Today, we have a special treat. We have my good friend, Steve Sims. Steve, you may know, is the head of the Bluefish organization, a high end concierge service that can help you do anything you can imagine like getting people married at the Vatican or having dinner at the feet of David with Andrea Bocelli entertaining. Anything you can imagine, Steve can actually make happen.
I had the great experience of going to a taping of The Voice, the TV show, with Frank Kern. I got a signed guitar from Maroon 5 for Frank when we were doing an event together, and Steve's the one that made that happen. I’ve really enjoyed and have been the beneficiary of some great times because of my relationship with Steve.
Now, he has a new book coming out called Bluefishing, and we started our conversation by talking about some of the things he went through in writing the book and some of the things he's doing to launch the book.
We hit on the big idea, the evil scheme, the thing we can wrap the whole thing around. I'm pretty excited about it and I think it's going to evolve into something big.
I'll let you enjoy this episode and hear the hatching of an evil scheme live.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
Check out the interview with Steve on ILoveMarketing.com (releases Oct 16th)
Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.
Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 066
Dean: Mr. Sims I presume?
Steve: Mr. Jackson, how are you?
Dean: I'm fantastic.
Steve: As we always know.
Dean: I've been looking forward to this, because this is my favorite format. I'm not sure how many of you have heard any of these More Cheese, Less Whiskers episodes, but this is you and I just hatching evil schemes for your new booklet. I'm excited to do it. We're already, we're recording right now. We got a whole hour.
Steve: Okay.
Dean: I will have directed everybody before we pick up with them right here, that Joe and I just did a great episode with you about your new book, Bluefishing. Everybody can go and check that out on I Love Marketing. Now, you and I can focus on what you're going to do with the book here. How are we going to maximize all the marketing opportunities for it? I'm anxious to hear what you got going on, because I haven't had a chance to talk with you about the whole launch plan.
Steve: Plan, that makes me sound as if I think things through. I'm not sure I've ever done that. I'm like Lemony Snicket's whatever, Disastrous Events, but just happen to come off at the end.
Dean: That's perfect. A positive attitude, unlimited budget. That's your whole life.
Steve: That's where I am. I've always ... My joke is I don't care about your IQ, I care about your I can.
Dean: That's perfect. Tell me, so what's your big vision here for what this book is going to do for your world, and what you're hoping to accomplish with it.
Steve: It's funny, because in the early stages, I think that answer changed four times within the first month. When there was the chance of getting the book, and I had then, Scot Hoffman and Frank, talking to publishers, I will probably have to say I had a bit of ego on it. There was the standard, "Well look, when you get a book Steve, you're now credible because you're an author on that subject." I thought, "Well okay in that case it's a very elaborate business card." But the thing that I had a problem with as me and you know Bluefish, because of the crazy stuff that we do, and we're not going to go into that. We already get a ton of media. I'm on about Forbes, Worth, South China Morning Post, BBC. We don't need the book to be credible. But the trouble was, as an entrepreneur, and then I'm starting with a weakness, we go for shiny objects.
So as soon as this came up, and it was a case of, "Oh, if you get a book you're going to be credible," I was like, "Oh, I need a book," and I was just like a dog on a bone. Then when I got the book, and everyone was like, "Oh, this is going to be great, people are going to start taking this seriously, you're ..." I was like, "Hang on a minute," and as I say, and I'm gonna restate, it may sounds, as an entrepreneur we quite often focus on the wrong thing. I had focused on getting this book, and Joe came up with a great statement once and he said, "Is the juice worth the squeeze?"
Dean: Right.
Steve: It was one of those moments, me and you have set next to each other. It was one of the moments where you're ... Someone's talking and it's like everyone gets you up out of the room, leaves, you're the only one in there, the speaker turns around to you, locks into your soul and says four words, and they were just speaking to you. I remember when Joe was doing his usual rant and taking the mickey out of everyone and he came out with this. It hit me so hard. I wrote it down, and I try to look at everything and go, "Well look, I know I really want that. I really, really, desperately need to do that, but is the juice worth the squeeze?" I haven't, I don't think, asked myself that, when I was looking for the book contract. It was a case of who doesn't want a book? I'm an entrepreneur, I get a book. It was that kind of thing.
When it did come off, and it happened real fast, and I'm not the normal, I had wonderful people around me. It went from an introductory page overview on what the book was going to be, which actually got done because it was nowhere near what it was going to be. Meeting up with the agents, meeting up with one of the biggest publishing houses in the planet Simon, Schuster, and then a week later having a deal. To say there's loads of people that have been trying to get a book done, and they've been doing it for years trying to get a contract, and they're all hating me now. Yes I can respect you all, but it happened all real fast that I suddenly stood there going, well I don't want it for credibility, I don't need that. My second choice was well, it's a book. It's got a price tag. I want to make some money out of it.
Dean: Right.
Steve: Then, two other things happened. I realized that the amount of money you make, when you look at those contracts, you get a nice retainer at the beginning, if you're lucky. I was lucky. Then you notice, in the contracts, that selling a couple of thousand of books is not buying you your beach house.
Dean: Right. Exactly. Yes.
