Big Bamboo founder Stephen Meade shares why relationships, vision, and trillion-dollar thinking matter.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Stephen Meade, Founder of Big Bamboo LLC, about his work in high-level finance—from facilitating a $16B green bond deal to building a blockchain-powered digital stock exchange. Stephen unpacks his “Bullseye Belief” system and explains why helping others succeed through strategic alignment is his ultimate mission.
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today I am in Beverly Hills, California at David Rivera’s Monetized Talks.
I come to this. Every month. And let me tell you, it’s spectacular. He does this mastermind. He brings in these world class speakers. I learn a lot. The audience learns a lot. And then I always get the privilege of doing a bunch of interviews. And today, who walked into the room? A return guest, Steven Mead, the bullseye guy.
One of my mentors, helps me put things together all the time. I got a deal. I got something really big to work on. I’m bugging Steven. I’m like, Steven, come on man. And let lend me that ear. Let me, let me, let me, let me give you some advice, man. How? How does this work? How, what should I be doing next? So, first off, Steven, I just wanna say welcome back to the show.
Appreciate, it’s good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. And I’m gonna give you some kudos because not only am I a returning guest, I was one of the early ones. Ooh, back from when you started. Yeah. And just the, the. The growth of the mission and you and the whole, I think you were there with Money Matters Top It was Money Matters.
That’s a solid seven, eight years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this has been a tremendous journey for you and congratulations. You’re doing great. Oh man, I appreciate that. Yeah. And um, and I’ve seen what you’ve been doing and I wanna, maybe I wanna. Start with a little bit, um, on the last time that we seen each other out in Miami.
Yep. So we were at FII, there was a lot going on and I noticed like part of your career and from me looking in from afar and I’d like you to elaborate mm-hmm. What some of the questions I’ve always asked. I noticed that you’re always at these really high end events. Okay. There’s always players. There’s always like milking conference next week.
Um mm-hmm. Um, you’re gonna be there. Milk. Yeah. Milking global conference in Beverly Hills. You’re always in Saudi. You’re like, you’re in Dubai. You’re doing all these other like, big things like Yeah. Let us into your world. Like what, what’s behind the scenes? That, and what’s some of the actions, because I know you’re very targeted.
I know you’re direct. Uh, I, I appreciate it. So I’ll, I’ll build a little bit of akin for context. Yeah. Um. 22, I went to work for Travelers Group sales training, read 357 books six and a half years. Uh, trained about 8,000 salespeople. Wow. And part of what that was, was to a, a good salesperson is you don’t convince anybody to do anything they convince themselves.
Mm-hmm. And I learned a lot of psychological, we’ll call it manipulation, I called it psychological juujitsu. Mm-hmm. Uh, because my goal was to convince you it was in your best interest to come work for me. Mm-hmm. To go sell insurance. Yeah. The reality is it really wasn’t, but that’s okay because we were taught you can’t measure the man, uh, or a woman’s heart, and so you had to give them an opportunity.
Yeah. Point of that is many years later, I realized I don’t like. Convincing other people to do things that they aren’t passionate about. Mm-hmm. So, as I said about, I have a a system and I’ve got 10 steps that I can say, okay, here’s what I want my life to be like. Here’s the kind of companies I wanna build, here’s what I wanna do.
So I have a very specific framework as an entrepreneur that says, here’s what I want my life to be like if I have everything I want. And one, it lets me measure opportunity. So when you talk about where I am and what I do, one of. The things on this list was I wanted to be able to help other people be successful at what they’re already passionate about.
Mm-hmm. Two, I wanted to be in a position with. You know, athletes and billionaires in the best events in the world? Not, not because I’m egotistical, I just, I like learning from people that are in the executive entrepreneur class different than the creative class, and not, neither one’s better or different, but they’re, they’re markedly different.
And so I’ve built my life around saying, what kind of companies can I start that allow me to be at the events that I wanna be at, with the kind of people I want to be around? Yeah. And so some of them you mentioned are purposely some of the top ones in the world that I’ve been fortunate to do for, you know, 10, 12, 15 years.
