Making Things Happen For the World's Most Important People with Bluefishing Author Steve Sims

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right, everybody. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo bringing you sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. So this is my platform as an entrepreneur to speak with other amazing thought leaders and entrepreneurs and business leaders about the things that they're doing and the opportunities they're working on that they're seeing in the market and really tap into folks who've got their finger on the pulse of something that I may want to know about. And as I've said on many of these episodes, I only have people on this show that I'm authentically curious about. And I'm recording these and I broadcast these out to you so that you too can have the advantage of eavesdropping and listening in on these conversations that I would want to have anyway and that I plan on having. But I'm pushing this out to the world. So today I've got a really interesting episode because I've got Steve Sims on the. On the show. And Steve, I heard about him through a book that he had recently written. I think it was from Jay Abraham, and it's called Bluefish. And we're going to talk a lot about that on the show. But what really got me intrigued was the business model and behind Steve's company and his personality and the way he goes about making things happen in life. And it really is, if you are a longtime listener to the show, you hear me mention the concepts of access and influence quite a bit and how they really are the two hinges that open the doors of opportunity if you understand how to get access and build influence. And I can't think of anybody in recent memory who probably epitomizes this more than Steve. So I'm going to have Steve tell you what Bluefish does in more detail, and we're going to talk a little bit about some of the strategies he's used to succeed in his life. And I'm gonna, by the way, first of all, recommend that you go out and get the book Blue Fish. It's on Amazon. The art of. What is it? The art of making things happen. Steve.

Yeah, it's Blue Fishing. Blue Fishing, Yeah. Blue Fishing, Yeah. The art of making things happen.

Fantastic. So, Steve, welcome to the show, man. It's great to meet you and have you here. As I said, I'm a fan of your work.

Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

So let's start off. Let's, let's, let's dispel this. What is not the. What is Blue fishing all about? Give us the.

The book.

Yeah. Blue fishing in general. So the book, the blue fishing.

Blue fishing is, is kind of as you probably already worked out, anyone out there, it's a made up term that we just put a meaning behind it. It was when we didn't recognize any obstacles, when we didn't recognize the ability to fail, when we just ignored any negativity and got on with stuff. So over the years, you know, my concierge company was called Bluefish, just jokingly, and it was very, almost cheesy. We would come in and go, we got a no. But we bluefish the crap out of that. We got a yes. And it just became this funny little adjective to when, when we actually sprinkled some of the kind of sparkle and the sexy sauce on it. We were blue fishing it, you know, we were blue fishers, you know, oh, congratulations. You bluefish the hell out of that. That was an amazing bluefish level of it. We just, we had a joke with making this new almost accreditation of things and it just stuck. We thought it was out there for shits and giggles, but people just like the terminology. So that.

Did it come from the Dr. Seuss? Redfish. Bluefish.

Well, the whole, the whole company. Just, just to start at the beginning, I was a doorman in Hong Kong. Yeah. And I used to throw parties and I used to charge people heavily. I would tell them when it was going to stop, but I would give them a password. So to get into my past, into my parties, you'd already paid, but I would give you this password. So you'd have to turn up, speak to the meat ed and go, you know, whatever it was. And one of the passwords we had was finish this sentence, one fish, two fish, red fish. So people would turn up and go, bluefish. And we'll go. In you go. And the funny thing is the company, and there wasn't a company at the time. But once we decided that we were doing really good at this party planning and we needed to take credit cards, so you had to get a company and that. We didn't call it Bluefish. We never recognized how that had caught on. And we called it Trianon and People would literally start calling us, going, hey, is that Bluefish? And we'd be like, no. And they would hang up. So it wasn't until, like, about a month later that we realized that people had labeled us as Bluefish based off of this password. Yeah. So we did a name change on the company and became Bluefish. So. And I remember for many, many years, we thought Bluefish and Redfish was just a Dr. Seuss character. We didn't actually realize there was a bloody fish that is actually a blue fish.

That's great. So now Bluefish, the luxury concierge company, it goes beyond, like, there's a lot of concierge services out there, etc. Yours seems to go above and beyond and into this realm of like, holy crap, how did you pull that off? Right. Which is kind of like the point. Explain a little bit about the Bluefish model, who you serve, and I really want to find out a little bit more not only about how you really started that, but what are some of the things that have been the biggest drivers of the. Of the success of it. Let's start off with what Bluefish does.

Yeah. Well, we never went out to make a concierge firm, so Bluefish is very well known to about the top 1% and maybe half a percent of those in the planet. So we work with the rich and famous and the even richer and unknown around the planet. So we do things like send them down to see the Titanic, have Beyonce turn up the singer, party, play piano with a rock star, be on stage and actually sing with them, close down a museum in Florence for a dinner party, and then have Andrea Bocelli come in and serenade you, stick you on the back of MotoGP bike, stick you in the cockpit, a Ferrari, Formula 1 cars. The bottom line of it is if you can even partially dream it, but more importantly, afford it, we're the ones to make it happen.

