‘A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do’.
Or so the quote states.
But the question remains
What?
What has a man got to do?
One could argue
Could it be something worthwhile?
Or something destructive?
Let us analyze.
Right now around the world you have the chaos of Libya, the madness in Bahrain, the disturbance in Iraq and the Obama administration giving you once again amazing hope for a better tomorrow.
The newspapers are filled with these tit-bits.
But somewhere in the beautiful yet blessed city of Dubai, you have something which remains unknown.
That something is Robert Simic.
The first normal yet polite reaction to this amazing name can be echoed in the immortal words written by Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman – which was later on modified by the Dutch Band Gompie, titled “Alice…Alice, who the @#$% is Alice?”
So this may be the question you would like to ask me…..
‘Robert…Robert, who the @#$% is Robert?”
Robert is…..
Wait.
I don’t think it is right that I brand, baptize and bestow a single word and ruin this amazing moment.
I mean after all, I have to keep your suspense until your eyes have gone through the whole article right?
So read on with a nice plate of nachos dipped in hot cheddar cheese and red pungent salsa…….
In the month of November after I had been introduced to reality thanks to the school of hard knocks, I sat down in a tiny room of a unknown Samaritans house, contemplating the future.
The only thing that kept me afloat was hope – a dream that everything would be okay and that I could live a life doing what I was always passionate about – Speaking and training.
But I had a few problems.
I didn’t have a trainer’s certificate.
I didn’t have the ‘specific scientific knowledge’
And I didn’t have the USP that made me stand out from other trainers.
And the biggest problem of them all….
Loy Machedo didn’t have ‘the Moolah’.
So as I sat down in that tiny room and wondered what to do next, I got a stupid idea.
I took a small sheet of paper and wrote:
“I am a certified NLP trainer, certified under the best training institute available in Dubai.”
That sounded nice but there was a problem.
I didn’t know the name of any institute nor did I have details of how much it would cost….I didn’t even know if there were any such institutes in Dubai.
So I googled for those missing pieces of the puzzle and sent all of them an inquiry.
Finally, after a few days I received the responses.
All of them were more or less similar except Robert’s company – Evolved coaching. I mean the minute I read how much he was charging for the same course, my eye balls popped out their sockets!
He was more expensive than any other institute! And I was like, this guy must be crazy!
So I sat down in my lonely room with the names of 3 to 4 institutes including that crazy super elite training company with their over-priced quotations another idea struck me!
I made my mind to write to them that I didn’t have the money but yes I had a dream and yes, I wanted to complete a course with them.
Well what did I have to lose?
So I wrote and emailed the request.
And it was done.
Guess what happened next?
All of them responded telling me that they were very excited to read my letter and almost everyone was ready to offer the course for free! Yes folks, each and everyone of them! Sounds great, isn’t it? Yeah right!
Are you nuts or something?
The reality is…..nothing happened.
Nothing.
No one responded.
And no one cared.
May be I was reading too many motivational books and hoping for the sun, moon and Hollywood happy endings to take place.
But yeah, nothing happened.
Later on one evening as I was about to sleep, I received an email.
Not just ‘an email’.
I received a personally typed letter from this guy ‘Robert Simic’. He wrote to me about his life, his career, the challenges he faced and how today he was living his dream. The letter was not just an email, it was a sincere conversation. It took me a pretty long time to read it and I wondered how much time he must have taken to write it all! And in the end of it all, he surprised me. He offered to pay for my fees for me with the blind faith that I could pay him back when I did have the money. I was stunned. And may be that is why I ended up doing something even more stupid.
I ignored the email. I honestly ignored it. I didn’t know what to say. I mean what if I was unable to pay this guy? The course was a fortune! This is what I wated…but how would I pay him back?
So I did what I felt was the best thing to do – nothing. I decided I would write to him only after I found a job. I kind of spend the whole week searching for someone to give me a job…..but nothing surfaced. Guess what happened after that?
Another email from Robert Simic. And this time to my utter surprise, he had the concern, care and compassion to ask me if I had received his email with the offer.
And he had forwarded the same letter to ensure I had received it.
This time I replied to him stating why I had not replied to him and the fact that I was searching for a job so that I could at least pay him something.
He replied almost immediately stating that my priority was to complete the course – not focus on the payment. He made it clear, he wanted to help me only if I was willing to help myself. Finally he concluded stating that I could pay him back once I got a job.
Now this may sound shocking to you.
Imagine this, Robert Simic actually wrote to me almost every week encouraging, motivating and guiding me towards being mentally prepared to come for the course. And I never even met the guy!!!
So now, here we have a guy whom I have never met, whom I don’t know and whom I have no idea what he does….but is going all out of the way to help me complete the course.
And me?............well just getting mentally prepared for the course.
So, isn’t the story over?
Nope.
Friday, February 25, 2011
This is where it gets even more bizarre.
The training was to be held at the Address hotel, in Marina, Dubai.
A 5 star hotel with state of the art conference facilities and super over priced food!
I came in there sheepishly and saw him face to face – Robert Simic.
Robert if you haven’t met him personally, looks like a mix between Vin Diseal and Bruce Wills. (Don't let the photograph fool you...I can assure you his is very muscular & strong!)
He is smart, sharp and sexy.
(Don’t worry folks – no intentions here. I am not interested in men.)
I sat down for what I was mentally prepared to be a simple NLP course. However, what I was not prepared for was the intensity of this program. I mean if you were to go for any training program in the world, chances are you would imagine going into a room to be trained for 3 to 6 hours. Well buddy, that is where you are wrong.