Steve: Yeah. All of a sudden the showing starts to go off and then you suddenly start realizing, well hang on a minute, I've got this for concept state, I've got this for the first chapters, I've got this for them to sign. You've suddenly got these deadlines. Without me realizing it, I had suddenly ended up with the boss. I had actually ended up with Simon, Schuster that now gave me, me, the 50 year old crazy entrepreneur deadlines, and gave me someone I had to answer to. I'm trying to warn people out there that it is tough. When all of this started to settle, I then started looking, Okay, what does this do?
We actually started writing a book, and the first book, when people mention this, was very much more on the kind of cocktail stories. It was the kind of book that you could sit down on the fireside and go, He did what? Then we went there? Then he pulled this off? It was a nice book, but actually, it kind of, it embarrassed me because it was all about, Oh yeah, we got this and that, and then we pulled that, and then we did ... We dumped that line of book. Then we decided, and this is where the big Aha moment came to him. It's really stupid, but it was about this guy called Bobby. I imagined, because I travel a lot, we were in airport so often aren't we? We're walking through the airport and you see the book shop. On the front of the stand, there's always a book. It's an actual composite because of the circle we're in, we always look to see if it's anyone we know.
Dean: Yeah exactly.
Steve: We all get on there to see, what's Tucker doing? What's Louis doing? All this kind of stuff.
Dean: Let me look at the acknowledgement to see if they mentioned us.
Steve: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: Right, right.
Steve: So they should. I remember, it was so vivid, this guy that I didn't know, and I think I called him Bobby or something, he's walking through the airport. It was the Jet Blue terminal in New York. It was that vivid, even what terminal it was. He was walking past the bookstore. He looked over and he saw my book. Bear in mind, a book that we didn't have a cover for, but he saw my book. He picked it up and he paid for it, and then he read it on the plane on the way home. Now I started to think, well hang on a minute. I've got my retainer. I've been paid. If that guy is going to read my book, what am I giving him?
Dean: Right.
Steve: Because of that guy that I didn't know, I suddenly started to feel quite simply in debt. I had to do a little video on it. I really felt as though I now had a liability, not to my publishers, because they had paid me. They had taken a gamble, they do this every day. But, I now had a debt and a liability to the person who's going to pick them up. I had to, I had the chance, for that five hour flight, they were now just talking to Steve Sims. Was I going to tell them a bunch of funny jokes? Was I going to tell them how fantastic I am, or was I going to do something that when he got off the plane, he could actually action to the point that maybe he gets to buy the next class up on his flight. Or maybe he doesn't have to go to that journey anymore. I just suddenly started thinking that. We actually transformed it, definitely into a How-To for dummies. I've done this for the Vatican, but forget the word Vatican, just call it a venue.
Dean: Right.
Steve: Then it got down to the point where, Okay, I've started doing talks, most of the time with entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs, to try to get them out of the way of the analysis project and out of the way of their excuses, and that's where my end goal developed. I wanted, not in an egotistical way, but to be able to use the book as a platform to actually get people to do things the way I wanted them done. As you, as I'm calling you out, because there's very few, sadly, Dean Jacksons in the world. If I ask Dean I need, I won't say money, I need you to get me a car. You need to phone someone in LA because I'm stuck. You need to phone someone that you trust in LA to pick me up and take me for a meal. If I say, "Hey, can I use your credit card, I need some money?" Then that's there you go, there's your credit card.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Steve: You actually put effort into finding someone who you would trust to pick me up, to burden them with feeding me for an hour, if you couldn't make it over. I know you're the man who would do that because we have, and I'm classing myself with that now, we have the old school mentality. We treat others as we want to be treated. If we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it, because that's the way that we were raised, and that's the way I raised my kids. In doing this book, it was a very sneaky way of me going, follow these guidelines and build a world that I want to live in.
Dean: You're so selfish.
Steve: It was very funny, but I did see it as a completely selfish way of getting people to get off the bloody social platforms, start communicating, start doing this incredibly stupid thing called build relationships, and actually action. The ROI, I see these people get up and they talk about click funnels and they talk about catch pages and all this kind of stuff. The ROI, on a decent relationship is endless. Endless.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely. You think about these, I think there's a lot to be said for those relationships have to be built in person too. I think there's something to that. You and I have a relationship because we've spent time in person. All the way from Table One at Genius Network, to spending time at the Warner Brothers lot, to sharing meals together. Those are the things that build that relationship. What I'm curious, first of all, you brought something up that I like to use as a thought, "Is that is the juice worth the squeeze?" It's such a great saying. It really makes you think. There's a lot of effort and a lot of work that goes into writing a book. Part of the thing is when you started saying, it's not that the book is going to give you credibility, you've already got credibility.
You're already in all the media, you're already that. That, it's almost like a chicken and egg thing. The reason you had the opportunity to write the book from a publisher's standpoint and the reason they gave you an advance on the book is because you've got that credibility. Somebody who doesn't have that credibility and is hoping the book is going to give them that credibility, is not going to get an advance from a publisher to do that book, because they don't have a platform to sell the book. The publishing house is not looking to sell these books. They're looking to publish the book and you're going to sell these books, because of your exposure and your…
Steve: I realize that. Yes.