Right on.

And I was actually called the real life wizard of Oz. I never went into this to actually build up a concierge firm. I went into this because I, like, like all entrepreneurs to be challenged. And this was my. My drug of choice. I was getting regularly challenged to do these amazing things, and we incorporated a lifestyle concierge element into it. So we kind of backtracked into the concierge industry. But what we're really well known for is creating these fantastical experiences for people that basically own everything. So we're giving them nothing other than a smile and a story.

Now, how often when somebody comes to you and, like, I've got this idea for something I want to do. How often is that what you end up booking versus you taking it and making it even bigger and better and something that they didn't even like. They came to you for one thing, and you made it even more magnified.

Oh, that's easy. Never. Absolutely. Every client comes to us. And here's something I worked out as an entrepreneur. I can ask you what your religion is, when the last time you had sex was, how much money's in your bank account, what your taxes are, your Social Security number, your religion. I can ask you all of those taboo questions. Some of them will make you feel uncomfortable, but I've noticed nothing makes people more uncomfortable than actually asking them what arouses them, what excites them, what is that hot button? Because you're now getting down into the core. Yeah. The bottom line of it is your bank account goes up and down. The last time you had sex is just a. It's just a date fact. Your religion comes from pretty much, you know, how you were born and raised. All of those things fluctuate for your core, that's getting down into your soul, you know, and so a lot of people, they have these ideas and like, we had a client come to us once, and he's. He came to us through Richard Branson, and he wanted to meet. Meet the rock band Journey.

Okay. And so this story from the book. This is great.

So we got chatting with the guy and he had a phenomenal story of. From his years of sleeping on his mate's couch at college. He was a cover singer, a lead singer for a cover band of Journey tunes. And through all of his ups and downs of a normal life, you know, relationships, money, all that kind of stuff, he had Journey tunes that basically related to chapters of his. Of his. Of his. What would be his movie. So when you fast forward now and he's very successful, very qualified, no longer sleeping on his mate's couch. His goal was to get in front of Journey and just to say thank you. Thank you. Now I can understand wanting to meet your. Your idols and say thank you for being my theme tune for my life, but to just meet them and shake hands after them. Being with you for the last 30 years of your life, that just wasn't what we were happy to do. So we take the requests that people give us, and they're usually a diluted version of what they really want. And. And then we just see, how far can we possibly stretch this?

Yeah.

And with that client, we managed to get him on stage. And he sang four tunes live on stage with the entire Journey band and is now deemed as the shortest term lead singer of the rock band Journey.

That's great. Yeah, he will. He will take that memory to his grave and beyond. Like, that's amazing. And then what about the. The issue where, like, the very first thing I remember reading, you know, all this stuff in the book, just the little thing in the back of my head was like, well, yeah, that's, of course, that's easy when you're. When you're dealing with millions of dollars or like unlimited budgets for all these people. But it doesn't sound, from reading the rest of it and talking to you, that that's. It's just. It's not just all about money in order to be able to make these things happen. Is that right? Because, I mean, obviously everybody's got a price, but.

Everyone's got a price. But the last question is the money. I guarantee you, you phone up the Vatican, you phone up the academia in Florence, you phone up Elton John, all of these people I've worked with, and you say something along the lines of, how much is it going to cost me to hang out with you on Sunday? Or how much is it going to cost me to have this closed down? And for one, if you're lucky enough to even get them on the phone. But two, I guarantee you the fastest thing that's going to happen is hearing that click. Yeah. Because no one wants to be bought.

Right.

They all want to be engaged. So every time we've got any venue, location, event, icon, superstar, rock star, business icon, anyone that you can think of, from the Elon Musk's to the Elton Johns, we've gone into the relationship understanding what they're passionate about and how we can be of value to them, and by allowing us to introduce them to our client. So it's always about getting them on board with the passion and the point and the project. And then the third, fourth, fifth question down the line will be, oh, by the way, I appreciate it's probably a financial situation here, so just let me know what that's going to cost on there. But anyway, let's get back to making the dream happen. So the financial aspect is the smallest. And I did, I did. I had a client that wanted to have a dinner party in Florence and he wanted it somewhere really exclusive. And you probably read this in the book as well, but we actually went as far as we could by making the most iconic Italian meal. And we did it by taking down the Closing down the Academia, which is the museum that houses Michelangelo's David, the most iconic statue in the planet. We put a table of six at the feet of David and then halfway through dinner, I told them I would get a local singer to entertain them during the dinner. And I actually brought in Andrea Bocelli.

