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Here’s your program.
Andrew:Hi everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart.
How do you stand out by doing something different? Joining me is Sheridan Simove, who’s sold one million dollars worth of novelty items worldwide, and keeps coming up with creative ideas. I invited him here to Mixergy just to get an understanding of the creative process, and the system he uses to come up with new ideas.
Shed–I know you go by Shed–welcome to Mixergy.
Shed:Thank you for having me. Absolute honor. It’s like you’ve arrived when you’re on Mixergy, isn’t it?
Andrew:Thank you, I appreciate you saying that. I want to give people an understanding of the way your mind works. You got a book to number 44 on Amazon. Can you show people the book and tell them why it’s different?
Shed:Sure. Here’s my book. It’s called What Every Man Thinks About Apart from Sex. It’s gone to number 44 on Amazon. And inside, the truth is revealed. It’s completely blank. I thought of this idea, published it, got it on Amazon in nine days flat.
This came from an amalgamation of my experiences with publishing a real book. This is my first book, which took me five years to write, and another year to get published, and only went to about 35,000 on the Amazon chart.
I was really depressed about this, because I think this has worth. This is about the power of the mind, and about success, and how to get success, and only a few people have read this; as opposed to this, which has swept the world and become a worldwide phenomenon. Go figure.
Andrew:It has been, and a lot of people want to know what you did to get that book to sell. I’m going to ask you about that in the interview, but let me talk to you a little bit more about some of your ideas, just to really introduce the way that you think to the audience.
We’ll spend time thinking about and talking about your creative process, and, also, how you market; how you marketed that book, specifically.
Do you have another product that you can show us, that gives people an understanding of the kind of creative expression that you have?
Shed:Sure. It’s not so much a product . . . I can show you lots of my products. Here’s the Martin Loofah King.
Andrew:Martin Loofah King. That’s one of the novelty products that you sell, and you’re holding it up right now to the camera.
Shed:Correct. On the back it says, “I have a clean.”
Andrew:Where do you sell that? Where can someone buy it?
Shed:I sell a lot online, but I also sell to big chains: Urban Outfitters, Spencer’s Gifts, and sometimes even to the mainstream stores: in the UK, Selfridges and the big High Street retailers. But the novelties spread all over the world. It’s astonishing really.
Andrew:I see your stuff in Urban Outfitters all the time.
Shed:Here’s another example, Andrew, of my creativity. I made my business card my own currency. Here is my own Ego. Currently I sell this online, and people buy it, so it has a real exchange rate. Currently one Ego equals equals 1£.52, which is a better exchange rate then the euro or the dollar.
Andrew:I want to spend a little time on this thing. So, this is your currency. It’s called the ego. Not the euro, not the dollar, the ego. That’s your picture on there.
Shed:Yep, that’s me.
Andrew:And let me tell you, you’re a great dresser. I’m looking here at a press photo that Ari, my researcher sent me. I see you here prepared for the interview in a way that’s even more prepared then I am. You’re looking sharp.
The bill looks great. That’s your business card. If I were to meet you and give you my business card you’d give me that. What do I do with that to realize some of the value that’s on there and trade it for something that I can take to the supermarket?
Andrew:You know, you’re a very clever man, and you immediately saw. . . You mentioned my dress sense and the card and this is my branding. And this is important to me. And because you’re successful, wildly successful you don’t need to dress nicely, but I’m on my way up, so I have to dress nicely.
I actually think it’s important. I think its confidence inspiring, I think it’s a bit show business, so it marks me out as a performer, and I also think that this is just another example of doing things differently.
Everyone else has an 85mm x 55mm business card. When I give someone this business card they can’t put it in a traditional holder so they put it on their desk and they often stick it up on their wall and I’m in their mind, all the time. That sort of brand reinforcement is valuable.
Andrew:Shed, Can I tell you something? I’m a dry man. For some reason . . . Actually I shouldn’t say for some reason. I know the reason. I don’t have creativity at all.
You look at this, the whole design here, it’s just so bland. The whole design on my site and everything I touch is bland. I know why. Because when I was a kid growing up I thought creative people were wasting their times with dreams that would never come to fruition and business people didn’t care about that. They cared about money, dollars. They cared about spreadsheets, and that’s all I focused on and to be honest with you I peed on the rest of it, metaphorically speaking, of course.
So, I know now understand the power of it. I know that now you are going to stand out for my audience in a way that other guests will not. I know that in my mind little touches that you have will stick there, and I want to be able to stick that way in people’s minds when I meet them.
I definitely, even more than myself I want my audience to be able to do it. I don’t know how to teach them that. The most feeble attempt that I can make, the only attempt that I can make feels feeble.
I see you’ve got a currency; the ego. I think ‘Aha, I should create a currency too, and call it something like the ego, put my picture or maybe,’ here’s the big creative burst that I have on this.I would put Andrew Carnegie’s picture on it because I admire him, and again, that would make it even drier and blander and less interesting to anyone else and I steal your idea.
How do I come up with stuff like this? I just spit on the mic out of excitement and also frustration. How do I do this?
Shed:You come up with so many issues, and the first thing is, it’s fundamentally wrong to say you’re not creative. You –
Andrew:I’ve killed my creativity.
Shed:You’re completely, wildly creative! I’ve read your life, I know about your background. There were so many times when you have to adapt to a situation and you saw a different way to do e-greetings or you said ‘Okay I’m going to sell this mailing list to someone over there rather than over there.’ That’s being creative.
All creativity is, is seeing a good solution to a problem, and of course, some creativity is getting attention, and that’s perhaps my best . . . that’s my forte, but your creativity is in problem solving and I bet your audience is creativity and somebody watching this, if they’re engaged with entrepreneurialism , of course you have to be creative. You’re just problem solving in a different way.
All I do is . . . you give an example with this You say ‘Shed? What would I do?’ Because I’ve done this you have to do what I do, which is to look at what everyone else is doing and do something different. So it wouldn’t be good enough for you to have your own currency, because ‘Sheds has done that’, so now, and sorry to talk about myself in the third person, but now you have to do something different.