Dean: But tit's the absolute truth. That's where ... Now you have to then think that through of what are you going to do with this? Because your book it's out this week as we're talking a week a head of what it is. Some people listening to this right now, your book is just coming out this week. Then we've got this little window of the launch of the book. Nobody's talking about or remembering the books that came out last October right now, that cycle is over. What is the thing that's going to come or that you're going to do with this book here to capitalize or to maximize the opportunity to reach your goal here if your goal is to get people involved in thinking new thoughts, live in a new way. How are you going to get that word out there and build that community? Have you got instruction in the book on what people should do? Where they should go? What's next here? What's the journey going to look like here?
Steve: I've always loved ... I'm using quotes again. "I've always been the guy that's enjoyed getting comfortable by being uncomfortable." I've always loved when someone has gone, "Hey, can you do this?" And it puts me in a room where there's no way in the world I ever should have been, maybe shouldn't even be now, but I've got a job to do. It's now I'm mingling with either rocket scientists or I'm mingling with icons of business or actors, or musicians, florists, racing driver's. I get to travel around to actually be in environments where I have no knowledge of it. We've met each other, so it's not disrespectful for you to acknowledge the fact that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.
I'm not a Harvard graduate. I'm not a high school graduate, but I love just going, "Oh, what can I do there?" When I got the book and it was a case of, "Okay, how are you going market it?" I didn't have any ego I had to worry about to ask people questions. I find that the danger is when you think you really are that good, you usually stop asking questions. That's usually when things go wrong. There's someone sat next to you that can do something, that can save your marriage. Your relationship with your kids, your business, your marketing plan, your budget. There's a guy near you, a girl near you that can transform your life if only you ask a question and got out of your own ego. With me, when I got this, always knowing that I don't know, what I don't know. I'm running out of bloody quotes so I apologize.
Dean: That's okay.
Steve: I can go out to so many people. The first thing I did and I remember this. Jay Abraham was doing a trip over to Paris. He contacted me because he wanted me to look after him. We're chatting away and Jay's really cool. In his usual cool vibe manner, he's like, "And Steve what's going on in your life and what can I help you with?" I remember him saying that.
Dean: I love that about Jay.
Steve: But he always does that, doesn't he?
Dean: Yeah.
Steve: I remember just turning around and going, "Oh, I've got a book." He said something about, "I'll call you back in five minutes." I thought ... You know how when someone says, "Hi, how are you?" They're not really expecting you to go, "Well, actually it's funny you should ask because my foot really hurts." They're just being polite. I wondered for that nanosecond, was Jay's little tagline as empty as it now appeared? I don't know two minutes later, he'd obviously cleared something off his desk. He's like, "Steve tell me. Tell me my boy, what's going on?" He came back to me. I was like, "I don't really know. There was this proposal. They don't like the proposal, but they think there's something in it. I've now got a contract with Simon, Schuster." He said to me. The next words, which I'll never forget coming out of Jay's mouth. He went, "What's your steak?"
I was like, "Sorry?" "What's your steak?" I was like, "Well, I don't know. Steak." "All right. Can you be down here Friday? We're going to write a book." I had sadly something that not a lot of people get the chance to do. I drove down to Jay's house and we sat there and mapped out what kind of book this would be. Where is shelf space? I had the ability to ask a ton of questions while Christie recorded everything. We drank Japanese whiskey. We had loads of steak. I had the chance to ask questions. When you're in that environment, you have no idea if you ever are going to be there again. You hope, but you don't know. The trouble is, as you get older you don't know if those situations are going to occur again. Something could happen to your life. Something could happen to the other person's life. You have to seize every moment. I had the chance of sitting there, I was not going to blow it. I was like, "How do you do this? How do you do that?" I was just a question monster.
Dean: I love it.
Steve: I was an eight year old kid and everyone out there thinking about doing this has to follow these guidelines. Be an unembarrassable four year old. A little kid that turns around and goes, "I want a lollipop." The mum goes, "No you can't." "Why?" "Because your dinner is coming up." "So." Kids drive through that and then we're told as we get older, "No. You can't be like that." In this situation you have to be like that. You have to ask all the questions. I went out to Jay. I came back with a mountain of information. Now I will say, not all the information that someone gives you resonates to you or will fit you. The way that Jay markets, dresses, speaks, is pure Jay. I wouldn't last a second if I tried it.
Dean: The vocabulary alone.
Steve: Those big words of his, yeah. I had to ask loads of questions. Take them back, find out which ones I could hang my hat on and quite simply just start reaching out to people. Some of the best advice I got were from people in marketing that never had any books or people that knew someone that had a book and they had some ideas or they would say to me, "My friend had a book. I never knew why he didn't do this." I would just accumulate and suck all that information in before we started writing the book. I was just getting it all laid out going, "Okay, okay Jay said this. I spoke to Dean Jackson. I spoke to Michael Fish. I spoke to Jim Quick. I spoke to Louis Howe. I spoke to Tucker Max. I've got their blah, blah, blah. I've got all of these pieces of information down. Funny enough, and this is what does make a giggle. You get five of your best friends in a room and you say, "Look, let's go for the best restaurant tonight." You may get six different answers.
Dean: Right. Right. Right.
Steve: Even though I had those any incredible people a hand to reach out to, the amount of conflicting responses I got was hysterical.
Dean: That's true of anything. You've got between ... Just think about all people we know, all the health experts that we know. All the doctors and fitness people. If you've got ... We have Dinner for Five for them and talked about. "What's the very best thing we should do?" They would all have different opinions. "If you do that you're going to die." It would really be that level.