That's just crazy.

But here was the thing. We hadn't even paid Andrea or the Academia, so we had got everyone involved so much that they were so excited about this project that we actually paid them after the event, because I only decided on the Monday that we were going to do this on the Wednesday. So to talk about short time and to get this turned around, but everyone did it based on my credibility and quite openly, which I think is the bigger one. The fact that they got, they bought into the passion of the project.

So that's the big thing. And I know that passion is huge in everything you talk about and in your book and your interviews. One of the things that comes to my mind now is like, for you, the more you do this and the more successful you get, the easier the doors are to open because your connections get bigger and your reputation. So when you're starting out, when you're trying to make big things happen, but you, you've got a Rolodex, but it's not maybe as big as yours and you've got some connections, but it's not, as, you know, there's not as many doors open, you don't have your feet in as many doors. What are some of the ways that people can utilize these strategies so that they can get people to buy in to the bigger why and the bigger passion behind it, where normally you're going to hear that click. So, you know, there's a lot of doors I'd love to open, but, you know, I don't have the credibility myself to do that. Obviously I can, I know some influential people, I can make some phone calls. But what is your advice for those people who are like, yeah, that sounds great for you, you've already got these connections and can make it happen. How do I start on a smaller scale and still get some results like that?

Yeah, I'm hearing you. And it kind of gets me irritated and pissed off because there's an old proverb that says, when's the best time to plant an oak tree? 300 years ago or today? Yeah, I have had more clicks, more go screw yourselves, more piss offs than probably most people out there. My Rolodex is very, very attractive now. It's very, very powerful. And the amount of calls or texts or messages I've got to put out to get to the person I want is very few now because of the shit that I went through to get to where I am now. I'm a bricklayer from East London. The bottom line of it is, if I'm able to communicate with Peter Diamandis, Richard Branson, Elon Musk and the Pope, it's because I've got there. And anybody can do this. Absolutely. Anybody can do it. The first principle, the first perspective you've got to get is if you want to do something on the roof, you've got to climb up a ladder. And that's with any business. Luckily, I think I'm pretty much on the roof now. But in the early stages, you've got to do the first thing, and you've got to be very prominent that you're doing it not because of the money. Now, money is very important for you. It's important to me. It's important to everyone, but it's not everything. So do an amazing event. If a client pays you to do X, give him X and a bit of y, give him 20 more than what he realized he was paying for. My client didn't know Andrea Bocelli was coming in the door, okay? So always try to go above and beyond what you do and start building up that reputation. And here's the key. My company, Bluefish, has no phone number on its website. There's no way of you contacting me other than applying for membership. And it cost you five grand to apply for membership. All right? The reason that we're in that situation is because when I do a good job for X, and I've used the exact same philosophy, philosophy from the first day of doing business, and I still use it now because good shit never goes out of style. Simple as that. So if I did a really good job for X and I'm over here talking to Y, and I want. I want to do something with them, the. The first thing I'll do is I'll get X to call them and tell them who I am. And so now I'm coming in from a position of strength, reputation and credibility, right? So if I'm doing a birthday party and you want me to do a birthday party, I'll actually get the other guy to phone you up and go, hey, I believe you're looking to do the birthday party. Steve was great. Steve did this, Steve that. So when I call up, they're like, oh, I heard from that guy. Well, that's Great. He probably told you I'm big and ugly. We'll let that slide. But still, so, you know, use you. Don't try to be someone you're not. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna annihilate a word you mentioned earlier in a second, but be you, and then get used to being someone of your word. Now, the reason that is so key is because of a word you used earlier. Authenticity. It is my hate word. Anything that makes me cringe and makes everything shrivel up is encapsulated in that word. It's like saying, oh, look at him. He breathes. You know, authenticity should be something that's just taken for granted now. But we're all in an insta perfect world where we create these Personas and these brands to make us look more interesting than we actually are.

Yeah.

What I like and what I want to be, the new word, and I'm probably going to go on a personal mission to make it the new word, is transparency.

Right.

Because I want a big difference, too. There's a massive difference, and I'm glad you picked up on it. I can relate to anybody as long as I can see them for them. The second you try putting on some clothes, a suit and armor, a costume, you build up these filters between you and me. I don't want to do an Indiana Jones. I don't want to go digging for the gold to see if you're someone I want to communicate with.

Yeah.