For me, I can do something similar so when this was successful another key that’s being important in my success is that when something is successful you build on the success and you add something to the range, so I made my two cents coin and this is a very special business card. It’s a limited edition, and its got heads and tails, and it’s got humor on it, so the tail is my bum and this together is my currency, but when you say to me, “Shed, what could I do?” The baseline way we’d start is, look at what everyone else is doing, and then do something different. So we wouldn’t do a currency. We might create your own stamp, or we might create something that’s relevant to your business.
So, if you in the greeting card or e-greeting card business, or whether you’re in the plumbing business, I would make something relevant to your business that makes you stand out. If you’re a plumber, instead of giving someone a normal business card, give them a stopcock that’s got your information printed on it. Or give them a piece of lead pipe, or copper pipe.
It’s not so difficult to just think, “What is everyone else doing? What can I do that’s not what everyone else is doing?”
Andrew:Let me just say this to the audience. First of all, if you’re just listening to the MP3 of this, stop. Just go online and grab the video. I have the utmost respect for people who listen to the MP3s and read the transcript. I would never–even though I put out video–I would never watch the video of these things. I would listen to them on my MP3 while running, or going into work.
In this case, with Shed, stop listening, stop reading. Go and watch it, because it’s too visual. You’re going to miss it all. Or, if you can’t watch it, then go do something else, because I feel like the MP3 is not going to give you enough value here.
All right, Shed. They say . . . Sorry?
Shed:The expression is “great face for radio.”
Andrew:The other thing I admire about you, and I’ve got to hold off on talking about this, is your attention to detail. I do interviews, nonstop, sometimes with people who beg me to do interviews. And then they come unprepared for them:unprepared in the sense that they just are wherever they happen to be with their computer. They plop down. Whatever’s in the background, that’s what they’re going to do the interview with. That carries throughout.
You’ve got a solid connection. You could write off the whole, “He’s dressed in a certain way.” You’re dressed very nicely. You could say that’s just who he is. You could say he’s got [??]. He might want to sell you stuff next time you’re in Urban Outfitters.
You can’t discount the fact that the Internet connection is strong. The way that you position yourself to look at . . . There’s no bathroom behind you. There aren’t people running in and out, and opening doors. Your attention to detail is another thing I admire about you. But I have to come back to that.
First I have to grill you–with love, because I need to learn this. I don’t grill the way TV interviewers grill, because they want to catch you doing something wrong. I grill because I want to absorb and really use this.
Here’s the thing. When you send me out into the world and say, “Andrew, look at what everyone else is doing and do something different,” you’re giving me too many possibilities.
Here, let me give you an example. Somebody buys from me, or somebody helps me out; I want to send them a thank-you note. Thank-you note is what everyone else would do. You say, “Look at what everyone else would do and do something different.” I know have too many possibilities.
You tossed out a few ideas, like send them a lead pipe. I thought, “Can I find an excuse for a lead pipe?” No! See how literal my head is? Give me more of a framework, that makes me say, “This is where the creativity comes from.”
Shed:What you mentioned about attention to detail, and homing in on this idea of doing different, they mix nicely, actually. The way they mix is that it’s about being thoughtful, and it’s about thinking deeply about what the end user will get. The end user is either a customer, your date, or your business contact.
It’s just about thinking about the other person, quite deeply, and thinking about, “What would I like in this situation?” Because I’m demanding, and have a very short attention span, I’d like something in any situation. Something interesting, different, funny, sexy, naughty, rebellious. You use all of those things–funny, sexy, naughty, rebellious, different–to filter what you come up with.
To say thank-you to someone . . . I’ve got an example. It’ll take me five seconds to get it. Shall I get an example?
Andrew:Absolutely. Whatever example you have.
I just shut my door. They’re getting a little too loud in that office out there.
Shed:This is an example of a thank-you gift that I made somebody. The person’s name is Lynn. Do you know Absolut Vodka? I made her her own vodka bottle. I made her an Absolut Lynn vodka bottle. Now, all I did here was think, “I could have given her a vodka bottle I bought from the shop.”
And, in fact, I bought this from the shop. What I did was, I steamed the labels off and then designed my own label. I printed it on acetate, in reverse, so that this is protected. I then stuck it on with superglue, and I cello-taped the back, so it’s beautifully done. And do you know how powerful, because it’s got her name on it, it’s got where she was born, it’s got a little bit about my interaction with her? And she will absolutely love this. It’s just again thinking, everyone else would give chocolate or flowers, but I’m going to give a personalized vodka bottle, because no one else ever does that, and it will mean so much to her. I spread a little happiness, I show off, and I do the brand good.
Andrew:The brand. Do you consider yourself a brand? Do you consider all of this as part of one message that you send out? Maybe that helps me understand where you come up with the creative ideas. You said, “the brand good.” Tell me what you mean by that. Shed:I suppose that, these days, we are all bombarded by content, and I want people to think that when they encounter anything I do or say, it has value, it’s challenging, it’s funny, it’s engaging. I think it’s very important, because people’s time is so valuable, to give them something that they can’t get somewhere else. Otherwise, you’ll have no competitive advantage over every other person in the street and every other business. So, when I talk about creating the brand, it’s sort of the brand, but it’s sort of me as well. It comes from me, which is the need to be liked, of course, but also the need to be recognized, for beautiful women to find me attractive, and for men to find me inspirational. It’s the old same-old, same-old everyone else wants, but it’s a conscious decision that I don’t want to let people down, Andrew, I want to be valuable, I want to be special, to have a niche. So, then, people will either hire that niche or invite that niche to a party.
Andrew:Ha ha ha. I would invite this niche to a party!
Shed:Thank you very much. Ha ha ha.
Andrew:Let’s go back to the currency that you have. First of all, tell me that one dry question that I asked you earlier, before I get back to creativity. I get this, how do I exchange it for real money?
Shed:Ha ha ha.
Andrew:Look at where my head goes with this stuff, but how do I exchange that currency for real money?
