Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Nina Majer
Sheridan “Shed” Simove is a British entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker, known for his unconventional and amusing ideas, such as his own currency ‘The Ego’, an international bestselling book ‘What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex’ containing two hundred blank pages, and for changing his name to ‘God’. He is constantly in search for new, innovative products, among them conceptual gifts, adult toys, greeting cards and other unusual merchandising offerings. In November, he is coming to the media trends conference SEMPL in Portorož, where he’ll speak about techniques for creativity and deliver marketing insights. “It will be fun, it will be exciting and it will also be beneficial,” he promises.
As an “Ideas Man”, most of the people or the companies you work with probably expect that you would generate ideas in an instant. Could you tell us something about your own idea generation process?
My experience is that you should immerse yourself into any creative challenge that you’re trying to solve. If you think about the brain as an interesting computer, the more input that you put in and then mix around, the more brain can output. I firmly believe that we’re all creative. The human brain has evolved over millions of years to solve problems and that has given us our evolutionary edge. We had to be creative in a wild to get food and to find a mate. These days you can find your mate on Tinder, if you’re lucky, and you can get food from a lovely supermarket. We don’t need our brains for solving those challenges so much now, but we do need our brains for coming up with creative solutions in our business and personal lives.
Our human brains naturally make connections. I think it’s very important to realize that in order to work, the brain must be fed. Either you can feed it with a very good brief or you can feed it with a very good brief plus other stimulus – like Wikipedia, a walk around a museum, a visit to a trade fair – and then you’ll start to make your mind bubble. I believe you can have ideas immediately if you train your brain to twist something already existing or break a rule about how something is usually made or done.
In your career, you’ve come up with some of the most unusual ideas (and executed them very successfully as well), such as ‘The Ego’, your own currency. What is your intention with such projects – to provoke people, to inspire them, make them think differently?
In equal measure I’m a show-off who likes to entertain, but sometimes it’s important to make people think as well. I’m fascinated with humans, in what they believe, how they organize themselves and that extends to religion, to societal norms, to government. Any time I see that something can be poked fun at or challenged, that attracts me. I believe it’s good to make people think about the world around them, as only by questioning everything change can happen.
When I changed my name to ‘God’, I did it partially to see if it could be done, but also because I find it fascinating what people believe in. I think sometimes you should challenge beliefs, because they make people act. When I created my own currency ‘The Ego’, it made me think about the concept of money in the world – and ‘value’. Value is very relative in a business sense; all working people create value and then we sell this for a higher price than the cost it took to make it, which is of course profit. Value is pivotal and that’s why I talk about it to companies. If you increase the value you give to customers and those around you, they will pay you even more.
So, is it possible to change your name into ‘God’ in UK?
This is one of the things that I might talk about in my speech at SEMPL. You’ll have to wait and see! This idea took me on a journey, which was exciting and interesting; I submitted my ‘change of name deed’ to my bank and then got into trouble; it caused a lot of havoc.
In your motivational speeches, you often share your secrets for success. What does it take to be successful?
There are so many factors in success but it’s like asking someone ‘What is good taste?’. It’s a very personal thing. For me, the base level of success is a level of health. The mere fact that we have 70 or 80 years on a planet is a gift and we sometimes need to be reminded how precious that opportunity is.
The second level of success is relationships and the third level is some sort of fulfillment. Getting fulfilled may come from buying Gucci handbags, which doesn’t turn me on personally, or releasing something you’ve created from scratch, which does turn me on. I believe the absence of stress is one measure of success, having time for yourself is another, having choices and freedom are also huge parts of success to me. To be able to decide by myself what to do every day is an enormous privilege, not having a boss or some man tell you what to do is a measure of success. I’m an idiot man in charge of myself. Perfect! It’s too simplistic to say that ‘money’ is the only measure of success. Of course, it’s lovely to have a first class seat on the plane and wear nice suits, but we all know that material or sensory pleasures are not enough these days. We need to be fulfilled and fulfillment can come from tapping into something that you are good at, overcoming a challenge, achieving a small win, helping others or having a family.
What are you currently working on?
I’ve got some really exciting projects in development at the moment. I’ve got a new app coming out, called ‘tilt’. This is an idea that’s firmly a mainstream, serious business idea, which differs from my product line as ‘tilt’ isn’t childish or sexy. As well as loving what I do in novelty sector, I’m also obsessed with how people can change your life when you meet them. Whenever you encounter someone new, they give you a business card and it’s very difficult to get the information on the card into the address book on your phone or computer. That’s why I created this new app, which allows you to place your phone up to someone else’s phone and you immediately swap contact information. It even works when you’re offline. I’m hoping that ‘tilt’ will be something people will really engage with as I’ve taken a long time to create the first version. You can find it on the iOS App Store by searching ‘tilt swap’.
In November, you’ll be giving a speech at the SEMPL conference in Slovenia. What will be your key motivational message to the audience?
I can’t wait! I’m hugely excited and grateful to be invited. I’ll be delivering concrete techniques and tips to help each person in the audience improve their bottom line – i.e. get more sales and success. I’ll cover techniques for creativity and give marketing tips that will make you more successful in your business and your personal life. I guarantee it.
Some speakers will give you a burst of positivity, some speakers might be inspirational, and some speakers might be entertaining – I hope I will give you all those. And what I really want to do is to deliver actual benefit for your company or yourself. It’ll be fun exciting and beneficial. Hope to see you there.