Jeff Seems: You Don't Know What A Bad Day Is | The Business Blast Podcast #591

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Jeff Siems with us. He is an International Business Director at VNU Asia, which is China's oldest exhibition organizer, and Shanghai business coach that helps professionals in high-stress jobs empower their energy, productivity, and communication. So welcome to the show, man.

Hey Tyler, really appreciate it. Been looking forward to this for a while.

Of course, man. Grateful to have you here, Jeff. We'll jump into the first one. The first question I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

It's a good way to start off the podcast for sure. You know when your parents, when you're having a bad day when you were a kid, like, ah, say school sucks, or or you're a little bit older and I don't like my job and everything, your parents are always like, have a positive attitude and you can do better and just, it'll get fine. My dad always came to me and he was very calm when he said this. He just said, Jeff, take a breath. You don't know what a bad day is. The reason he said this is because his father, my grandfather said this to him. To him. And there's a reason behind "you don't know what a bad day is," because my grandfather was a POW in World War II from the Japanese. For 3 and a half years, this man experienced horrors that he didn't really share with anybody. My family, my dad, my uncle, they don't really know what happened much, but I'm sure you can let the imagination roam and kind of figure out for yourself what those men of the Greatest Generation went through, especially the horrors of World War II. So when my father was having a bad day, he was, oh, school was bad, or hey, you know, I don't like my job, same thing that we all do, we all complain. My grandfather would say, hey, you don't know what a bad day is, you can suck it up, life's good, you have it really good for yourself. And this, you don't know what a bad day is quote, I think of a lot because we don't have it bad, we have it very good, we've grown up in a lot of, peace. We've grown up pretty spoiled as Americans and just living, living well anyway. So I always try to remind that to myself. I've written that down in places at work, you know, something good doesn't go down. So as you know, being an entrepreneur, you don't always win the deals, and it's a little frustrating, and maybe you're really hoping for something, but you don't really know what a bad day is. It just puts everything into perspective.

Thanks for sharing that with us. That does put it in perspective. For me, I always try to think about it in that way too, where it's like anytime I catch myself complaining or I'm thinking that things are not as good as they should be or something, I put myself on like, whoa, man, there's people that are just trying to eat. They're trying to reach their basic human survival needs. And, you know, as most Americans are in a sense, like, we already have those things met. So to complain about anything is pretty wild when we have it as good as we do. So I appreciate you sharing that with us.

Yeah, for sure.

So, so yeah, the next one I have for you, Jeff, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

It doesn't matter if it's in the industry exhibition, cool, or with training with people skills. I know you've had a lot of— in your past— I've seen that in all the types of jobs I've done. Business. You can be very, very skilled in certain technical aspects of your job, and that's very important depending on what you're doing, and you need to learn that things and those things. But if you don't put in the effort to really hone those people skills, right, to create trust and rapport with not just the people that are closest with you, your family and your friends, but in your business it's going to be really hard for you because you can have all the smarts in the world based on what your job is, engineering or medical, but if you really don't know how to make connection with that person sitting across from you, it's going to be tough. And as an entrepreneur, both of us know this very well, that business is done between people. It doesn't matter. I've seen situations here that especially in China. You know, it's all about the guanxi, as you've probably heard, even more than in the States. Your network is your life. And I've seen deals done here. I was just in Kunming. I arrived tonight and I was with our president. He was sitting down drinking with this other guy from the Kunming government, and they made it— they made a deal right there, just over drinks. Just simple as that. Just because they got along really well and having a good time and boom, there was no formal meeting to really kick things off. It was more just, hey, I want to get to know you. If there is trust between us, let's move forward. And it was so good to see that because it just keeps reaffirming to me that people is business and business is people. And in my industry, in training, entrepreneurs like ourselves, but pretty much for anyone.

Yeah, man, I couldn't agree more. Business is people. I actually was just talking about this with somebody else where Gary Vaynerchuk just put out a video yesterday, and it was People Are the ROI of Life. That's what it was called, and I couldn't agree more with that message. So I think it kind of leads in. If you have any other piece of advice, feel free to share it, but the next question is, what's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific, and I think like people is that answer, but if you have anything else to share, go ahead.

Yeah, the last question was pretty much covered that overall piece of business advice, people is business, business is people, but to add on to that just a little bit to go deeper, I would say put your phone down. When I say put your phone down, I'm thinking of the guy— what was that movie? Glengarry Glen Ross. My colleagues right now in China sometimes to put that phone down. Have you heard of WeChat, that app?

Yeah, yep.