Shed:OK, the wonderful thing about my currency, the Ego and the My Two Cents, are that as soon as I put them on eBay, they started to fly. And what’s very interesting, and what’s perhaps a good thought experiment for entrepreneurs is look at modern art. You know Damien Hirst, the famous modern artist, he takes a skull, he covers it with diamonds, and it costs him 5 million pounds to do so. Then, he sells it for 50 million pounds. Who decides the differential in how much it costs and how much it sells for? Perceived value is really interesting and, really, a confidence trick. All money is a confidence trick, because the dollar in your pocket isn’t worth a dollar. It’s just a promise; it’s a promissory note, and so, for me, this could be worth a hundred dollars or two dollars depending on what you think. It’s just a human slight of perception. So, when I sell these online, and people buy them, it takes me by surprise, but I’m delighted that they think that something I’ve done has value and interest, and I will take these in lieu of payment for some of my products, so, that’s fine.
Andrew:OK. You have a method, or a system, or some framework that you can share with us, don’t you? I mean, you’ve thought this through in a way that helps you share this with others. Teach me that framework.
Shed:Sure. There are certain techniques I have for creativity, and those are simple techniques that are widely known. Things like break a rule, take an idea that’s already existing and twist it slightly. So, for example, here’s an example from my life, let me see if I’ve got it, Here we are, let’s have a look. Sorry, I’ve got so much on my desk.
Andrew:And there are so many visuals, we’re going to go through every single thing on your desk later. OK, so, let’s see what you’re holding.
Shed:So, I saw some candles in a shop (and this is an example of creativity), and those candles spelt “Happy Birthday”, and each separate candle was one letter, and you just put it on the cake. No one was doing fun slogans. So, I made “You’re Old” in candles. Here are my “You’re Old” candles. It’s a simple idea. It makes it just a bit more humorous, and these have sold a quarter of a million units worldwide because it makes somebody laugh, it’s under 5 dollars, so it’s a very easy purchase. The packaging is nice, the thickness of the card is good, so it’s sturdy, and the actual product does what it means to do, which is put it on a cake, make a phrase that’s funny, and it looks good.
So that’s one example of creativity, which is taking something and twisting it slightly, but really, I think my ethos has been to just work with experts. That’s one of my massive ethos is, instead of trying to do everything myself. What I do is, is I license a lot of my ideas. That frees me up to then think up more ideas rather than deal with the shipping and the warehousing and the stuff that isn’t creative because I love the creativity. And it gives me a great buzz when one of my products turns out.
Here’s the Cock-A-Doodle Pad, and the Cock-A-Doodle Pad is a bit rude, but it shows line drawings of men and you doodle you know what on the line drawings. And one of the men in the pad is me because I thought I’d put myself in and obviously the gack [SP] isn’t big enough, but do your best. And so it gives me a great thrill when I see someone in the shop buying one of my products and it makes them smart. But with this, and lots of other of my products, I team with a good company who’s already in that sector, who’s already doing novelty and doing them well. I go to them, I show them I have value by bringing my ideas to life in a crude way, but a powerful way, and then they say, “OK, Great Shed, we’ll license it off of you.” It takes all the aggravation off of me in terms of distribution and often, marketing. And then I can just focus on the next product, and also getting this one right.
Andrew:I see, so what you might do is take an ordinary note pad, start drawing pictures of men without their genitalia on it, and take that collection with a pencil, show it to a novelty creator, and say this is what you guys could be selling.
Shed:Yeah, correct. If I think up an idea, I’ll, for the gaydar, for example, I was thinking of the whole issue of sexuality and how when you meet someone new it’s always an issue, isn’t it? Especially in modern days, are they gay, straight, or maybe? And this idea of somebody having a gaydar, which allows you to tell what sexuality someone is, is a funny idea. So I thought, “I’ll make it into a novelty product.” So now you press it, and it comes out on a random decision.
Toy:Oh my goodness, you’re like so totally gay! Oh, please.
Shed:And what I did was, I tried to make it pro-sexual if you will, so it’s positive about homosexuality. So when it’s straight, it’s when it lands on straight, it says, “Oh, you’re straight, what a shame,” because I thought that was funny.
For this example, I brought it to life in a very crude way. I’m not a designer, let’s get this straight, and you could say that my talent, if I have one, is that I’m a visionary. I believe something will work, I’m good at detail, but I’m not a designer. So I bring it to life enough to communicate the idea to somebody, you make sure you sell it to them, and together you make sure it’s the product and it works and it’s funny.
Andrew:Before I grill you again about creativity, do you mind showing people, you were part of a documentary. You have a newspaper in front of you from that? I
Shed:Yeah.
Andrew:I don’t want to say anymore than that. I’ll let you introduce the story and hold up the, there it is.
Shed:OK. Here you can see the front page of one of the biggest newspapers, in fact the biggest newspaper, in the UK. At the bottom there, you can see that it says,”Fake TV scandal, channel 4 man, aged 30, posed as pupil.”
Andrew:So what’s the story there?
Shed:OK. The story here is that I’ve always been very interested in how we bring up our young people and how we prepare people for adulthood, and how I think we fail people, fail young people, because we should be teaching them the important skills in life, which are how to deal with money, how to be a good entrepreneur, how to look inside yourself and find what your love and what you’re naturally good at, and then second to last two, which are how to be a good parent and how to be a great lover.
Andrew:You think we’re failing our kids because we’re not teaching them how to be great lovers?
Shed:I do, I do, because, I think actually, that’s one of the components about having a rich, full, happy life. We pop out with more life skills, and being a good lover is just one of the life skills you actually need. Being a parent, being good at business, looking into yourself and seeing what actually moves you so that then you can gravitate towards that area of industry to see what happens.
Andrew:Oh I see. OK. Maybe it’s a language issue because a lover over here means something completely different.
Shed:No, no, no, wait. It means what you think it means.
Andrew:Oh OK.
Shed:I’m just giving an example to… No, I do think…
Andrew:What is the scandal? What did you do?
Shed:I said to Channel 4, the big TV company, a big broadcaster, I want to make a show about young people, and I want to go into a school and examine how teachers inspire children, and also… Children is the wrong word, young people and how young people are prepared for the real world which I think they’re not prepared. And so, they said, Shed, we love that, but we need a big idea on top.