Yeah. Um, but, but they’re different. I’ll give one quick ex example, Adam, that’s on energy. Like I’m big on energy and stuff. Mm-hmm. And I have lots of friends that are in Burning Man. Mm-hmm. And Burning Man’s great. I have friends that are there and there I was like, oh, Steven, come to Burning Man. There’s billionaires.
And I’m like. Uh, like, like I said, I’d rather be on a yacht in Monaco than a yurt in the desert. Same, like there’s, there’s great people in both. I just prefer a yacht in Monaco versus a yurt in the desert. Yeah. Like, not, that’s not, that one’s better, but they’re markedly different. Yeah. In energy and expectations.
And so I’ve picked and am fortunate to just attend some of the best. Events in the world of things I’m interested in, in those, the, the realms, primarily financial services and FinTech and things that are kind of leading edge. Yeah. And so any projects that you’re working on that you care to talk about now?
Like I know you guys got a ton of things going on. This is good catching up for me too, by the way, because I can’t keep track of you, man. Yeah. Um, the, the, they range, so some are really interesting and they’re far, and I’m, I’ll share one. We just signed a contract yesterday, which is kind of. Uh, interesting for, so we do green bonds, which is, it’s a very narrow niche.
Yeah. But it’s a 30. Trillion dollar niche. Oh, you’re see, hold on for everybody at home. He said trillion with a T. That’s why I like Steven. ’cause he thinks small, like, I mean, so this is a $30 trillion niche. Yeah. Where banks have mandated, uh, funding for sustainable projects. Mm-hmm. And we signed, again, I’m gonna give you the number, but the number’s massive and it’s not, we’re not writing checks.
We’re helping that call. We just signed a $16 billion with a b. Mm-hmm. Um, structured bond and a, to build a sustainable plant. It’s a sustainable, uh, power plant in Indonesia. Mm mm So we have a company that helps governments and, and, and big companies qualify for big projects. Yeah. With sustainable financing.
It’s cool. It’s interesting. It’s boring. Yeah. Um, uh, one of the more exciting ones. That we’re working on. And again, I joke about crypto. Mm-hmm. People love crypto. We were, we were big in crypto for years. 2017. 18. Malta. Yeah. Bermuda, you know, Dubai, Abu Dhabi. Oman, like all over crypto’s. Cool. I like it. And I like saying things that are, you know, a bit argumentative and then adding context at ’em, and I’m like, yeah.
People go, oh, Steven, why aren’t you doing crypto? I’m like, yeah, outgrew it. It’s too small. They’re like, what do you mean small? Like, I’m like, yeah, too small. Doesn’t matter. Oh, it’s big. And so then I give very specific numbers that are easy. This’ll, this’ll kind of help where my mind’s going now on these things.
If you take Bitcoin out of the cryptocurrency asset pool, there’s a million cryptocurrencies. Ethereum, every a million cryptocurrencies in the total value is $1.3 trillion. Mm. Okay. So a million currencies to 1.3 trillion. In the world of real finance. Mm-hmm. There’s 28,000 public companies around the world on multiple stock exchanges.
Mm-hmm. New York, Luxembourg, London, 28,000 companies that have 10 million or more in revenue. Yeah. Take a guess what those companies are worth collectively. 28,000. Ah, take a guess. I got no idea what’s $109 trillion. Yeah. A hundred times. So let’s, so let’s think about it. There’s 28,000 companies collectively around the world worth $109 trillion.
Yeah. And there’s a million cryptocurrencies worth a trillion. That to me, is a little difference. Here’s the gap. Mm. There’s 5 million companies in the world that are still private, that are $10 million and up in revenue. Mm. So you just did the math. Right. From 1 trillion to 109 trillion is a hundred x.
Yep. To go from 28,000 mm to 5 million mm. Chad, GPT spit me out. I tried to do a bar graph. Yeah. They’re like, no, we can’t calculate. It’s like 14 gazillion gabillion, like Chad GT’s. Like, no, we can’t do anything that big. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so we’re, we’re in the process of launching a digital stock exchange.
It’s basically taking a blockchain exchange there. There’s no such thing as a crypto exchange. Mm-hmm. Crypto is the asset that runs on the exchange. Like as true stock exchange is trading stock, but the exchange is the technology, the, the, mm-hmm. So we’re gonna take a blockchain exchange mm-hmm. And move it over into a digital stock world.