Okay, yeah, WeChat is probably the most robust app I've ever seen in my life, and they have, uh, they're pushing 1 billion users. It's like WhatsApp except just, uh, much more robust. You can do payment, online payments through there, or mobile app payments through there, and it pretty much revolves around your whole life. And, um, the thing is with businesses, and not even just in China with WeChat, but also in the States with many social apps and the mobile phones, is that We're always looking down at it. And yeah, technology has increased communication and our business with people, but it's also taken away that personal communication aspect directly with people, because we're better relationships. So to go along with these last two questions, people is business, business is people. In order to create those meaningful relationships with people, It needs to be genuine, and I feel that sometimes that mobile device takes away from that.

I agree. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

I would say not to seek advice from everyone. And it's okay to be open-minded, and I felt that when I was younger, it was a strength that I was really curious and asked people for their advice and wanted to hear their thoughts and their opinions of what I was doing or how I could be better. But sometimes, I've noticed that especially now doing more of my own business and working more professionally across the world is that, especially when you may need to make decisions quickly, you just, you can't take that much information in. It's an information overload. And it's not possible to get advice from everyone because it will stop you in your tracks and for you to really, to continue being efficient and to make the right decisions. So I would tell my younger self to, practice trusting your gut instead. So seek advice from people who are— who believe in you. So your family is always a good, good person to go to, but there's also mentors out there that, uh, for whatever you're into, right? If you're younger, maybe you like a sport, or if you're a young entrepreneur, right, and somebody who's more established in the industry. Um, but trying to seek advice from everyone, it can be dangerous sometimes. So trusting your gut I would tell my younger self that it's okay. You'll fail sometimes, but at the same time, you'll see that you do have the right answers and not to be afraid to pull the trigger.

And kind of going a little bit down a different path, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

I don't think there's any key to happiness. 'Cause life isn't easy. I would say that I guess our goal as human beings is to be content. I think content is a better word than happiness. You can't always be happy. Maybe your job's going well, but maybe your relationship's not going well, or vice versa. Life's never gonna be perfect and happy-wappy. It's to be content. And I think, I guess, if there is an answer to this question, the key to this happiness, or contentment is to always strive to evolve. As human beings or any organism on this earth, we're always trying to evolve to be the best thing we can be. And I think that's what we are subconsciously doing, is evolving as a race to be better with more. We're going after more technology. We've invented this look where we come to as 7 billion people. I think that individually, if we always strive to be better and evolve ourselves, that's, I guess, the key to contentment or key to an overall healthy lifestyle or a happy life.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

Well, as we spoke about a couple weeks ago, anything Tim Ferriss related is is absolutely great. I have all his books on my shelf. They're like Bibles up there. But I'd say that probably the last book I read in the last year or two that really was really interesting to me was something that maybe you haven't heard before. It's called Prisoners of Geography from Tim Marshall, and it's about how geography still plays a role in how different governments are making their decisions and their policies and how they interact with the other countries around them. Like, why, why did Russia go into Ukraine, for example? The book goes into— it's, it's all about geography against the EU powers. Or what about Japan? Many, many say that Japan has actually become the power, not China, because of where they are. They need to be This book put a lot of politics and history into perspective. We forget about that. We just think that there are no borders anymore. And that geography, that land between us still plays a role in a lot of things that are good between countries, but also can cause some stress in some political, I guess, political discussions. And what this taught me then from a business perspective or a life perspective is that life is all about positioning sometimes. So you have to position yourself to gain advantage in some ways or to position yourself for success. But also you need to understand where, where people are positioning themselves, where they're coming from. If you understand where people are coming from, you can create a better connection with them or you can create a better business with them, or if you're trying to work with them, you need to understand where they're coming from, what position they are, where they are geographically, for example. So this book is just really interesting to me, and it pulled a lot of information from politics, history, geography, and you can go more into it and analyze it into your business life as well.

Yeah, it sounds really interesting. I have to check that out. The next one I have for you, man, is what is your favorite quote and why?

My family always told me to believe in yourself, even when no one else does. They said that to me as a little kid, you know, just okay, great. And they, they continue to say it to me. And I've begun to say that to other people as well. It's played a big part of my life because, hey, the world's tough out there. And human beings are very collaborative. We work together and we want to help each other, but we're also very competitive. So there's a lot of people pulling you down, right? And it's always going to happen that way. It's a competitive world out there in business and just in general. So you always have to believe in yourself because if you don't believe in yourself, who will, right? You're not going to have a lot of support behind you in certain situations. So you got to stay positive and keep looking forward and know that you can, even if you fail, and come to the right conclusions later and optimize what you need to optimize and to reach where you need to go.

Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find and connect with you online?

LinkedIn would be great. You can find me under Jeffrey Siems.

Perfect, man. Thanks again for jumping on.

I appreciate it, Tyler Wagner. Thank you for the invite. The podcast you just heard was published with Anchor. Got something you want to say to the creator of this show? Send them a voice message using the Anchor app, free for iOS and Android.