So, years before this happened I’d read about a man who, in the UK, had posed as a come back to school, 16-year-old boy when he was, in fact, much older. This idea gripped me and also because I’ve had an issue with how I look for a long time. I’ve always looked younger than I am, but not now I’m haggard. I became gripped. I said to Channel 4, I want to see if I can persuade… I can go back to a school and pretend to be 16 when, in fact, I’m 30. They said, Shed, you’ll never do it. It’ll never, ever happen, and I said, let me try.
I got passed around all the departments. It took me ten months to raise $200,000, about $300,000 to get this program made, and I found myself going for an entrance interview at the school. And we told the school we’re going to film a new boy, and the new boy was going to be me, and he’s 16. In fact, I was 30, and I found myself in this entrance interview petrified, petrified, Andrew, and went there. I had to shave really thoroughly and wear different clothes, and I had more hair then. It was just horrendous.
I went catatonic in the interview. About halfway through the entrance interview I seized up and I couldn’t speak. My brain was saying, Shed, there’s hundreds of thousands of pounds riding on this and all your dreams. And it’s your production company. You’ve got to keep speaking to the head master. In fact, I couldn’t and the director saw that I was in trouble, made excuses, and I went outside. I thought I’d blown it, but the director came out and said, Shed, we thought you were great, but you were a bit nervous, but you start on Monday. I went to school for nine weeks as a 30-year-old boy. No one detected me as a 16-year-old boy, rather when I was 30.
We got the most amazing documentary in the bag, but when I told them at the end, and this has been a huge lesson for me both personally and in my professional life… When you tell somebody a lie and you establish you’re a liar, everything else you say after that is called into question. Your words are almost like tissue paper in the air, they just blow away.
And so, when I told the school that I wanted to make a program all about young people, they just thought you tricked me, you wanted to humiliate me. And it blew into a huge scandal. The school took legal action against me. I lost hundreds of thousands of pounds. I had to go on the run. I didn’t work for a year. It was horrendous.
Andrew:You had to go on the run?
Shed:I had to go on the run. There was so much press interest and there were so many journalists chasing me that I had to go into hiding. I had to hide in different hotels and commissioners’ houses.
Andrew:Isn’t it good for your brand to be on TV? Isn’t it good for the brand?
Shed:Yeah, but the program didn’t air. Oh I see, to be…
Andrew:All the people that were trying to get you on TV and in the press.
Shed:With hind sight, perhaps I should have taken those TV interviews and tried to explain my motives. With hind sight, I should have. Yes, you’re right but at the time the Channel was just sending me running for the hills. Actually, I was no frightened of all the people that were angry with me who are great people who I bonded with, and that was part of the problem because I bonded with them as me, but they thought I bonded with them acting. I hadn’t, but I couldn’t tell them that I wasn’t acting because every time I tried to they thought I was lying.
Andrew:I see.
Shed:That was an example of dreaming big because everyone said, you’ll never get away with it. I did get away with it, and going into the school talking to those good people every day was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. What it taught me, Andrew, was that my mind can overcome anything. So, if you said to me, Shed, go and pack up the rest, that’s easy for me, and actually I wouldn’t want to do it because it’s been done before but that’s easy now. So yeah, it was good for me in one way but very traumatic in another.
Andrew:Let’s go through one more. You change your name to . . . I’m looking here. We actually have research on every guest. Usually it’s a business timeline of what they did, when they launched . . . Yours is actually called the ‘stunts timeline’.
So that was 2001. I’ve got 2007:successfully change your name. To what?
Shed:I changed my name to God, Andrew.
Andrew:Why?
Shed:I did this because a book that really moved me. And the book was called The God Illusion, by Richard Dawkins. I don’t know if you know the book. It’s a great book and Richard Dawkins is one of the leading thinkers of our time. He puts his thesis forward in this book that God doesn’t exist and it had a big impact on me and I began to think about how God means something different to all of us.
I started to become gripped with the idea that some people don’t think God is real and could I make God real, and could I change my name to God, and was it legal. The more I thought about it, the more I was attracted to the naughtiness of it and also the fact that by doing it I might make people think about the concept of God.
I went to a lot of different solicitors and said I want to change my name by deed to God and they said ‘No, you can’t do it Shed, it’s wrong. It’s immoral. It’s illegal.’ But one solicitor said ‘Yes.’, and I’ve actually got the deed here. Here’s the deed. I actually signed, and you can see there, that I signed as ‘God’ to change my name.
So I got this deed and I was officially God, then, and that was a small success for me, but what I really wanted was a credit card in the name of God, so that when I went to parties I could show girls and that would be really awesome.
So I put this in to my bank. I sent them the deed and I said ‘I want to change my details over to God. I want to get a card and checkbook’ and they said, they phoned me up a week later. My bank manager was a 25 year old guy, fresh out of manager college, and let’s just say he wasn’t amused. He was really angry. And I could hear the anger in his voice.
And he said, angry, ‘Mr. Simove I’m calling you …’.
I didn’t stop him and say ‘It’s God now, can you . . . ?’
He said ‘I’m calling you about your name change’ and he said, with a happiness in his voice ‘You can’t change your name to God because our system needs two names.’
And I laughed and said ‘Hold on a minute. We’re humans, and the machines haven’t taken over yet. It’s not Terminator just yet. Can we change the system because I . . . You can see now I’ve only got one name. I’m God.’
He said ‘No, the system needs two names.’
I didn’t want to be beaten, and I said ‘What about Madonna?’
He said, and he’d obviously brainstormed this “We checked, and Madonna is Madonna Ciccone in statements.’
I thought ‘Okay, I’ve got to give him some props for actually checking’ but then, quick as a flash, I thought ‘He can’t beat me in this, there’s always a way around’ so I said ‘Fine, put me down as Almighty God then.’ Because then I’d still be ‘Mr. A. God’ on my credit card and he was really annoyed and he was angry and he put the phone down.
‘Okay Mr. Simove, I’ll check.’
A week later he got back to me and he said ‘We’ve been discussing your case and we’ve gone to the highest levels of HSBC,’ which is my bank. ‘We’ve gone through the legal team and all the Board of Directors.’