If you're an asshole that just loves good whiskey, hey, you may be the kind of arsenal I want to hang around with, but I want to know that right at the beginning, and I don't want to waste my time. And we're in a world with low attention to detail, low, low focus. I want to be able to look at you and go, all right, I know what he's after. I know where this is coming from. So I want people to be transparent. I want people to get used to being them themselves because there's no effort. And I want them getting used to using the credibility for everything they do to bump them up the next step up towards the roof by getting them to leapfrog on the credibility. And I do it now if I need to get a hold of an artist. Journey. When I needed to get a hold of Journey, I phoned up one of the music contacts I was dealing with. Took me two phone calls to find out one of them knew the drummer. Bingo. Make a phone call, tell him who I am. I'll sort it out from there.

Now I just want to go down that road just a little bit because you just jot like, I now I visually pictured you doing that. Right. And you didn't have. Yeah, you didn't, you don't. You didn't know Journey. You knew people who knew Journey. Right. So.

Yep.

So at that point, what is the conversation like? And it doesn't have to be like verbatim or anything, but what is the conversation like when you're talking to that person and he's like, listen, Steve, I've got this. You know, I don't, I don't know how you would even begin to position that to say, I've got a client who's been singing your songs and it means a lot to him. He'd absolutely love to meet you. He's blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's a, there's a nuanced, I'm imagining way to do that while being transparent. But it's still at the same time being effective because you get introduced by somebody who can kind of vouch for you. But does it all flow like a hot knife through butter at that point, or is there still some ways that you have to work that situation?

Well, sometimes you have to heat the knife up yourself before you go in. That's actually a fantastic question. No one's ever asked me that, so I'm pleased. You did. Good. All right. So it goes back to you being you. So once you've had the introduction made, you don't want to tell the person making the introduction what you want from the other person. You don't want to cloud the message.

Makes sense.

So when that person goes over, it's a case of, hey, he's asking me to make an introduction. And usually because you're just being you, you'll get things like, he's got a funny accent or he's a funny looking guy. And me and you, you can see what I look like. I'm not the kind of guy you are knocking on your door 8:00 clock at night. So I will often get a few of those kind of little jokes and they'll be like, oh, yeah, Timmy told me about you. And you'll get those kind of things. There's nothing better than that because these people get an idea of who you are right from the word go. And I'm a great believer that because of the Internet, we can get our foot in the door with absolutely anybody. That's no longer the talent. The talent is being so irresistible, they don't want you to leave. Yeah, that's the talent. So how do we do it? Right here, we sit up. First of all, anyone worth contacting, you need to research first. Everything is about positioning, whether it's business or boxing, it's all about your position. So if I want to get in touch with Journey, the first thing I'm doing is researching what's going on with Journey at the moment. Do they have a book? Do they have a documentary? Do they have a movie? Do they have a concert? Do they have a great hits album? What charities do they support? What galas do they go? What hobbies? And you can even just go on Instagram and see, you know, look up the different artists in there. You know, are they always with horses? Okay. They like a question. You just try to build up something so that you know what's going on. During that initial research, before I contacted them, I found out a number of things. One of the things I noticed was that they were going back on tour. Okay, so they were going to be touring then, which is great because it means when they tour, what do they do? They're all together. Okay? So that makes it easy for stuff. Nothing worse than trying to get. I did a thing a while ago with Guns N Roses before they started touring again, and of course they're all over the bloody show. So trying to get them all together was. Was tough. But with Journey, you know, they're touring and they've got a new tour coming out. A new tour means a new album. Also, in doing my research, I found out that the drummer's son had autism. My client's brother's son had autism. So I'm like, oh, hang on a minute. I've got many different connects here. I've got the charity that is close to home to one of the members. The managers are going to love me because maybe I can help promote the fact that the concert is now going on. And so when I went to them, I was able to say, hey, I'm glad Cheeri reached out to you. Thanks for taking the call. Look, I've got something that, you know, I want, but I want to tell you why it's a benefit to you. I know you have a concert coming out, and I did my research. I noticed that there's something very strong in your heart regarding autism. Now, let me tell you what I've got going on and how I think it can help both of those. So within the first 30 seconds, you've introduced them to the fact that, a, you've done your research and that you need to keep me on the Phone. Because I've got something that's going to benefit you by you helping me. Yeah, now that's transparent. Straight off the bat. And that's exactly how the conversation went with Journey and that's exactly how the conversation's gone on with everything from the Vatican to, you know, business icons.

That's amazing. And you're absolutely right. It's one of the things I've done a lot, which is pay close attention, do your research, find out, you know, what is important to that person and what they're trying to do with, you know, one of my most high profile clients. I just paid really close attention for the stuff that he was saying, the stuff he was doing. And I saw an opportunity to take advantage of that because I saw an opportunity to add value based on precisely what he wanted. And it had nothing to do with what I wanted. And it led to like a really great relationship. You said something a minute ago though, regarding the. That when you're having somebody introduce you, so you don't really, you don't want to cloud it. So you don't want them to tell you to tell the person exactly why. At the same time, like, I always hate when I get introduced to somebody and they don't say, well, this is why. Like I'm always gonna ask you, why do you want to introduce me to them? Or. But at the same time, I do this, if I make an introduction, I'm gonna ask, why do you want to make this introduction? Because I want to know that if I'm going to hand this off, that it's something that it's going to be really beneficial for that person. So how, how would you recommend somebody go about getting introduced without having to give away the entire farm? Right, like this.

