My Messi Encounter

In the world of soccer, Leo Messi is a Titan. But behind the scenes, a tale unfolds of friendship, competition and the pursuit of the extraordinary. Welcome to the List Building Lifestyle. I am an artificially generated voice of Morgan Freeman and today we will talk about Igor’s quest to meet soccer star Leo Messi, navigating challenges and setbacks along the way from the highs of anticipation to the lows of disappointment. Igor’s journey is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. And the power of perseverance experienced in this captivating episode, where each narrative unfolds as a journey, promising moments of greatness with every turn.

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I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire at igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

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Leo Messi, as many of you probably know, he’s a soccer player, he’s widely considered to be one of the best in the world, I’m not gonna say he’s the best because I believe he is the best. But he’s considered in the top like, top two, top three ever to play the game, etc. And I have a photo with him. And the way I got it is actually a really interesting story. So my best friend, he’s a huge Leo Messi fan, he pretty much worships the guy and the earth, he walks on. And you know, he’s making good money, and I make good money. And we kind of established this almost like a competition of sorts over the years, where we would like to give birthday presents to each other. And every year, we would try to kind of top each other, you know what I mean? So it started out innocently like gift cards and became rock concerts and track days. And he actually is the one who gave me the gift of driving a tank over a car.

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And I mean all kinds of stuff like that, right? So pretty crazy stuff that most people don’t get to do in life. And we ended up sort of having this relationship where we tried to one up each other. And a few years ago, I went and I read this book called Blue Fishing. Blue Fishing is a book about dreaming bigger by Steve Sims. He’s like a really expensive concierge service that specializes in doing crazy stuff that you wouldn’t be able to do in real day to day life. For example, if you wanted to be James Bond for a day with fast car races and explosions and helicopters, kidnapping people, etc. If you wanted to have a romantic dinner, while an opera singer is singing next to you, just for you, if you wanted to sing on stage with your favorite rock band, or something like that, I mean, things like that, okay, crazy dreams that people might have on their bucket list or but they don’t really think it’s ever gonna happen. 

So he specializes in that. And I read his book, and I joined his mastermind. And I say, because when you are around people like that you start thinking different. That’s actually one of the hacks to success, in my opinion is to be around people who have a much higher level of thinking and success than you are. Because you will immediately start noticing how different these people think. And if you’re smart, you will try to think like that from that moment forward because the quality of your thoughts will dictate the quality of your results. So I started hanging out with Steve Sims, right? If I wasn’t hanging out with him in person, I was talking to him like on the phone a lot. And he keeps on telling these crazy stories, right? So he arranged for this guy who was a fan of Germany, the rock band, he goes on to sing three songs on stage with them at some concert and the other guy who always dreamed of being James Bond he arranges for the whole day where he like drives in St Maarten to get some to a shooting fight. something explodes, there’s a girl he has to save. I mean crazy stuff right? Aside from like, pretty normal stuff, which is like going to a NASCAR race and go into the pits. And so I was like, you know, my best friend’s birthday is coming up and he’s a huge Leo Messi fan. 

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Is there a way to maybe somehow get him an autograph or something like I mean, just get something personal for him, right? And Stephen’s up looking into it and suggesting that as a possibility, there’s a possibility of actually meeting him in person. And the way to make it happen is to pay about $40,000 to a charity of that apparently, in Leominster he supports or people close to him support, and they will arrange a meeting, which is exactly what I do. I just wired them almost 40 grand, and I think it was 36 or something. And they connect me to a guy who is like a cousin of somebody’s agent, or something. Basically, the guy is involved in the football world. Okay, somehow, I’m involved in Real Madrid, and most people in Barcelona, which is a club that Leo Messi used to play for at the time, and, you know, start chatting with him. And he’s like, Okay, I’ll update you. And then they set a date. And on my best friend’s birthday, I go ahead and tell him about it. He’s obviously shy, everybody’s shocked. And so we wait, we wait for about six months for the meeting. 

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And then what happens is that the week before the meeting was set, Barcelona, Leominster steam is just getting, they get their asses kicked, and they get kicked out of the Champions League by Liverpool, and a very dramatic, extremely dramatic match, like one of the craziest matches you’ll ever see. And they call off the meeting. So we have to wait for another year until we finally get a call. And we and they say hey, can you be in Barcelona next week? And we’re like, Yeah, sure. I mean, Slob. Like we have lives. Yeah, so we get on the plane. And we go to Barcelona, and we wait for about four days, just waiting for a call. And then we finally get a call at midnight on a Wednesday or something saying, hey, tomorrow, around 11am, we’re gonna make the meeting happen.

So we go to their training facility right outside of Barcelona, and we wait for three hours, they get us into the training facility, they get us into the inner parking lot, where all the players park and we wait until they finish the training, which they do. And while we waited for Leo Messi, actually, we ended up taking pictures of all the other players with their defensive line, with their attacking players, with a lot of their substitute players. We just ended up seeing them like literally just right here, taking selfies and everything. 

And then finally, Leo Messi is about to come out. And so he’s about to come out of the door, it’s kind of like you know how your shower door will go misty and foggy when you take a shower. So you can see the silhouette of the person. We can’t really see any detail. So it’s kind of like that. And so you see the outline of Leo Messi, which is really hard to confuse because he’s really short. And some other guy next to him. So Messi opens up the door a bit and he sees me and my best friend. And he closes the door back. And you can see him go something like, you know, he’s like complaining, like, what is this? 

So the guy, the tall guy ends up convincing him. Leo Messi steps out, puts his bag into his car. He was driving a Mercedes GLC. And Messi then reluctantly stands next to my best friend and I snap a quick photo. And then he just goes straight back into his car. And then I’m like, looking at my guy. And I was like, what about me? And then he starts screaming. It’s like Leo, you know, talking to him in Spanish. So he reluctantly comes back and takes a photo with me. 

And then he just storms off and drives away. So on one hand, this was a really interesting experience to meet him in person. Never didn’t even hear him speak a word. On the other hand, it made a really bad impression about him as a person for me because I mean, at the very least, he could have looked me in the eye and said, Hey, I know you don’t like, he doesn’t have to care about me but like just be a decent human being and say hi, you know, you don’t I mean, but he just was like a complete alien. And he you know, I really felt insignificant to be honest with you. So I had to do some therapy about that. But at least my friend got what he wanted, which is like now he’s got a photo with Messi, I got one too. I don’t tend to like to show it or talk about it because I don’t feel like it’s anything worth mentioning. But I think I did post on Facebook at one point and yes, but anyway, so that’s the story. As usual, the story behind the thing is not as exciting as whatever the imagination usually is behind it.

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Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package.