I thought, ‘wow, this is amazing.’ Normally I get a letter from the bank, which is automatic, and it’s a fine, a £15 fine or something, but now the board and the legal team know my name. That must be progress.
They said ‘we think what you’re doing is wrong and immoral and we’re going to close all your accounts. Your business accounts, you’ve been with us 20 years.’
So in that state I leaked it to the press and some of the press articles are brilliant. I haven’t got them with me but they’ve got headlines like ‘Bank snubs God’ and ‘No Bank for God’ and it’s great that the press had real fun with it, and they’re all on my site:shedsimove.com
Andrew:Is this all good for business? At the end of the day is this just for fun, for attention, for creativity, or does it help your novelty business?
Shed:That’s a really good question. I am not motivated by the wealth. I’m motivated by burning bright and living a life less ordinary, and spreading a little happiness as I go by. Being an entertainer, being appointed different and perhaps drawing people’s eye to some ridiculous taboo’s existence in society that probably won’t exist in 200 years. I find the human condition fascinating. I like playing with the human condition.
Everything I do is not motivated by money, because a lot of the things I do is challenging, so if I was just motivated by money I would probably go to the city, but I am motivated by the smile, or the shock, or the reaction that you have when I show you. That’s it.
Andrew:That just sounds crazy. Now . . . everything you said up until now I understood, but the fact that you said that you have no interest in money; you’re not motivated by it. That just blew my mind. Now I don’t get you at all, sir.
Shed:No, I do have an interest in money, of course, but I’m not . . .
Andrew:Is the business doing well? How well is the business doing?
Shed:Really well, and you said at the start, I’ve sold a million dollars. I’ve sold a million products.
Andrew:That’s what I meant.
Shed:That’s about six million dollars.
Andrew:Six million dollars since when?
Shed:About four or five years now.
Andrew:Okay, so the business is doing well.
Shed:Business is great! I mean, it’s amazing. The Secret Santa market is huge. You can come up with a silly idea like the ‘Design a Beaver’, price it under five dollars. Or you can think up an idea like the ‘iPod’, which is a memory stick in the shape of you-know-what, and its obviously two giga-bytes, two giga-bytes or number two giga-bytes, a memory dump. These things just sell really well.
No, let’s get this straight. I am motivated by money, but more, no, I’m not motivated by money. I value money and I see that money allows you to do things.
Actually, a rich man is a man who has the time for the opportunities that come to him, or her, or woman. So, for me being rich is having choices.
As you become more successful people come to you and say ‘Shed, would you like to do this, or would you like to work with me on this?’ So the idea that someone could come to me and say ‘Shed, I run a spanner company, a wrench company. Would you like to think up new ideas for wrenches?’ That excites me as much as Spielberg coming to me and saying ‘Shed, would you like to direct a movie and star in it?’
Andrew:Do you do it as a consultant? Do you go to companies? You do.
Shed:I do. You have to be a bit careful.
I go to companies and I talk to them about my techniques for success and my ideas on innovation and how I believe knowledge is flat now, because of the internet, and therefore creativity is much more important in business to give you a competitive edge. I do run sessions where we come up with ideas and I also have consulted, but the thing about consulting is you’ve got to be a bit careful. Because I’m a completer-finisher, and that’s one of the keys to my success. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. To the nth degree. And I will not let go.
The problem is when we go in as a consultant you say ‘Come up with a great idea for the new wrench.’ Then someone else doesn’t follow it through and I actually can’t follow it through or they can’t pay me to follow it through. So, therefore, it doesn’t get done and that frustrates me. I don’t like any part of a process where we don’t see an end result.
Andrew:Can you hold up that currency again? I’m not obsessed with the currency. I’m obsessed with the process. I just think the currency is a good example of it. You see, anyone who’s looking at this, I hope is recognizing that it’s not just two colors. There is that golden seal there. There is line down from top to bottom, just like a real currency.
Anyone else who is going to create this might just copy a dollar bill on a copier, and then on the back of it put their business card. Or, maybe they take it a step further and create their own currency design and put it on standard paper and just print it out, or have it printed out.
You made it look, to the detail of that silver foil there, like a bill. That seems like an important part of your process. I would not be as impressed if it just looked like a scanned and printed bill. Even if it had your own design.
Tell me about that attention to detail that I mentioned earlier.
Shed:Sure. The attention to detail is everything. A good example is my product the ‘Notepad’, which started out life as the ‘iNotepad’. Here I used a very simple creativity technique which is:see something that everyone else is finding popular and is in the aether, and then parody it. Twist it. Have fun with it. Or use it for your business.
So take a good idea from another business and use it for your business. So I took the idea of the iPad, and I thought ‘I’m going to make a notepad which is exactly the same dimensions.’ So the attention to detail on this was really important. It’s exactly the same size, but it’s exactly the same thickness as the iPad 1, it has a shiny front cover as you can see, which actually was hard to do because of the [??] attaching to the back, not that hard, it wasn’t [??] but it was quite hard in the novelty business, in the pad making business. It also has a different orientation, so you can hold it in a different way, like the iPad. It has, on the back, a logo. And that logo is the nice pear logo which got me in trouble with Apple. Andrew:Let’s show that again for a second because I think you have to see that to understand. OK. Nice pear. Yep. That’s what got you in trouble? I read about this.
Shed:Yeah, the first version of the nice pear logo and the pad was got me in trouble with Apple. Got me in hot water with Apple because they said I was infringing their copyright because my first logo was very different. But, remarkably I still sold lots of them and I just changed the second batch.
Andrew:What was the first logo?