And that makes, that makes total sense. But you know the score. If you tell your mate a joke and then he tells his mate and then he tells his mate, by the time the 10th person's heard it, the jokes probably change. Change quite a lot. Right. There's no one that can sell you better than better than you. And I don't want my client to be held with the liability that he's not going to make the connection. So I will say to him, there is a experience I would like to do with the band, but please let make an introduction. So then he's going to go, hey, he wants to do something with the band. So I'm going to give him a little bit of a nugget. Yeah, Tiny, tiny. A little lick of that iceberg. But my point is to have them go forward and go, this is what he did for me, you know, this guy and this is the best thing. This guy gets shit done. This guy does astonishingly, shouldn't be nowadays, but astonishingly what he says he's going to do. Yeah. You know, so when you go, that's where these days again, it's like bloody authenticity, isn't it? Yeah. I've often said that I've become a fantastic, exceptional, brilliant communicator because the rest of the planet has become shit at it. And so that's why I've become so good.

It's not that you've gotten better, everybody else has gotten worse.

Yeah, yeah. I had a, I had an event a little while ago that I spoke at and there was a gentleman there that was one of the first billionaires of the legalized marijuana trade here in California. One of the first. But the other gentleman that was actually speaking at the event was Rick Ross. Not the rapper, but the Rick ross from the 80s.

Incarcerated.

Yeah, that was. Incarcerated was also the biggest drug kingpin in the planet at the time. The only thing that separated those two guys was timing.

Yeah.

You know, and I believe it was totally true and I believe that, you know, I was a 17 year old East London bricklayer rolling around with a black T shirt, jeans, drinking at the time shit whiskey but riding around on a motorcycle, fast forward. I'm 51 years old and the only difference is my, my whiskey is a better quality. But the position of the world has enabled me to just remain who I am and focus on the great art of communicating. Which is still the only bloody app that you can't download.

Yeah, that's. You know, you're 100% right on that. The. It's funny, I've actually told. I've had clients and friends and other stuff this, especially if they're in the service business, like I don't know, they're, they're a cpa, they're whatever, plumber, it doesn't really matter. It's like if you really want to be the work seen as world class, top of the game, all you have to do is what your clients actually expect you to do. Because so few people actually do that. It's like if you just do what's expected, what you say you'll do, you're. You're going to be more than half your competition.

So. Well, we're actually being educated on a daily basis not to trust the next button because how many times do you see something and you go, hey, this is only 4.99 and you click it and then it's like upsell or plus shipping or if you buy it, you know, if you buy it. I saw something on TV the other day that just made me a pee my pants. It was some. It was some product, and it was the only one you'll ever need. Okay. But if you bought it in the next 24 hours, I'm thinking, fuck, I'm gonna do with the other one, you know? Yeah. Apparently I only need one for the rest of my life, but we're constantly taught that. So if someone just says, hey, you pay me, I'm gonna do this. There's no area of miscommunication. And one of my greatest quotes I loved, I heard with Joe Polish, the difference between being easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand.

Right.

And if you got that clarity and that transparency in a world where there's neither of those, you actually come out as king.

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I love Joe and I love that quote. And I remember reading about it the. And it's not always easy to do. It seems like it'd be the easiest thing in the world. But you actually have to think about, how can this be misunderstood? I know years ago, one of my mentors had told me, like, listen, the meaning of your communication, the meaning of your message is what that person understands. If they misunderstand you, it's not necessarily. Not in all cases their fault. It's your fault for not being easy enough to understand and not weeding out all the. The BS and the communication. So you have to take that on yourself. And I don't think enough people take responsibility for how they communicate and they just get upset that everybody else misunderstood what they had to say.

I don't just on that point there, and I don't want to pretend as though I'm smart because anyone listening to this will realize I'm not. I actually got sent a Austrian, some kind of college paper from some professor there, and he wrote on this paper that there was, I think it was 12 people that read everything you write and it was about the different things that happen in your day that changes your perception to what you're reading. And the basics were if you send an email out to someone that that morning just won the super lotto, it is now worth $100 billion, they're going to read everything that you've written was sunshine and rainbows. But if that same guy woke up to find out his wife was actually messing around with the next door neighbor, he's going to hate everything you write. And it went into all the other types of Personas that would read your email. So he actually came out with that magical number. So you're right, it's how the person is at that moment in time as to how he's going to meet.