Steve: It was funny, I can't imagine I'd actually want to be at that meal for a start.
Dean: On what it is.
Steve: What are we eating? Cardboard. Yes, it's very important to find out. Try and get all the information together so that you can cherry pick out. The first thing that resonated to me, was I had to get more of a social following. Way back, now I'd always posted stuff on social. I'd always put it up there. Now I had to start focusing and preparing people to see that in a year's time ... A book takes a long time to come out. I had to get ready back then so that in a year and a half's time you would have got used to seeing what I got up to. Basically my social feed, which maybe I would post one picture, a comment a week. I had to start getting down to three, four, maybe five times. If I'm at an event, maybe doing a gallery, maybe doing a livestream. I had to get far more involved. I remember having ... This was actually, this was one of those nuggets that came out of nowhere. It was actually from my mum.
Dean: Ah.
Steve: Now I said to you earlier that some of the best advice can come from people that have no knowledge of the interview what-so-ever.
Dean: Absolutely.
Steve: I couldn't handle Snapchat. I know everyone is going to go, "Oh Snapchat." For some reason, I just couldn't do it. I did open up an Instagram account. I already had a Facebook, and I had a Facebook page, and I had LinkedIn, and I had Twitter. I had all those, the only one that I've really got that was fresh to my stable of social was Instagram. I opened it up, I had maybe 20 followers on it or something like that. I started, whatever I posted manually. I post manually, because we know about all of these place.
They have algorithms. If they see something automatically posted it doesn't get shown to all the viewers. So take the couple of seconds just to cut and paste and post. It doesn't take that long. I would post something on Facebook. Then I would go over to Instagram, same picture cut and paste, same comment. All of a sudden my Instagram started creeping up. My Facebook wasn't too shabby to start with, but my Instagram started to look pretty decent. I remember saying to my mum. "It's doing quite well up there." She turned around and she said, "That's because I don't need an account to see what you're up to."
Dean: Oh really?
Steve: I said to her, "What do you mean?" She said, "If you've told me something's on Facebook or you've ever sent me an email and it's got your Facebook link on it. I don't have a Facebook account, so I can't see what you're up to. I don't have a LinkedIn account. I don't have a Snapchat account. I don't have an Instagram account, but I can look at all of your Instagram pictures without needing an account."
Dean: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.
Steve: Do you know the funny thing was, I had actually the day before spoken with social experts. There were three of them, not one of them had mentioned that. Here's the darn thing. I've maxed out my friends on Facebook, I've now opened a fan page. On Instagram I've started with about 100 something people within about the first two months. I'm now about 26,000 people on Instagram.
Dean: That's awesome.
Steve: I've got people that literally will go, "I saw you go." I go, "Oh, where'd you see that then?" Because I want to test where it's coming from. "I saw it on Instagram." "Oh you've got an Instagram account?" "No, I haven't got an Instagram account, but I saw it on there." You don't need an account to see Instagram. Instagram is a great way for people to be able to find you, look at you, see what you're up to without needing it. That was a single piece of advice from my mum. Get your social up and then try and then involve other people in the conversation. This element actually is in the book. I've always believed in the three E's. Entertain, educate, engage. Depending on what publication. I've always used this on media.
If I get the Hollywood Reporter to contact me. I will run with entertain, engage and educate. If I've got the Wall Street Journal, that want to speak to me I will go with educate, engage and maybe entertain. My conversation will change depending on if I've got a little Flick mag about, "What's the best Oscar parties?" Then you'll go with entertain. You change the way you speak and what you're capturing them with first. I now started doing that on social and try to get other people, and this is when you know it's working. Try to get other people to spread your message. We all know about tribes and communities and things like that. If I'm sat there and I get a ping and there's a reTweet or there's an Instagram share or there's a Facebook share of your message then you deserve an extra piece of pie because it's working.
Dean: An extra piece of pie. I was thinking as you're going through all of these things. One thing you talked about doesn't matter about not graduating college or going to college or graduating high school. All those things are IQ things, but what you have you a very EQ, emotional intelligence. That you can't ... That's not book smarts. That's something that you have that ability to humble yourself in a situation or to come in where you're just connecting with somebody as a person whether they're rocket scientists, you're not trying to compete with them or be their equal intellectually, but you've said it a lot. That no matter what, when you started being more you, that's when you really started taking off. You could slip into any place with a black T-shirt and black jeans and just look people in the eye and connect with them. Connect with them as people, that's really been a big thing. Very interesting.
Steve: When we're sitting in a room and we're having a conversation with Peter Diamandis, who is unquestionably one of the most intelligent men in the world. I still walk away from that conversation and go, "How in the world should I have been at that table?" It hasn't got to be ... I remember and you mentioned it earlier Table One. I will always forever just well up when I think about the people. It was only about five of us, the people at that table at Joe's event. I humbly and proudly put you at one of the higher of the pedestals at that table. This was an incredible table of geniuses and I'm there. I still can never get over that, that table. The fun that we had, the strength of the relationship that had been built from that. Don't be frightened to sit at somebody else's table and never worry about pecking order.
Dean: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Let's hatch some evil schemes here for the launch here now and beyond here. What are we going to ... I understand where you're coming from with this, but practically speaking, what is going to be the outcome here that we're looking for with the book? What are we going to try and accomplish here?