This training started at 10am sharp and concluded…..get a hold of this…..at 2am!!! Yes! 2 am in the night! 2 am in the early morning! 16 hours of training! And guess what? That was just day 1!!! We had another 8 days more to go.
Initially, I thought not only is this guy crazy, I thought may be this was his first time as a trainer and he was overly excited.
There was no way in the world he would last another day with so much time invested in all of us. But no. To my utter amazement, this superhuman of a being continued this format for the next 8 days non-stop! I mean he would not only speak, train, motivate, guide and mentor each and everyone in the room, he made sure he was with each and every person all the way, until the last person left the room with all the doubts cleared!
Can you believe if I tell you this – he even had stayed the whole frigging night in the conference room with one of the students simply because she needed a coach to talk to with regards to her doubts!!! He guided her in the way a father would guide his daughter and ensured she was taken care of.
What time did it end?
5am.
What was the surprise?
Within a few hours this guy was back in the training room at 9am with hardly 3 hours sleep – and went on for the next 16 hours again training all the other students! Was this guy for real???
And if you want something more to think about, try this.
I was the most distracted student – I mean in my life I have never sat in one place for more than 2 hours – you think I would sit in one place for more than 16 hours???? It was painful! I mean don’t get me wrong! The course was fantastic and everyone loved it but I could not sit so long in one place! I kept moving in and out, kept yawning, kept fiddling around with my laptop, kept getting restless – but this guy treated me with the same interest and passion as everyone else.
The part that amazed me still further was that he gave me total respect and honor, as if I had paid him the full amount and was doing him a favor. Now have I finished buttering him? No. And is this the only reason I wrote 2017 words about this guy? No way!
The main and only reason I was motivated to write all is because of what happened during the course of the day, which I will now share with you.
On day two, as I was struggling to sit and learn what Robert was teaching in came Roberts wife, Billy. And if Robert looks like Vin Disel, do I even need to explain how Robert’s wife looks?
Billy was not only an extremely beautiful woman but the part that stood out among everything else, she was so down to earth and so friendly.
And in the days that followed, Robert and his wife treated me with love, respect and as a family.
Friends, you may have not known this because you were not there in the room with me, but do you know how many times they encouraged me? How many times they patted me on my back and cared for me? How many times they made sure I understood the educational material?
Forget all that, do you even know many times Robert and wife hugged me with love?
The number of times they did this for me exceeded the total number of times my own south Indian parents must have done for me in this lifetime.
Not a day passed by where they both treated me with love, honor and respect. And mind you, I was not one of the most humble, quite and resourceful students. There were complaints about me and the noise that came from typing on the laptop – how I know this?
Well Robert was honest and told me so.
Did I listen to him?
No, I am afraid not.
16 hours was a bit too much for me and still is. But even with all this, Robert and his wife Billy loved me as if I was part of the family. Not a day passed by where they didn’t make sure I was okay. I was treated how a parent would have treat their own baby.
Now let me confess something totally embarrassing.
The silly willy that I am, I had cried so many times during the course of the training with the love they showered upon me. And every time I cried, they stood by me, next to me, with me until I had emptied myself out.
I honestly never felt loved by anyone so much to such an extent.
Thursday, March 03, 2011 at 11:09pm,
Today being the second last day, we completed everything early.
As I sit down all alone, I contemplate everything Robert and his wife Billy have offered me.
How has the 16 hours of training per day been? Wow….simply amazing.
When I look back and reflect, Robert and Billy could have made the course short and gone home as soon as possible. They didn’t have to stay all the way till the late hours of the night. But they stayed for all the students. They stayed for their commitment to make us the best. And they stayed up late for the integrity they represent.
Robert Simic, Billy Simic and Evolved Coaching was truly one of the finest training sessions I have ever attended.
It was very intensive but honestly, worth every penny invested by every person…..and which I have yet to pay off.
My experience with Robert, Billy and evolved with be a memory that I cannot describe in words and an experience that may be no Hollywood movie can depict; and no one can comprehend.
So so….after editing and re-editing a text at 1:12am…… I ask myself yet another question…..
How many secret lives has Robert and his wife Billy touched in this manner?
How many unknown people has Robert and his wife Billy blessed in this way?
And most importantly what can people like you and me do for angels such as this?
I wish I had a good answer to that.
For now, all I can do is pay Robert in bits and pieces, small bits and pieces for the loan he took for an unknown person he met online, thanks to an website which his beautiful wife Billy designed all by herself.
(By the way, in case I forgot to mention – Billy’s wife is one of the top website designers in South Africa having designed website for top notch multinational companies)
And as for Robert, you can be rest assured, no matter where I go, no matter what I do, if ever I am asked to recommend the finest Life changing training programs or coaches in the world, it would be without a fragment of doubt - Robert Simic from Evolved Coaching.
So my friends, as I contemplate the overused macho quote
‘a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do’,
I can only think of a person like Robert Simic. Simply because he was a man of courage, a man of heart and a man of character. In a world filled with so much destruction…from the chaos of Libya to the madness in Bahrain, from the disturbance in Iraq to the unrest around the world…..I see hope in the blessed city of Dubai, in the form of a man, a man who changed my life named Robert.
So if ever in the future I am asked ‘Robert…Robert, who the @#$% is Robert?” Do you know what my answer is? Simple. Robert Simic is THE man.
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