is that being done like this? That is confrontational. It is. I would never be that direct.

15:20Sure, sure, sure. But I would turn around and go, look, how long have you been doing those figures? Oh, I've been doing them for six months. Have you seen any curve on them actually working? No. Then why are you still doing them? And people didn't like those kind of questions because nine times out of 10, there seems to be an Olympic sport of doing as little as possible and getting paid as much as possible. So that when someone confronts you and goes, well, why are you doing it that way? You know, it startles people and it scares them because they're going to be found out. But it gets to the root of the problem quicker and it can identify any problems, any misalignment within the team and can actually clean that up.

15:58So the first thing is you've got to understand And you're going to get kicked back. You are going to get people going, you're just trying to pick a fight. No, I care enough to want to save your time and my time in order to get the best solution that this entire system can work. A better system, a better company, better stability, better pay. You know, it's a high tide rises all ships. But a lot of people are going to avoid it. A lot of people are going to steer away from, as you openly said, confrontation. So me, I have a certain direct point. Of course, as I've got older, I've learned to ask better questions, but I've also become less tolerant.

16:44I realized I don't have a lot more years left in my life. So I want the answer in three seconds, not in three hours. A younger person may be seen as rude and crude if they want to attack. So soften it. Hey, I wanted to ask a question. What would happen if we did this? And have you seen any results in this? And would you be against trying this new system or new structure or new system? You can reframe it to still get to the same point. But I believe today, we're actually terrified to question and converse about what people are doing. They get very defensive. You ask someone in your job or someone in someone else's department, what do you do here?

17:31Is that working? They will literally get upset that you are asking about it because a lot of people are there for the paycheck and they're not there for the career and the growth. And that really is going to be the differentiator between someone that's an entrepreneur and even an intrapreneur, someone who wants the best of that company and someone who just wants to pay their bar tab on a Friday. So let me digest what you just said and put it back to a little bit differently. Because again, our North Star here is, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm trying to figure out how to communicate to my consumer what I do in the clearest way possible.

18:14And right now, what we're exploring on our path to answering that is kind of communication in general and the value of being as direct as possible in whatever it is that you do now directness can as you say come off as rudeness but i don't think that it necessarily has to as you said a younger person might couch what they're saying in the form of a nicer question but still just as direct. And I can think of an even more floral, but very effective thing that I do in my line of work where I'm often asking people direct questions, which is that if I want to ask someone a direct question as a means of soliciting a really insightful answer, but I know that that direct question is maybe going to feel a little probing, especially for people who are not that comfortable with being probed.

19:10What I often do is I do this thing where I start to ask the question and then I give them my version of the answer, like how I would answer it if I was being asked it. And then I come back around to directly asking the question. A good example is that when I sat down to talk with Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Danny Garcia, his business partner, I wanted them to explain to me whether or not they had ever had a moment or like, what was the moment in which something had gone wrong and had given them a better clarity of purpose over what is the rock to other people? We were talking about finding your mission statement and understanding who you are to others.

19:53And I said, I wonder if there's a moment in which you got it really wrong and that forced a course correction. And then I said, for example here's what happened with me and then i explained this time in which this guy had come up to me and bought my book and he tried to hand me his book and he was like i'll read your book if you read mine he was giving me his book and like an absolute asshole i said if i have the time or something like that he had handed me his book he bought my book and he'd given me his and i was like if i have the time because my first gut reaction was like i don't have the time to read your random ass book.

20:30I don't know. But then as soon as it came out of my mouth, I realized what a incredibly insensitive and ungenerous thing to say to somebody. And that guy was being generous and nice to me. And all that matters is that I engage at his level of generosity and I make him feel good and heard. And that is not what I did. And it taught me to think totally differently. And I filter every encounter that I ever have with a stranger through that moment. And then I came back around and I said, so that was my experience. Did you ever have something like that? That's what I said to Brock. And then he told me this incredible story about a time in which some fans approached him in a restaurant and he was really rude.

21:13And it was perfect and it was wonderful. Anyway, Steve, the reason that I'm telling you that right now is because what I think you are really saying. And what I want people to hear, and you can correct me or whatever, is that it's not even necessarily about the number of words that you use or the tone in which you use it. It is about the deliberateness in which you are communicating. Because what you don't want to do is repeat yourself five times. What you don't want to do is give people seven different entry points to the thing that you're asking them. You want to be really direct. And then you want to be really intentional about the language that you're using and the way in which you're doing it.