Steve: Two things. More speaking gigs and more consulting contracts. I've done a fair few luxury and branding contracts with luxury brands. I want to do more. I want to be able to get up onto more stages to pass the message on. I'm utilizing the book to leapfrog me into those two elements.
Dean: Perfect. When you talk about the speaking, then who is ... What kind of speaking are we looking for? Are you looking to be a keynote speaker at corporate events or are you looking to do your own events or are you looking to build a community and your own tribe? What's the outcome there?
Steve: The keynote. I would like to get into more corporate and more business platforms.
Dean: How much of that do you do now?
Steve: Very few. Probably about one every ... I don't do a lot of speaking. I think this year I did, maybe I did nine speeches and I think two of those were corporate. Most of them are entrepreneurial colleges, EO groups, those kind of things.
Dean: Those are mostly like say at a entrepreneurial level kind of thing? Like our circle-
Steve: Yeah, friends and families that have reached out and asked me can I speak at this event. Yeah, friends and connections at the entrepreneurial level.
Dean: That is going up to that corporate level. That's one thing that having a traditional book, that preferably a bestseller can help because you're the author of a bestseller. Are you doing a New York Times campaign or push? Is the goal to get this on the New York Times list or what's your strategy or intention there?
Steve: It is. I always wanted it that. Then again, I remember Table One. I do want to get it on there. I have noticed there's about 20 lists for the New York Times bestseller lists, there's all these different elements. There's many, many, many different lists, it's not a one horse race anymore. Yes, I am pushing for that to happen. At the moment I'm engaging my tribe. One of the things I did early on, Rob Anspach helped me with this. We actually went out to some of our people that had good followings and had their own tribe that followed me and went to them and go, "Look, could you help me do this? I'll help you."
Again always offer help to receive help. They're actually now, it actually starts very shortly doing a gentle push. At the moment there's been a lot of mentions. People going, "Oh, I just saw the Gallery copy of this. Oh I met up with Steve." I've got a lot of crossover promotion that basically seeds into the minds of these people's tribes who I am. So that when a book comes out, they already knew that, "Oh, Steve's a good friend of Greg Reese. Steve's a good friend of Jason Gaynor." They already know that, I've already got the credibility of the friendship so it doesn't look like it's just a sponsored advert that I've stuck on their page.
Dean: Exactly. That'll-
Steve: Not in print.
Dean: None of it print. Do you have a strategy for specific markets or? It would be an interesting thing. I did a couple of these More Cheese, Less Whiskers podcasts with Jamie Smart and he's in London. He's written books that have gotten on the New York Times, the Sunday Times list in London. One of the things we talked about was getting his whole street team organized. Getting into the trenches here of how this is going to get out there. There's something really interesting, even Tim Ferris talked about this when he did the Four Hour Work Week. His thing was really New York, Chicago, San Francisco were his big markets where he wanted to be ubiquitous because it's hard to launch a global campaign kind of thing. So you look at how in the markets where you want to be, how to get that from word out there. What's your outside of that relationship marketing plan? Have you got other things that you're doing or are going to do?
Steve: We look to print because we get a lot of print, but print what people don't realize is they write the article today, you won't see it in the magazine for probably maybe three months. That's a slow pony there. Social is far, far faster. I am sure on release dates there will be some advertising and some sponsorship posts on Instagram. I will say that 99% of my activity is social. Now because of Bluefish already having a good email following, they will get an email as well. We've already got that. Then I will go out and as far as I'm going to say we're doing a launch party. You know about this and the launch party, a lot of people do a book launch party and it's in a store and they're signing books and stuff like that. I've taken over a whiskey bar where people can just get drunk.
Dean: Right.
Steve: I wanted to do something that was a little bit more quirky, but a little bit more in line with who I am. The idea of just turning up and having a whiskey, just seemed to be a no-brainer on there. It's definitely social. I've started and I don't know if it's going to work. There's a company, I think it's called Green Box or Green Leaf. Have you come across them?
Dean: Tell me what the context is and I'll think.
Steve: What they do is they go through your social, and they find all of the emails from your social. Whether or not you select Twitter, Facebook. Then you can actually from your email, actually email them a request. You can message them. If you're going to mail them a request, an offer, you can just go, "Hey, I thought I'd reach out to you through this way. All the best Steve." You can do anything you like. It's a way of getting a campaign out from people to follow you on social. I'm not a great believer in email. There's too much noise there. If you're talking to them online and then all of a sudden there's people there, and this is the world we're in now. There's people that communicate with socially and with private message and through LinkedIn, but maybe we don't even have their email address.
We may even have their phone number, but not their email address. This is now another way, "That hey, I'm communicating online. I'm on your feed. I'm showing you what I'm getting up to. I'm showing you what I'm getting up to. I'm showing you the unveiling of the box of books that come up. I'm showing you the party I was at. I'm showing you I'm flying off to X, Y, Z country." Then you get an email saying, "Hey, I'm looking at changing people's attitude on the way they do stuff. If you like this please buy the book, or share the book, or grab the book." I'm using that platform. I can't tell you if it works yet, because as we're doing this interview, I only did it a couple of days ago. I don't think ... The one thing I do like about it is it only sends out 10 emails at a time. It won't get caught in the spam. It does take about five days for all of your emails to actually get out.