Shed:Let me see if I’ve got it, hold on. This was the first logo. So I had the most hilarious exchange with a big legal firm who came to me like, on a ton of bricks, and they sent me a thick legal document about the history of the Apple logo, which is really interesting. This is an example of why I do what I do because it always makes me laugh, Andrew, that serious men who have trained for years have to deal with me about something frivolous. And it makes me chuckle and it gets me up in the morning, so I had this big lawyer shouting at me saying, the bite mark and the leaf infringe the Apple logo, so you must change that Mr. [?] so I said, OK, I’ll change it, no problem. So I changed it from that to that, and so I think it still works, the joke. Nice pear. Obviously you get the gag. But those sort of details connect with people and make people’s hearts say, I know I’ve got this straight, I’m not with these novelty products doing anything revolutionary. In a way, I’m like a comedian telling a joke. But, in order to get the joke right I have to have the attention to detail so as you noticed on the currency all the details are right, and on this you’ve got the energy [??] and you’ve got the wireless symbol there and also as part of my sort of self promotion, on every page, I’ve put my URL, which is ideasman.co.uk or [??] And so all these things make it right. I’m very difficult to work with because I am a stickler for detail and I want to get things right and I want people to notice the work I’ve put into it. I believe they do notice it.
Andrew:I’m wondering how you even notice the details, let alone improve on them. The thing is, that I don’t blame other interviewees who just plop themselves down wherever they are in front of a camera. We take the fact that every computer has a camera for granted at this point. We just expect I’ve got this on my calendar, expect that everything will work out. You just make the phone call and boom, it will all work. You don’t. You said I want to make sure I have all of these props here so I won’t just talk about it I’ll show it. You thought about the connection. That it’s not just wifi even though you can now take your computer anywhere, you want to be in a place that’s quiet. I wouldn’t notice those details. And then the next step is improving them. How do you take the first step?
Shed:I disagree. Your track record shows that you think about what the consumer wants. I know your story.
Andrew:You’re giving me too much credit. Even when it comes to this video. I said – I did exactly that. I plopped myself down in front of my computer and I talk and then a few people who watch me, back then it was just my family, my brother said, look, it looks like you’re looking right down at the computer. Put a set of books underneath it or something so that the camera is within eyesight. I disagreed, I said, who cares. You’re looking at details no one else is going to notice. A few other people said it, I plopped books underneath. Someone said, hey, the lighting is terrible. This is what it was like before. Like, you couldn’t really see me. And they kept saying put light on, put light on. It took me maybe a year to finally say, OK, maybe light’s important. Look at how easy it is. Boom. And it changed everything. The details, I didn’t notice them myself. And then when other people pointed them out I didn’t value them. Now you’re making me value the details. So I want to go a step back and say how do I notice them so that I can do something about them?
Shed:I think it’s a brilliant point you bring up, which is it all comes back to questioning things. You have to constantly ask yourself, how could I do this better? How could I do this better? And that goes from products to services to when you take a girl out, to getting a business card. It’s how do I do this better or louder or more funnier? And that’s what I always ask myself.
In this situation, it’s a big honor to be one of your guests, and I want to give value to your audience and to your members. And so, it’s very important to me that I prepare well, I set up the camera so it’s decent and I have all my stuff to show you because then, I hope, it will be a rich experience for them.
It’s just about asking constantly, is this good enough? Is this good enough? Of course, you’ve got to stop at some point because you’d drive yourself mad which I frequently do, and I drive everyone around me mad. But it’s just about wanting to be a little bit different and better. It’s about wanting to connect, and I actually think it’s about being thoughtful and being empathic to the other person. What would the other person like? If I was in your shoes, what would I like? That’s it, really.
Andrew:All right. I’ve got to delete this whole interview so I can steal all these ideas and pretend that I never heard them from you. No, actually, I take it back. I started this interview admitting that I come from a point of view that says, “I don’t know how to be creative”. And so, what I do is I look around and see who has got the best ideas, and I’ll just use them. Through the process of using someone else’s ideas, I’ll make them a little bit more mine, a little bit different. You’re showing me… First of all, it seems like with the expression you just gave, you’re saying that’s OK.
Shed:Yeah.
Andrew:OK. But you’re also showing me how to go a step beyond, to just keep looking and saying, stop, how can you make this better. Well, try the lighting. Do make it better. How can you make this even better still? Well, get a better mike, quiet things down. Maybe, I heard some noise on the mike a few times. Get some cushions for the wall or even… I see what you’re saying. OK, so you’re giving me a framework for that.
Now, I can see taking this to a degree that would drive me nuts which is fine. I go nuts anyway with the things that I care about. What I want to do though is ship. How do you when you get to this place where you realize, ha, I turned the light on. It gets better. I adjust the camera, people like it more, more people discover it, more people like me. All of the things that I wanted in life are coming to me as a result of this.
I should just keep adding more and more and more, and then you never ship. You never get the product out the door. How do you discipline yourself, Shed, to say, stop, get it out there even though you know you can make it even better.
Shed:Because you get it to a certain standard, and that standard has to satisfy you. Now, we all know life is about compromises and especially in making products or even giving a service. There are trade-offs between time, employee wages, amount of money you invest to the end product. We don’t like to give a dime’s service, but sometimes we have to give, perhaps, a polished gem stone service with a smile. I think whatever you do you can always do it with a flourish even in the blank book, OK?
I had to make sure, because I’ve only got one joke, I’m selling one joke. I had to make sure that the joke was done well. So, I made sure that the inside of the pages were off white. That’s really important because when the spine is on the shelf one of the signifiers that tells you that it’s a real book is off white pages. Now, some people might have done white pages but I didn’t, and I knew that that was one of the signifiers that was important.
I only knew that because I went into my bed, and I got a book that was existing, and I just copied it. It’s not brain surgery, and then I also noticed that the bound spine… If you look very carefully, it’s called perfect bound, and it also has a crease. These are things that are very important to signify a book and signify a proper professional book. So, it’s just really about making it good enough. You don’t have to drive yourself mad. You just have to drive yourself mad enough so that you get it good enough.
What’s been funny with this is I’ve now had inquiries from around the world to print it in different languages. That’s hilarious because it’s just a cover, and they paid me money. So, here’s an example of a situation. Spain paid me a big advance. This is the Spanish version. This is the Croatian version. It just came the other day which I’m really happy about. This is the Mongolian version. What I did with the contracts for these is I knew people did not have my attention to detail. I put in the contract the paper they needed to use for the inside and the card for the outside cover, how they needed to print it, how they needed to do the actual color print, and how they needed to bind it. In that way, I can ensure that my customers get a good product.