So we’re gonna take a, the new advantages of crypto blockchain exchange and put it in institutional. Yeah. And go after a market of 5 million companies, 10 million and out, that have never gone public. Wow. What is that gonna scale to? No idea. There’s 28,000 companies now. Worth a hundred trillion. Yeah, there’s a million cryptocurrencies because it’s quicker, faster, easier.
There’s, there’s a multitude of reasons you can do crypto. Yeah, we’re just gonna do a big mashup and see what happens. Ooh, I love this. I like a big mashup with big numbers and I like you heading that. Yeah, the numbers are like, the numbers are weird. When we were doing the math and I kept running it through, I’m like, this can’t be right.
But it’s right. It’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So, Steven, I know we’re, you got a lot, lot of things going on here. We won’t keep it too long, but la Last question here. Sure. Relationships, long-term relationships, business relationships, uhhuh like I’ve noticed, you know, people that, your name, when I talk to different people, Christopher Kai, our, our good buddy of course, and just other people like you have long-term relationships.
You keep people close. What does the word relationships like, business relationships, what does that mean to you? Like how, what’s the importance? Um. It, it, it’s a, a great question, Adam, and again, on my top 10 list of things, mm, I don’t know if you remember what I said was them. I didn’t know that that was, I didn’t know that was one of the list.
Well, what number two on there is I wanna build companies that help other people be successful, what they’re passionate about. Mm-hmm. And I have a 10 step program called a, a Bullseye Belief system. I don’t sell it or t it’s just I had to build this structure. Number two of my 10 is called Wiffu. W them.
Mm. You know, we’re in La Hollywood. Beautiful house. You know, you have amazing set up here. Hollywood is a lot about w Hmm. What’s in it for me? Oh. Who are you? What can you do for me? Who do you know? Yeah. The inverse is fu is what’s in it for you then what’s in it for me? Yeah. So if you, if you really approach things of not walking and going, oh, how can I help you?
Like the whole, how can I help you crowd bugs me? But if you’re really curious about what people are doing, what they’re passionate about, not what they do, but what they need. You can have friendships and relationships over time because you know just enough about what that person’s passionate about. Yeah.
To always be able to keep ’em in mind. So never discount relationships. You don’t know who they know. They’re, you know, everybody knows somebody important. Mm-hmm. So it, there may not be anything you can do to help them. Yeah. They may not be able to help you, but that doesn’t mean it won’t change one day.
Everything’s not purely transactional. Mm-hmm. But you can’t get more strategic about how to make it transactional. But it all doesn’t have to be that way at the end. Fantastic. Even last thing I want you to do, look at the camera. How can people follow you? How can they learn more? How could they learn more about your programs too?
And check out your content. You have a show too. I mean, a lot of other things, like I don’t plug it. I know you don’t. I know you don’t like your newsletter. I’ve been in your newsletter for years, man. My newsletter’s great. It’s people love that. I love it. Thank whenever there’s one that comes out. So I’m not, I’m not blowing.
Yeah, I have one. I have one coming out. So, uh, basically Steve. The bullseye guy.com. Mm-hmm. Uh, big Bamboo is there, the bullseye guy.com. Just, and thank you Adam, for saying it. It’s actually a personal branded site and it has the, a lot of the podcasts and content and information on there. So it’s got three sections.
One is interviews where I’m fortunate like you, I get to do great interviews with people, mark Victor Hansen and Ishmail, like, I’m not gonna name drop, like just a bunch of really cool people. Mm-hmm. We have a middle section on blockchain and FinTech and I make. You know, predictions. And then the third section for the entrepreneurs is tips and techniques.
So a lot of the things I’ve learned mm-hmm. I put in there and I put the podcast out, not to build an audience, not to make money. I put it out there to help transfer knowledge. Mm-hmm. And I put it out there so I can say, oh, I said this. Mm-hmm. Like, I predicted Bitcoin would be a hundred thousand dollars in 2020.
Mm-hmm. It came true. So I, I put it out more for credibility. But yeah, the bullseye guy.com. Fantastic. And so we’ll put that in the show notes and, uh, appreciate you coming out, Steven. All right, Adam, keep up the great work. Thank you. Thank you.