Dean: Got you.
Steve: I'll be interested in seeing how that works.
Dean: It's a good way to reach everybody that you have connection with.
Steve: It's another way. Hopefully I'm coming at them from both avenues. Also, we've taken on a tribe and we put an offer up. A lot of people talked about this. There's the common pre=sale offer, "If you buy the book today, you get this, this and this." This is where I may sound a little bit off. Again the fact I don't know, I don't know. We built a pre-sale or pre-order offer package. There's a lot of people out there. If you are an unknown author and you go out to your circle to buy the book. They're buying the book because they already know you. The pre-sale bundles don't help. They actually if anything cloud it, because I've had people say to me, "Oh, I want to buy the book Steve, but I've got to select between these five ..." You're having a conversation, which let's be honest.
If you sent them a text and said, "Hey, I've got a new book." They're going to buy the book in any case. What you want to do is you want to get the book out to people that don't know you. I got rid of the pre-sales. The pre-sales concentrate on those people already in your community, waste of time. So I dumped that. I know a lot of authors are doing all those. When you're a successful author, hey that's a different thing. When you've already got a following, of course pre-sale it. When you haven't, then you've got to go out. I went out to people with tribes and I went, "Look, I want to make an offer to you. If you can promote over the next 10 days every other day something from this list and you give them ... You've got to try and be in control.
You give them three alternatives for each day and a picture. Then you ask them to post that. If they agree, and you've got to get this up front. If you agree, and I'm a great believer in forms. People hate forms. I hate forms, but I complete forms for something I'm committed to. If you give someone just a small hurdle to get over, you know they're qualified. If I phone up someone and go, "Hey, Jim will you do this?" They go, "Yeah, sure I will." I've got no commitment. If I go, "hey, Jim will you do this?" "Yeah sure." "Well great. I'm going to send you this little form so we can get that completed. Then I know you're in the system. Then if they complete it, I've got the commitment.
Dean: That makes sense. Yes.
Steve: It's a good way of doing it. Then all of a sudden you can bring these people into one format. You can release on Tuesday, "Please select one of these." It could be, "If you don't know anyone that's married someone in the Vatican, then meet my pal Steve. This is his book." There will be these little things. This is where it gets egotistical. You write in a third party format. You can have fun with it. You can go, "He may be the ugliest person in the planet, but he knows Richard Branson and Elon Musk. Wouldn't you?"
Dean: Right. Right.
Steve: You can just have some fun basically channeling your inner Joe Polish to insult yourself. Just write these tags and get it out there. I know over the next 10 days I've got a handful of people. They want to do either a 30 minute branding webinar for me with that community or they want to do ... I've got some that will say, "Hey, I want to go and have lunch with you, because I want to talk to you about things." Some of them have wanted a Bluefish beanie. Every single one of them have wanted a signed book. Those are all perfectly acceptable things that you can give them to help you.
Dean: Yes. Doing these, these podcasts that you're ... How many podcasts are you being released on in the first few weeks of October here?
Steve: I think the term is podcast whore. That was my wife that actually came up with that. As I say print media, we've done a lot of print media, but it takes too long. Now, once the book comes out, then we will actually get into those prints. For instant activity, then podcasts are king. I think I've been doing them now since the beginning of September, we started the podcasts. Now I made a mistake, I did podcasts in June, April and I had people screaming at me going, "No one will do anything that coming out for three to four months. Save your energy." I blew it a bit by doing some decent ones.
Managed to catch it before some of the others were released and went, "Hey, can you drop them in October." They managed to bump it up, so I was very thankful there. The trick is that with the way kids are today and it goes up as well. Instant gratification, try to make sure that you're only known to that person when they can action something on it. If I'm releasing the book in six months time, don't present yourself. Present yourself six days so go, "Hey, today is Monday, did you know on Friday you could be getting a copy of Bluefishing?" That's fine. I started focusing on my new podcasts in September. We calculated the other day and this is the scary thing. I've averaged three a day including weekends.
Dean: Wow. So there you go.
Steve: Yeah, I have gone out to everybody. I've gone out to groups. I've got something coming out, if you have space on your podcast let me know. I've just been getting tons. Yesterday we're doing this one, now today I've got three more. Tomorrow I've got two. Sunday I've got one, with Australia in the evening. I am just going hell for leather on these.
Dean: There you go. That's certainly going to expose you to a bunch of new people and where they can actually take action and get your book. What's going to happen from the moment those people get your book that will engage you with them. What's the step that you're encouraging people to take or to turn those into anonymous book buyers? Into people that you know, that are in your world here?
Steve: All right. I'm glad you brought that up. I don't just want to be a one hit wonder. I want to be able to encourage people to get the book. The next campaign is to vocally, visually and socially tell me what you think. You've just spent your money. You could have grabbed a pizza and a beer, on a book. You want these people to vocalize it. You want people to go forward. Say look, if you want to put it on Amazon, great. If you want to put it on my Facebook page, fine. If you think it's the biggest turd, then I want you to put it on there and be prepared to engage. You will, sadly in the day that we're in, you'll get haters out there and you will get people going, "I grabbed his book, he's useless." The ones that make me laugh are these fat people that buy diet books and it didn't work. Why didn't it work, because they read the book and they didn't get thinner. They didn't do anything about what the book said.