Andrew:I love this interview. I only do either… I try to focus because if I don’t have focus then I’m just the guy here with a microphone and who knows? I’m not about anything, and I don’t know who I’m going to attract and anyway. So, I just do interviews with Internet entrepreneurs and try to learn as much as I can about how they work, and every once in a while I find someone who’s just different and I can learn from, who’s extraordinary and I want to bring them on. And sometimes it bombs, and I know my audience knows it, and I can’t say hey, you and I both know this did not work out. Don’t judge me by this. Right, like that. When it works, it’s just wonderful.
Shed:That’s great.
Andrew:I’m so anal I take notes even on interviews like this that I should just let go wherever they want to go, but it’s important because one thing that I said we’d come back to we have to hit on which is how. How did you make that book sell? There was some method. There was some process. Tell me about that. I know you’ve talked about it publicly but share it with my audience.
Shed:No, I haven’t really. I’ve written a blog about it, but I haven’t had a chance. So, this is exclusive. OK, through all my years of making product and I’ve now got about 36 different products out I found that certain things are essential for getting your word out, getting your word out. We’re all after a cheap way to get our products or our services or ourselves known.
What I found very important are a few things. One is a professional image of you, your product or your service. That’s the first thing. The second thing is possibly, and this is optional, a YouTube video. And the third thing is a good press release. The press release doesn’t have to be sent out normally because people will ignore it. The press release could just be what we put up on the net. It just has to be something that people can copy and paste. And in conjunction with the good image and the YouTube video will make a really good blog.
It’s again thinking about the end user. What does the blogger want? The blogger wants an easy life, so he wants to cut and paste it. He wants to take the jpeg, and he wants to invent the video. It’ll take him 15 seconds, and then his audience will have a really great piece of content. So, just thinking about what does the blogger want and what does the audience want. That’s been crucial for my success.
Another thing that’s been crucial is again what I always do is work with experts. I think there’s a fundamental difference in dynamic about working with a PR company because when you phone up a journalist or a decision maker and say; “I’m Shed Simove. I’m Andrew Warner. I’m brilliant.” It’s very different than if someone else phones and says,” You know that Andrew Warner? He is brilliant.” It’s just different because people don’t believe you when you say you’re brilliant, even though we are brilliant, aren’t we?
Andrew:I’ll say you’re brilliant. Right.
Shed:But, yeah, I am.
Andrew:You are. You just said it, too.
Shed:We’re all brilliant in our own little way.
Andrew:Some of us are not. Some of us are…
Shed:Anyway, when I know I’ve got something of value for somebody; I feel competent about it, but it’s much harder to do when you’re saying it yourself than if someone else is saying, hire Shed or get Shed or listen to Shed. It sounds like you cheat really, but I hire a PR company, and I have a very tiny budget. What I do is I get them to seed certain areas.
So, if you get the traditional press, the actual tactile press, that’s good, but what’s even better one article online that’s recognized and then everyone else will jump on the bandwagon and put and paste from the article. And then, they’ll phone you and make their own article. Having a PR company, I think, is vital, but actually having the good image, the good press release and the YouTube video is the cheap part of it, and you use your social networks and whatever else you’ve got under your own steam to make those things reach a higher audience.
Andrew:Do you have to spend money on a professional PR agency? Our video quality just went down a tiny bit because I clicked on the London PR agency URL that’s in my notes, that’s the agency that you hired. The site looks great. Do you have to spend money on a company like that, just to have somebody say you look great, or do you think you could have hired an intern? Could you have just hired an intern a fake PR name, maybe even got a DBA on your current company name, so it could be a legitimate name and say “Hey, it’s Stevie calling from the New York PR agency”. Could you do that or do you have to spend money on a PR agency.
Shed:This, viewers, from the man who say he’s not creative.
Andrew:I know, I was just thinking as I did that, “Hey, that’s pretty creative I could” … [??]
Shed:So again, problem, solution. Of course you could, of course you could. What’s wonderful about the net today, Craigslist, Gumtree, all of these sites is that you can hire students really cheaply and you can find designers, interns, really, really cheaply to help you. Of course you could, of course you could.
I’ve had successes without PR companies that I’ve done off my own back. I recently got into the Wired magazine, which is my favorite magazine of all time. The way I did this was, I sent them lots of emails with information about myself and I sent them lots of novelty gifts in the post and this wasn’t working, they weren’t biting. Every time I phoned, they didn’t want to take my phone calls, so I thought “I’ve got to change my strategy”. This is an important key to success, again. If you keep doing the same things, we’ve all heard it before, the same actions get the same results. I decided I’ve got to change my strategy, so when I got my first job, I sent the boss of the company a pizza at lunch time with a message on it. It said “I want to give you a pizza my mind”, terrible, and said, “Hire me”. He got this at lunch time and thought “who is this freak sending me a pizza with a message on?”. Of course, with stunts they’re only good if you back them up with concrete work and concrete value. There’s no point in saying “look at me, look at me”, unless, when they do look at you, you’ve then got something to impart and value. Something valuable for them. With Wired magazine, I went to a wired event where I knew the editor would be and I walk up to him, showed him this and within ten minutes he called his assistant editor over and said “we’ve got to get this guy in the magazine”. My dream was realized and I didn’t even do a stunt, I just changed my strategy. That was really gratifying.
In answering your question in a helpful way for the viewers, personal contact is the key. Absolutely, the total key to getting good PR. By personal contact I mean this:You can send out 350 emails as a mailshot and in this day and age that will fall on deaf ears. It’s not effective. As soon as you find something becoming non-effective you have to change, as we’ve just discussed. What I would do is focus on three key decision makers who can change your business and can give you the PR you want and go and woo them. That doesn’t mean that you have to take them out for $500 meals. All that means is, do something thoughtful, like, make them a personalized vodka bottle or even, send them what every man thinks about apart from sex and maybe you do a one off, what Andrew thinks about apart from sex. If I made a one-off, which was what Andrew thinks about apart from sex and it was blank, you would remember me for time and [??] [??], wouldn’t you? You’d want to get in touch with me…
Andrew:I’d want to show it to my friends
Shed:Totally, and colleagues. I think the key is to have personal contact and, actually, that’s what the PR company does as well. They have contacts that they phone up and who trust them and there is a short hand there. That makes it much easier, but if you’re doing it cold and you haven’t got money for a PR company, find out who the boss is and woo the boss in an interesting way.
