Inside the world of luxury with Steve Sims and Ramit Sethi

You know, one of the things that we have been focusing on is creating magical experiences for our customer. Not just giving them what they sign up for, not just giving them some information through a book or a course, but really an unforgettable experience, something that's immersive. And if you think about the best companies, they are the ones that connect emotionally with you and take you through this experience. Today I'm really excited to talk to Steve Sims. He runs a luxury concierge business called the Bluefish, and he's going to talk to us about creating these magical experiences for his clients.

Hi, my name's Steve Sims. I'm the CEO and founder of the Bluefish, a luxury concierge firm. We send people down to the Titanic, book them hotels, do the amazing, the real wizard of Oz. And I am stoked to be here with Amit today. All right. My job is to get what the client wants and to exceed their expectations. So we actually took over the academia, which houses Michelangelo's David. And we set up a table of six at the feet of Michael. He had some friends with him at the feet of Michelangelo's David. And I said to him, we should really get some music in there, you know, because it could be quite deathly quiet just at the feet of this iconic statue just eating your food. So, you know, we started kind of going, and we love to do this, we love to dream big. And the more stuff we do and the more we get used to doing, there are no limits. There are zero limits. So we thought, well, we'll get a local performer, we'll get a pianist or maybe string quartz head or something like that. And then out of the blue, I had a client of mine that I was dealing with a different client of mine in Rome. And he mentioned Andrea Bocelli. And I realized Andrea Bocelli was a native of Florence. So we reached out to Andrea Bocelli and he actually came in halfway through the meal and sang to the client.

Amazing.

So, but we told the client we had a local up and coming performer that was coming in. So he was like, oh, that'd be nice, that'd be nice, that'd be nice. And then we'll sing Joy of a Chelli. Wow. So that was. That was one of those moments where we just had a client that was wealthy. Yeah, very wealthy, but also so open minded. Just wanted to see what could be done.

So this idea of dreaming big, I think it's a really important one when you take away that crutch that you've always had.

Oh, yeah, there's misery, loves misery. And these people love to sit there and say, well, you know, I would have, should have, could have done that, if only I've had this, this, this. They love the excuses. If it's as though the excuses are like taking an aspirin, that's going to dull the pain of them actually failing.

Yeah.

And entrepreneurs and business owners, when they start getting successful, start removing those crutches. That's why you're here interviewing, you know, brilliant people and me. But, you know, we've got to get rid of those crutches as soon as possible. And I try to get rid of the crutches to my kids so that they don't adapt those, because we're actually taught those. And then we go into a workspace where we're with 20 other people and they're going, oh, you know, if we had a better, you know, photocopier machine, we'd have more clients. If we could invoice faster, we'd have that. And it's the excuse, silly. And I remember one of the things my, my, my paps used to say to me, he said, no one ever drowned falling in the water. They drowned by staying there. And that was one of those things that kind of got me to come up. There's got to be a way out. And anything that can be done can be done bigger, can be done better, smoother, simpler, easier. There's always an alternative. Case in point, a big man doing exactly that philosophy is Elon Musk. He's reinventing cars, he's reinventing batteries and he's reinventing space. Yeah. Whereas quite openly before, and he had no experience of any of those things. And I've worked with the gentleman, I've been with Tesla and SpaceX, and when you walk into those areas, he's walked into it as a child and literally gone, well, why is that button there? Does it need to be there? And just, just adapts things with that childlike mentality that makes it work. And now, let's be honest, the motor industry that were looking at him as a bit of a joke before with battery powered cars, scared stiff of him.

Absolutely. Okay, so we've talked about the why, we talked about the who. Now I want to know how, how do you get access to places like the Vatican, sitting at the feet of Michelangelo, how do you do it? Take us through one of these experiences.

All right, well, first of all, I am that 2 year old. I'm always kind of like, you know, I wanna, I want a lollipop you know, why, why, why? Until I get my lollipop. So. And I attack everything like that. I don't overanalyze things, I don't give myself the excuses. And I certainly don't look at anything as unachievable, okay? And the old line about it's only impossible until someone does it. And so someone says to me, want to get married to the Vatican? Do I know anyone in the Vatican? No, I don't. Do I know anyone at a church? Probably about five churches within a mile distance here. So, you know, go and ask them, how do I do this? Do you know anyone up the next run of the ladder? And you just go up. And then when you've been doing this for as long as we have, 18 years, you can usually start mid run.

Yes.

Of that ladder. So when someone said to me about the Vatican, I had no access, none at all. I'm an Irish Catholic, but that was as much as I had. And I didn't think that was going to help if I knocked on the door of the Vatican. But I spoke to a couple of people and I knew some people in Florence, I was pretty well connected in Florence and I said, look, do you know anyone in the Vatican? And they led me to someone in Rome. And that person in Rome knew someone in the Vatican and that person. But that can get you to the gatekeeper. Okay? Then you've got to get through. And the way to get through is on a lot of cases and especially when you get to that big level, If I'm negotiating 20 rooms at a hotel, it's about the money. If I want a bunch of chauffeur driven cars and security guards and access to the Oscars and all these, you want the money, okay? When you get to that kind of backstage with this or opening up the van, then it's passion. Passion sells, okay? And you need to walk up to that gatekeeper, providing him with, with something that's going to want him to buy into your passion, okay? So you don't walk up to the Vatican and go, okay, hey, how much is it going to cost me for you to open up the doors?

Because there's no price they would accept.

There's no price there's no price they would accept. But they more than, more to the point, they won't tolerate being reduced to an amount of money, okay? So there's a lot of times you'll say to someone, I want to go inside, inside your personal collection of cars or I want to go into the Louvre gallery and have a personal view or something. There's a lot of those kind of things where if you try to trivialize it.

Yeah.

And be as disrespectful to go, look, I got money, and you walk in with that arrogance and, and you go, I got money. Name your price, then that's just going to shut the door.

It's really good.

But if you can give them a reason that's surrounding dreams, passion, Yes, I want to achieve this. This is my end goal that I'm trying to do here. And these clients have wanted to do this for this amount of time. The reasons behind it, this now, yes, I'm sure there may be a donation that's required or, or some monetary sum, but that's not an issue here. I want to talk to you about the dream. I want to talk to you about when these clients come here and experience what you have every day.