Dean: Right, right.
Steve: I am positive that people ... I actually did a campaign on it a little while ago, I actually did a campaign. This is another thing I would advise anyone that's thinking of doing books to do, video. People need to know, well okay this book's supposed to do this, but who wrote it? Who's the person behind it? If I'm a rocket scientist and I'm going to tell you about rocket development, well that makes sense. If I'm a rocket scientist and I'm going to tell you about the evolution of a toilet bowl, maybe not the right person, but Mr. Kleenex, hey, maybe I'd listen to him.
Dean: Right.
Steve: Get a video out there and start telling people, truthfully, what's in your heart. About two weeks ago we saw a very, very, very large jump in book purchases and it was because I did a campaign telling people not to buy the book. I told them that I was not there to motivate, I was there to activate. As corny as that was, I didn't want anyone prepared to buy the book and not action it. I went through-
Dean: I was going to say, going ahead then, tell me. That's what I want to see is what's the action that we want somebody to take here? I'm just thinking about how you've ... The brilliance of turning Bluefish into a verb, Bluefishing and that could lend itself really well to some hashtag culture. Hashtag Bluefishing to spread what somebody's been inspired to do because of the book.
Steve: Yeah, I do want people to report. I don't want to come up in the conversation, so I do want people to report. I want to know what have you done? Following the book launch is going to be a case of, okay it's in your hands, seven days after reading it what element did you do and what was the outcome? Again, there's your next marketing wave. If you've got Billy that's either on Amazon social, wherever, and he's going, "Hey, I read the book, I thought two thirds of it was a pile of rubbish, but I actioned these two elements and my relationship with my kids is better." Or "I actually got the job I wanted" or "I changed my attitude when I put on this event." I want people to start then reporting it because that's when quite actually Bluefishing becomes a cultural item, it becomes a hashtag, it becomes an action point.
Dean: What if that was an interesting thing, like hashtag Bluefishing, but then there's the Blue-Fishy awards or something where there ... Where somebody, you share the biggest outcome that people have gotten from Bluefishing.
Steve: I think that's great. I haven't thought of that, but I think that's ... Well, that's why you're Dean Jackson, but I hadn't thought of that. The Bluefishing award, that is, that's awesome.
Dean: Yeah, you imagine like the MTV moon man or something but the blue fish, the award. I think that there's kind of a ... It's a clean runway, there's nobody else is ... You're the only person that that verb os attached to, right? Nobody's ever put Bluefishing together as a verb, so you own that. It's 100% clean and attached to you, so there's very few things that people have that level of proprietary-ness. Everybody when they say Bluefishing, that would be your community, you know?
Steve: I actually just made a note of that, as you were talking I just made a note of that.
Dean: In order for that to happen, though, there has to be ... You have to really set that up in advance. You have to urge people to take that action and report on it and to have some sort of eye on the prize kind of thing. What would be a great experience that you could present for somebody who has made the biggest impact over the next year or whatever it is?
Steve: I'm trying to think in my head, the only issue is there would have to be some kind of qualification ... This is actually a great idea with a lot more work needed on it. You would need to work out some kind of qualification because if you've got a guy, that for argument's sake owns a car dealership and he actions it and the following day, or the following month he managed to move 200 extra cars because of something. That's a big item, monetarily that's a big item. If you've got a girl that maybe owns a florist or a guy that owns a florist shop and they manage to rebrand the front window, then that may have made it more appealing, but the financial gain wouldn't have been as big compared to the car dealership. There needs to be some kind of equalizer on how to merit the growth.
Dean: Yeah, but maybe it's a ... That whole, just thinking this way of thinking, of creating this subculture of Bluefishing that there's, that we're defining what that means. If we're to say, like if we were to create the dictionary entry for Bluefishing, what would be the definition? The act of what? How would you define it?
Steve: I'm being quiet because I'm actually writing that down.
Dean: Yeah, like I mean you know how when you see in the dictionary they have the word and then the accents and how it would be Bluefishing, the pronunciation of it and verb beside it, and then the definition of it. What would ... Because you've really created a word here. You've created something that you can attach this community to.
Steve: Do you know I love talking with you, Dean. That stopped me in my tracks and I was literally just on a piece of cardboard writing that because I'm actually having this conversation with you away from the computer so I never get distracted.
Dean: Are you in the garage, that's what I want to know?
Steve: Yep, I'm in the garage and-
Dean: Perfect.
Steve: I've got a, I found a piece of card here and I've just been writing that down and within 36 hours you're going to see a dictionary definition of Bluefishing and we're going to start posting that. I think that is pure genius.
Dean: Now you create a movement around that, hashtag Bluefishing.
Steve: Exactly.
Dean: Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. I would say that there's probably more, there's more legs to Bluefishing as an action and as a verb than there is over the book.
Dean: The book is to set the stage, but the action, what they do because of it is what Bluefishing is about. What I'm curious about and want to really make sure that you are absolutely focused on is building the community of this, building this ... It takes a lot of absolute overt direction of what to do. Telling people what to do to make sure that now, Billy, or Bobby, or whoever you said in the airport picking up the book and that by the time he gets off the book, or gets off the plane that now he wants to join in and be part of this community. Not that he just anonymously read the book, thought that was a pretty good idea and you made an impact on him, is what are you instructing him to do because of it to become visible?