Andrew:Can I tell you how I have grown as an interviewer here, I’m just going to pat myself on the back, but I’ve noticed this. In the past, if I tried what I did with you earlier in the interview, which is, to nail down a clear process that anyone can just use mindlessly and have the same results as you do, I might have gone for that. If I saw that you weren’t going for it and there wasn’t that kind of a system, I would have allowed for a looser system. I would have pushed you to give me some structure to you thought, or else I would have thought “I’m useless to my audience and I have to be useful to them”. What I discovered earlier on in this interview was, wait, that’s going to take away the essence of this person, of Shed, just let him share his stories and what he did and how he did and through it, we’re gonna pick little pieces out that we’re going to be able to use for ourselves, and I haven’t processed what I’m going to take from this for myself, but I know that I picked up on a lot of ideas that I’ll be able to integrate, and inspiration to. And I don’t like this empty inspiration, so I hate to even say I’ve been inspired by this, but I’ve been inspired by it because as you’re talking, there’s times when my mind’s said, oh I could do this or what if I could do that, you know? What if there is like a secret entrance to Mixergy? Like a back door with a page that only members could get, and I hand out [??] like a little [??] even. The whole thing is great. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do, but now it’s on me after I’ve seen this. I’m thinking all the different ways I could improve these interviews. All right, let me say this.
Shed:You’re a good interviewer because you have [??] to me, and I would like to be able to give you it on a plate. Because that’s what we all want. We want it quickly, don’t we? But I think what we’ve done is tease [??] personal contact is one of the big things that I – go out and meet people. Go out and meet people. Because when you meet people wonderful things happen. If you sit in your office less wonderful things can happen.
Andrew:How about we do – I don’t know if you have lightning round, or if you – you know lightning round, like they do in game shows? I don’t even know if they do it anymore, but how about we do a lightning round with quick descriptions and visuals of things you have on your desk. You do as many as you feel comfortable with.
Shed:Yeah, sure. [??] OK, no problem. OK.
Andrew:And we can also, where can we direct people to see more of the ideas for themselves?
Shed:You can go to [??] which is my name, but if you can’t remember that which is understandable, if you just put in Shed, ideas man, it will pop up on Google.
Andrew:OK. Great.
Shed:My site is ideasman.com.
Andrew:Ideasman.co.uk, this is very important. Let’s take a look, what do you got?
Shed:I’ve got lots of things. I recently, I’ll show you some prototypes. I recently thought about a new way to do a feeding bottle for a baby. I’ve made this which is just like dad’s feeding bottle, it’s nice. Perhaps we call it [??] I’ve got these, it’s my higher identity specs, which you put them on and you look like you’re in the [??] special forces when you have a photograph taken. That’s quite fun. What else can I show you? Oh, what’s done really well for me this year is I have an idea for a product, because it was inspired by sitcoms. And you know how on sitcoms people walk in and there’s an audience track that claps or laughs? I thought, wouldn’t that be cool to live your own sitcom? So now I’ve made this machine with lots of different sounds and so you say, oh hey everyone here’s Andrew [clapping]. So that’s applause. And they always laugh at your jokes. And this is done really well, and I partnered with a fantastic company in the UK and we made this together. It’s just gone worldwide and we’ve made lots of different versions of it, so you’ve got science fiction one, which is great for meetings. And we’ve done a cartoon one as well and it’s got silly things. [music] And a horror one as well. [screaming] So, again the principal of taking something successful and extending out to range is sort of there. I don’t know if this joke works in America. Do you know the idea of a butt? This is a butt on a plug, we call this a plug in the UK, so this is a butt plug.
Andrew:Haha, yes.
Shed:So, this, the butt plug taught me, you were talking about detail and this taught me an important lesson. I’m not going to show it. When I first packaged this butt plug it was packaged wrongly, people thought it was a real butt plug that – yeah. So that’s why it didn’t sell, so that was a hard lesson I learned to always make sure the packaging is very descriptive and shows the product well. So yeah, I mean I’m sort of really pleased to be able to speak with you and give you [??] I want to be able to give concrete secrets to success. And it’s hard, I tell you one thing actually, now you triggered it is failure. Failure is a big thing for me and a reoccurring motif in my life. I want to release a book called Failing Upwards because that’s what I’m doing. I’m constantly making mistakes that improve myself. When you’re young no one tells you that all adults are just winging it. You’re brilliant, you’re a self starter and a genius young man who gave something a go and gave it a go so well you sold your company for multiple millions. I mean, how incredible is that?
I sort of want to tell young people that all adults are just winging it and just making it up as they go along. No one has the answer and no one has real secrets. I think if you work hard and you keep doing what you’re doing for a long time, if you’re polite and you always do what you say, you can’t go far wrong. Actually, if you make sure you’re in an area that turns you on you will naturally be good at it and you will naturally have a real zeal for it. That zeal for it will make you better than other people.
Andrew:I see the zeal in you and it’s so contagious. That’s the thing, that people who are doing something that they love the way that you are, it draws us to you. It makes us want to learn more. It makes us want to be a part of what you’re working on. I want to, I want to find more ways to do more interviews with you to find out more.
All right, I think we need to end it here because you must have other things to do. I appreciate you coming on here. I’d love, Sheridan, to have you come back on here. In the mean time, let’s hold up the book Ideas Man. I think this is the best I can give the audience right now if they want more of your essence. There it is.
Shed:Yeah, this has real lessons to impart. It has some of the stuff I’ve been talking about. I think I titled this badly because my ego wanted it to be about me but actually the title should have been about something that this book gives the reader. Actually, people have told me on numerous occasions and on Amazon that this gives them a lot. It gives them just a reminder of how brilliant their brain is and how if you trying to do something and changing your strategy slightly you will absolutely, always get an adventure. Actually, the adventure is all that matters. That is my definition of success.
Andrew:Sheridan Simove, thank you for doing the interview.
Shed:Thanks for having me.
Andrew:Thank you all for watching.