Yeah, they're filters, right? Like are you looking through rose colored glasses or shit? Colored glasses?

Like what are you.

So you have to be real, really.

Really clear and also brief. There's a power in brevity. Dean Jackson did the, the infamous nine word email.

So good.

Brilliant. Yeah. And so I do very short emails. I also do a ton of video messages. Yeah. Because you can't confuse me when I'm stood in my garage going, Brian, we need to get out and have a beer because we need to talk about that experience. You can't confuse that.

No, no. And the ability to do video messages now available to absolutely everybody and still so few people actually utilize it. It's like sitting there. I actually do that a lot as well because yeah, it's, it's unmistakable. And on the other end, you know that somebody just took the time to actually do a video and not just send a little text or not send a, you know, a few words.

So here's the funny thing though, I don't know about you, but I didn't study doing 120 words on a bloody typewriter at school. When I write an email for one, my grammar is shit. My wife thinks that I think I get charged for using punctuation because I don't use punctuation. I can do a video message in a third of the time that it takes to do a text or an email. I haven't got to check it for grammar, I haven't got to check it for layout and I can push send. And here's the other beauty. It actually arrives on your text.

Yeah.

And if you think about it, if you wake up in the morning or anytime during the day, your email box is showing an amount of emails, your text is showing maybe two texts. What do you always answer first?

Text. 100%.

Every single time. And what's even better is that when you pick up your phone during the day because I'm doing a video, that there's a picture of me going like that. And you're like what Sims want and you watch it and again you're getting the full me and not the interpretation through words of a text, which is.

Really easy to misunderstand. And I think relationships have ended because of that's not What I meant. That's not what I meant. I want to switch gears just to one thing here real quick, because I'll pull it up here in my phone on the. You were talking about delegation, team building, etc. And I think this is one of the things that you said that resonated with me. I starred this, which is. Let me read the whole little couple sentences here. There's something that happens. Anyone who starts to become more confident and competent in what they do as soon as they achieve a little bit of success, they want more. More success, more accolades, more achievement that jeopardizes their ability to say no. And what they end up taking on absolutely everything. We already talked about how, especially for entrepreneurs, this can be one of our most devastating traits. And I can attest, I was actually given an interview yesterday. I was like, maybe my biggest weakness is saying yes to too much. But what's worse than that is once we take something on, we try to do every single element ourselves because we try to hold the entire project ourselves and basically implode the whole damn thing. You go on to talk about this a little bit more about delegation, doing the stuff that gives you energy, et cetera. So that one really resonated with me because it is absolutely true. I say yes to everything, and then I also end up holding on too tight as opposed to delegating. Because, you know, we've all had those war stories of we delegate, we try, and then they royally screw it up, and then we just go, screw it. Nobody can do it like I can. So this has been. This past year has been really the year of me training myself to let go and delegate more. So it's a very hot button for me. My question is, as it pertains to you, what are the things that you absolutely either hate to do, suck at doing, must delegate, otherwise you'll totally screw it up. What are those areas in your life?

Well, my biggest hate is delegated.

Yeah.

Okay. And I absolutely loathe it. Hey, it scares the living crap out of me. It gets everything tingling. But the one thing that I know I have to do is guess what? Delegate.

Same.

Now, you mentioned earlier about we've all been in a situation where we've delegated and they've screwed it up, you know, royally. With your. Was your term okay? Was that because a, you delegated to the wrong person or you didn't communicate what they needed to do? You know, there's a. There's a lot.

I take more responsibility. I'm actually one of those few People, I think it's like it was my fault, I didn't delegate correctly, I didn't manage expectations correctly.

Exactly. And you, you may have been, you may have been right and wrong on so many points in that situation. So here's my little test. And again, everything I do is simple and primitive because it has to for the 17 year old bricklayer. Yeah, I make a list of everything I do in the morning and then I make a list of everything I do in the afternoon. I do this quite often, probably get around to it doing like once a month. Okay. And when I say everything I'm on about, I wake up, I make the coffee, I get the kids ready for school, I check my emails and I go through, I go to the toilet, I put the dogs out after feeding them, I go through everything I do in that and then next to it I put a little tick or I've got used to put a little smiley face for the stuff that I like doing. Because the bottom line of it is delegating is there to free you up more time. But if it's something you like doing, why the hell would you free that up, you know, do more of it? So I don't care if driving your kids to school takes an hour out of your day. If it's something you really enjoy it, if you, that's the whole point. You got the big chair and all the crap you go through. So keep the stuff you like and then put a line through it, get rid of it and then look at everything else and ask yourself a question. Can somebody else do that job to the same ability or better? Okay. Now like any entrepreneur, we get a hundred million zillion emails a day. All right? There are companies, there are VAs that will go into your box. And I have a VA that does. It goes into my box. I don't check my email before, before I think 7:30 in the morning, I'm in LA, they're in Florida. So that three hours ahead in there, right? And they go in there and they get rid of the junk. Okay. And they know I like motorcycles, so the motorcycles and the whiskey stuff stays in there. But I really don't need carpet cleaning services and I really don't care about business financing or any of that. They may actually send me an email and just go, you have some on these subjects. Are these relevant or of interest to you at the moment?