You've got potentially all of these anonymous people reading the book and buying the book and that's going to be the short term gain of it, but how are we going to carry on the conversation with it? We talked with, and I don't know that you're planning on doing this or whatever, but having a prerecorded message on or in the book, or having an instruction for somebody to go here to join this community. There's still, email is still a valuable foundational element of building a community so I wouldn't downplay that at all. It's certainly a way. Is there some offer in the book or around the book that you're offering to get people to leave their name and their email address? To join something, to download something, to be part of something?
Steve: The only place that we have that is within the community page and the actual website itself. The website that we have for the book is where we're using to get people to purchase most of the book, and on that page we do have the CAPTCHA to get the details. Of course the next step is to find out what we can actually provide to them post the book. Say there's a chicken and egg, but yes we do have a CAPTCHA on there. I mentioned to you about this green box that even if you're on Facebook and you haven't given me your email address, I can still get your email through that green box.
Dean: Okay, perfect. The other thing, then, then it becomes ... With you it's how can you amplify this Bluefishing, this hashtag culture to become spreadable and to become ... It's almost like, look at what happened with things like the ice bucket challenge that took over for so long. What can you attach to Bluefishing that would encourage people to take some action and report on it? To recognize themselves doing it in action. I think there's something very potentially big there.
Steve: No, it is. You've just ... This is what you do, you worm your way in quietly, stealthily like the Dean ninja that you are and then you deliver a killer blow. I have spoken with so many experts, so many ... I've run out of the, I'm a New York Times Bestselling ... I've spoken to so many people and you're the first one that's come up with something, I don't want to upset everyone else, but so original and actually looked at a different part of the equation. I've got some phenomenal advice on how to market the book, how to position the book, how to build a tribe, how to do the video, all of that stuff. You're now come along and go, okay selling the book, oh okay, sell the book, but what then?
Dean: How are we going to create a movement? That's really it.
Steve: That one had not ... I think I was building a community of people that resonated to my tone and I saw the community being built and the Instagram is validity of that, but the movement. A movement and a community are two different things and in this conversation you've just highlighted that I now have another debt to build a movement to expose those people to go, "Look you've read this and you did this, you deserve the Bluefishing badge of honor." It needs to be ... I now need to sit down, probably with another bottle of whiskey and work out what this looks like because most good ideas come in my second or third blast.
Dean: Yeah.
Steve: That is pure genius, I love that.
Dean: Hashtag Bluefishing.
Steve: From here on everyone's going to go, Dean Jackson, the ninja from Orlando did it.
Dean: That's so funny. It's a shame that I'm going to miss you in Phoenix, you're going to be in Japan.
Steve: Yes.
Dean: I'm excited, I mean I love your book. I'm even more excited about this potential of the movement. This is-
Steve: That's brilliant, mate.
Dean: This has been exciting. My phone line is always open and I think this'll be the start. We'll have more conversations about this, but I think that that's an idea worth exploring.
Steve: I will, I will, excellent.
Dean: We've gone and hatched ourselves an evil scheme.
Steve: Thank you very much for including me in that statement, but you did. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and action the hell out of it. I'm not going to take some wisdom from Dean and just let it fall over and die, so thank you very much, that will be utilized.
Dean: I love it, there we go, hashtag Bluefishing. I appreciate you, Steve, I think you're awesome. I'm just glad that I know you and that you're in my life and I look forward to helping further the movement.
Steve: Appreciate that, Dean, thank you.
Dean: Awesome, thanks Steve.
Steve: Cheers mate, bye bye.
Dean: Hashtag Bluefishing, that was a great episode. It was good that we came around and had that at the very end here and I think that it's an interesting thing whenever you can attach a movement or some activity around people taking action because of what you've been able to do. I have full confidence that Steve is fully loaded to get the word out about his book. All the podcasts, all the people that he knows, he's a wonderful podcast guest. There's no shortage of Steve Sims going to be in the world here over the next several weeks. That's going to be everywhere and I think he's going to sell a lot of books. What I'm really excited about is the potential to really have his true intention which is to inspire people to take action, to do things that they wouldn't think would be even possible. Which he's built a life on really testing that boundary, why not? It's a great way to live your life.
I'd love to hear when you get Steve's book, listen to the podcast episode that Joe Polish and I did on I Love Marketing. We talk more about what's actually in the book. We didn't get into that in this episode, but I have a copy of the book, it's fantastic. Then share with us what would be the thing that you've been inspired to take action on? What's your hashtag Bluefishing and share it with us. Let's start that hashtag culture going here. It's not that often that you get an opportunity to create a category, and a word, and bring something into mainstream culture. I think that's pretty cool. Even something like the macarena started with somebody making up the word, you got to label it in order for it to happen.
I would encourage you to do the same thing. If you'd like to continue the conversation here you can go to MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com, you can download a copy of the More Cheese, Less Whiskers book, you can click on the be a guest link and be a guest on the show. If you'd like to see how the eight Profit Activators are shaping your business, where the big opportunities are for you, go to ProfitActivatorScore.com and try our Profit Activator scorecard. It'll give you some immediate insight into where the best opportunities are for your business right now and where some of your strengths are. That's it for this week, tune in next time and I will talk to you then.