21:50And there are a lot of different ways to do that. But as long as your North Star is, I know who I'm talking to and I know what I want to get out of them, then the question could come in three words or the question could come in a seven-minute monologue. But either way, as long as you're being intentional, you'll get what you want. What do you think? Yeah, you're removing the confusion from the question. A lot of people can receive something, and I'm always saying that it's not what you say, it's how it's received. And so whatever you're saying, if someone's in a bad mood, a good mood, they read it differently.

22:21Are you trying to trip me up? What do you mean by that? Oh, is there a hidden meaning? But the less words you use, the less chance of confusion you can have in that question, in that communication. So your main goal is to remove any potential interpretation or confusion outside of how it's intended with the directness. And that nicely brings us back to how to explain what your product or service or business is. Because people introduce confusion. They don't mean to. What they think that they're doing is they're introducing optionality or fuller understanding, but they're not. So how do you teach people to filter the way they really want to explain what they do through what they actually need to say in order for people to understand them.

23:14So the first thing I do is I ask people to send me a bio of themselves. And I say to you, keep it short, you know, but send me a bio, but I need you not to dilute. If you had lunch with the Pope, if you worked a$10 million company, if you've launched a number one bestseller, I need that to be in your bio. This is your trophy chest, your chest-puffing bio. I wanted to be a Hollywood screenshot of the great and wonderful you. Now, once we've got that, we can dilute. We can take some of maybe the over-the-top out of it. We can start picking it. And I'm always a great believer that you should always focus on three or four introductions.

24:01Because you may be speaking to someone where the highlight of you releasing two best-selling books is really relevant to that person. You know, launching an international paid speaking career, launching 15 companies that have all done over$10 million, whatever they are, if you can insert those elements into the intro and provide the question, so what is it you're working on? And I've always discovered that you start with that bio, you dilute it to divide it into like four, five, six main bios just by changing the relevant point in it. But I always believe before you introduce yourself, in order to connect best, get the other person to talk about that.

24:48Because then you can discover, as we did, you say, so what's important to you in a moment? What are you working on? This, this, this, this, this, and a book. Whoa, bingo. That's my bio number two that says I launched two bestselling books of my own, and I've helped co-author, I don't know, 27 others. You can turn around and go, you're funny enough. I may be able to help you as the best-selling author of Life. That's your bio. So I often find a good introduction comes best, maximum, and is consumed best when you care about the person you're talking to and you bring into your bio what's relevant to them at the moment.

25:26Again, as we said right at the beginning of this, you could have 30 products, but only one of them is relevant to the person you're talking to. There's a question that I like to think everyone is asking at all times. And that question is, is this for me or is this not for me? And you want to be able to anticipate that question and therefore answer it before they ever even ask it. And so this is a great strategy if you're right in front of somebody, right? Which is to say that your pitch, whatever it is that you have, doesn't have to be the same words in the same order for every person. Rather, if you're able to gain a little information about somebody in person, or if you know, So if you're talking to a group of people and you can make some assumptions, or if you're making some kind of targeted marketing to a specific category, you want to understand the things that are driving those people so that you can explain yourself slightly differently to each audience to make sure that you're as relevant as possible.

26:23Can you give me some case studies? Tell me some people who you've worked with and the way in which they maybe blew it at first and then the way in which they did it better. It's going to be tough to name names. I worked with some of the largest jewelry brands in the world and probably every major red carpet event in the planet. It seems that there was some form of uniting within all of these that got them stuck in their ways. Usually the biggest problem that we have is repetition with something that doesn't work. And the way that the affluent events, and I've worked for Oscar events, I've worked for music award shows, I've worked for major brands, both in Formula One, MotoGP, tennis, all over the planet.

27:08And I tend to find that when I first got involved with them, and this was in the 2000s, where I started to have this aha moment that why weren't they doing these things? It's like the emperor's clothes. He's naked. No, he's not. Only the smart people can see it. That kind of stupidity. why are you doing the advertising and you're talking to people like this? And if you can imagine in the 90s, when you went into a car dealership or an art gallery, you were looked down on. You know, you always kind of like treated with like, just as, yes, can I help you? Can you afford to be, you know? And I remember a friend of mine that owned a very large Ferrari dealership in Texas.

27:51He said, the guy that comes in on a Saturday wearing a suit can't afford one. The guy that comes in on a Tuesday would have ripped up a pair of jeans and an old pair of flip-flops on probably on his seventh. So the way that the world has actually moved and the interaction with those people and also with old money being replaced by new money, there's a different way and tonality in which you talk to people now. And they weren't keeping up with the times. So a lot of the time I would actually go to these events and I would be like, why are you talking to these people as though they've all graduated from Harvard on that dad's penny when most of the people that you want in that room are people that seven years ago were working in a garage and now can afford to buy the entire street?