Yeah.

Okay. And you may go, oh, I was actually looking for business financing. And then they will drag those over to you, but they will send off all Those emails to all the people that they need to go to before you turn on your email client, when you open up your email client and you see you've got 15 emails in there, you go, oh, yeah, that's sweet. Because you don't spend an hour getting rid of all of those.

I have 200 to go through.

Right, exactly. So. And you go through all of that kind of stuff and you delegate what's available or what they can do to that level or above. And another prime example is I used to go shopping down at the grocery store, or my wife would go grocery shopping. Okay. We work together. I know it sounds funny, but for me, going grocery shopping is not of interest. Okay. Not when you can jump on Amazon now, plug it all in, and get it sent to you every three days.

Absolutely. You know, love Amazon.

Exactly. And if you want the food, your local grocery stores are now doing it as well. So you haven't got to worry about all of this stuff. So you go in and you delegate. Now, if I delegated the person that did my emails to get my grocery shopping, I delegated wrong.

Yeah.

Okay. So one of the first issues is to make sure that you get the appropriate people in there. And Ari Meisel is a really cool cat.

I know.

Yep. He said to me the other week, actually, I was chatting to him, and I said, oh, how do you do this? And me and him, we know each other very well. He looked at me and he went, no way in the world you're going to do that. And I went, well, no, but I need to understand it, you know, because it really sounds cool. And he said, you don't need a how, you need a who. Yeah, let's find you a who. So he found me a who that already had the knowledge of it, could do it quickly based on my initial instructions. And again, that person's not going to get me shopping. That person's not going to get me an email. So I now have a who that can work on my bot technology. Okay. So the key is to delegate. Now, also understand a lot of these people you're going to need. You're going to need to spend time investing in them to get to the top of the hill. You got to climb up the mountain first. So stay on their ass and maybe only delegate one issue a month or something. So go through those things and speak to them. Go. Okay, I'm gonna stay with you for the next two weeks and then delegate the next thing. You'll end up finding your work day in the early stage will become Hard. And this is what you must train yourself against. Because you brought it up.

Yeah.

It's easier for you to do it than to teach someone else to do it. But if you teach someone else to do it adequately, you then have two hours a day to do the crap you like doing.

Yeah, you got. It's like taking one step back in order to take two steps forward. You got to slow down before you can speed up. I totally, totally get that.

I actually have a girl now that has done so much with me, and she's so competent in so many different avenues. One of my delegations of her is to teach other people to delegate.

Yeah.

So I actually say to her, oh, I need someone that's got to start doing this. She's like, I'll start looking for the right person. She knows my mindset. She knows how I communicate. She knows how I will say something and leave it for someone else to translate. Really what I'm after, you know, with that familiarity thing. So she's actually become my filter for getting the right people. And fiverr is a great way of finding these places.

Yeah, it really is. You know, I had. I had a former business partner years ago who's just brilliant, and his whole thing was he was my first hire. If I'm starting off a new venture or whatever, I'm going to start hiring my first venture or my first hire is an assistant. But more importantly, I don't just need her to do general admin stuff. She is the hiring manager. Right. She needs to learn. She needs to know how to be resourceful, delegate, and hire the other people, because she's going to be the filter for everything else. So he's like, before I hire an executive assistant who can do all this other stuff or whatever, I need a hiring manager, in essence, first, because that's the most important thing. And it's a mindset. It seems really obvious, but it doesn't. You know, I don't think a lot of people follow it.

The obvious stuff is nine times out of ten, the stuff we overlook or ignore right under our nose. Yeah. Yep. So you got to go for that stuff first.

So, Steve, what's a nut you're trying to crack right now? And by that I mean someone you're trying to meet, which probably you don't need help with, Someone trying to meet something you're trying to learn something you're trying to do or hire money, like, what's going on right now, that myself, my listeners, this network here might be able to even say, hey, I may be Able to lend a hand in that. Is there anything top of mind that.

Well, as we were, as we were chatting before we got on to the record, my concierge business is doing very well. This book has leapfrogged me into more podcasts, speaking and more private client consulting. My consulting before then was always big luxury brands. I'm actually consulting a lot now for like solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. So that's been very interesting. I'm at the, I'm at that, the edge of the, of the swimming pool and jumping in with both feet just to try and see where this goes and just astounded how the mentality and how the reception's been been. So what do I need you guys to do? Or what would I like you guys to do? Support, say nice things about me. Read the book. If you love it, then tell a few people. If you hate it, tell a lot more. Then you know, that's the challenge there. Just be open minded. But I suppose if anything, change the way you communicate now while you think that won't benefit me. I want to live in a world where I can trust people's words and at the moment I can't. So If I got 10 people out there to wake up tomorrow and go, oh, I may have told some little white lies yesterday, but today's the day I'm fully transparent, then it will create a world that I want to live in more.

That's brilliant. I love that. I absolutely do, by the way. So I'm 44 years old and I've only about maybe five, four years ago, got a taste for whiskey and I started and I love it. I started with tequila, like after I got over the stages of going out all the time and just drinking vodka with everything. And I actually wanted something that had taste. Did a tequila tasting and I fell in love and then I did a little whiskey tasting. I was like, oh, I love whiskey and bourbon and this is great. However, I am not a connoisseur. I am not somebody who knows all the best and stuff yet. Like my go to. I love Blanton's and I love a couple of other things. Heard amazing things about Japanese whiskey and never I don't think I've ever tried one or a proper one. Give me a couple to go out and try and start to wet my beak on some amazing whiskey.

So I don't like connoisseurs. Connoisseurs. There's a lot of arrogance in everything, you know, art connoisseurs and wine connoisseurs. I've just got drunk a lot. So I can tell you what I like. The Japanese stuff is very successful. It's very smooth. It's also quite trendy at the moment, so it can be very expensive. Yeah. And I don't often see the correlation between price and quality.

Yeah, same as in wine. And I've had amazing wines for $30 a bottle.

Oh yeah, yeah, it's great. But the Japanese stuff, the two that really are my go tos are Yamazaki 12. And like everyone knows in you got 18 and 21 and all the Yamazaki 12 is very popular, very good. My favorite for just over a cube of ice is Hibiki Harmony. Now there's Hibiki again. 17s and 50 year olds. Yeah, those are like the 400 buck ones. But Hibiki Harmony is a blended and it's. That's one of my favorites and luckily for me it's one of one of the cheapest.

That's fantastic. I'm definitely gonna go check those out. One last question just popped into my mind. You spend a lot of your time and career helping others achieve like just amazing experiences for themselves and their dreams and beyond. Is there anything that you've like for yourself that you really would love to do that you just haven't even taken the time to do for yourself?

Is so last December I was being trained how to handle a sword by a descendant from the samurai family in Tokyo. A little bit earlier I was being given a private tour through Jerusalem. And then before that I was serenading. I was actually singing a duet before our clients got to the dinner party in Florence. So to say that I vicariously live through other people is an understatement. Right. The funny thing is, what a lot of people don't know about me and even fewer believe is I'm actually incredibly dull. I like to barbecue, drink whiskey, hug the family, play with the dogs and ride motorcycles. And if I became a billionaire tomorrow, you do the same thing, there'd be absolutely no change. No change at all. So no, I'm a very content and because of that very wealthy individual.

That's fantastic. I love it. Well, Steve, thanks for taking the time with me today. This has been fantastic to get to know you, get to hear some of your wisdom, you know, from your mouth, not just from your book. But I highly recommend that everybody go and gets blue fishing. The art of getting things done or making things happen? I can't remember. Making things happen.

The art of making things happen.

That's right. Getting things done is what's his name's Book. So the art of making things happen. I loved it. I've got, as you saw, like, I've got like, I don't know, 30, 50, 50 highlights in there. And I was just thrilled to have you on here. People want to get more information besides on the Amazon and checking it out. What's the best website then go check you out.

They can, they can check me out on steved Sims.com that Steve D for dog Sims S I M S just one M Steve D. Sims.com I'm also on, you know, Facebook again, Steve D. Sims Instagram, but on Twitter I'm Steve D. Sims 1 for some reason. So that's where I'm lurking.

Well, I'll make sure I have all that stuff in the show notes. And for all of my listeners and subscribers, thank you very much for joining us here today. I would have conversations like this if I could anyway, but I'm really happy to share it with people like yourself. And if you ever have any questions you want to get a hold of me, shoot an email over to ask bradaconrapped business.com I'm happy to see if there's anything that I can do to give you. Whether it's a second opinion on some of the challenges you're going through or some of the things you're trying to achieve potentially. There's a way to work together. You never know until you ask and find out. But Steve, thanks again and I look forward to continuing the relationship. Maybe see you in person sometime.

Cheers, pal.

Cheers.