As the founder of Bluefish, one of the top personal concierge services, and an expert marketer within the luxury industry, Steve Sims has been quoted in various publications & TV including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, London’s Sunday Times, South China Morning Post and many more.
An entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word, Steve is well regarded within the luxury world for his innovation and down-to-earth personality. Known for his honesty, integrity and doing things “his way,” Steve creates experiences for his clients that they could never have imagined being possible.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Steve Sims about how he makes things happen.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How you can find the right audience and clients if you have something they want.
– Why it’s important to know how to ask the right questions in the right way.
– How having a real conversation can help you build lasting business relationships.
– Why running an honest business is a great way to get word of mouth referrals.
– How you want to work in an environment with people who support you.
Connect with Steve:
Links Mentioned:
stevedsims.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@SteveDSims
Facebook
facebook.com/groups/stevedsims
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here. I’ve got a great episode of the Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast for you today. He is a super guest that you are going to totally love, Mr. Steve Sims. He’s the best-selling author of Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen, and it came out a couple of years ago. I bought it as soon as it came out. It is a fantastic book. I was fortunate enough to get to know Steve a little bit when I lived over in LA. He is a great, great entrepreneur. Steve’s been running his luxury travel and lifestyle concierge firm, Bluefish, for more than 20 years. He has a unique talent for connecting with people’s passions, opening doors, making things happen not only from the book, but from all of his relationships. He’s developed a great reputation, an impressive client list of the world’s rich and famous. He’s got offices all over the world. Been featured in Forbes, New York Times, Entrepreneur Variety, CNBC, and now the Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast. So, Steve, congratulations for finally making it my friend.
Steve Sims:
Well, it’s obviously my pinnacle.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it, man. So happy to talk to you. Steve is a big fan of old fashioneds as I am. We connect on that and motorcycles as well. Though, he is much more passionate. I have a Harley softail. He’s much more passionate with many motorcycles. So, Steve, what are you driving these days? What bikes do you have?
Steve Sims:
Oh God, my wife would cringe. So, I have 12. I’m really, really good at buying them and I’m terrible at selling them. I’ve got Harleys, Ducatis, Aprilias, Nortons, Triumphs. I got a whole bunch. My oldest is a 1975. I had a 1951, but big surprise, it broke down. My newest one is the Road Glide special that’s now being tricked up. I like two wheels.
Rob Kosberg:
Where are you riding in LA? Do you go up in the mountains? Where’s your riding of preference? I know you were further West than I was. I was out in Pasadena.
Steve Sims:
Well, obviously Angels Crest, Mulholland, those kinds of things are fantastic, but I’m very fortunate in the fact I live in Topanga at the top of Topanga. So, for any reason whatsoever, I’ll do the 27 because it’s just a lovely curvy road all the way down to the coastline. I’ll literally say, “Oh, I’m just getting some gas.” My gas station choice to be on the PCH but I love going through the 27. It’s lovely to have that in your backyard.
Rob Kosberg:
Now, since I moved to Florida, and we’re talking about your speakeasies and I want to get into that in just a second, but since moving to Florida, I’m right on the water. I just jump on my Harley and I’m just right down the coast man to Daytona Beach. I was at bike week last year, which was super fun.
It’s pretty cool here, man. You definitely got to bring one of the bikes out and enjoy it sometime.
Steve Sims:
Well, the downside is Florida doesn’t have these things called corners.
Rob Kosberg:
Or hills.
Steve Sims:
Yeah. I remember living in Delray Beach and it was just a straight line and the most excitement you’d get every now and then is when you had to overtake something. They have no hills at all.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, you’re right. It is a little more boring because of that but the beach ain’t so bad.
Steve Sims:
No, it ain’t too shabby at all.
Rob Kosberg:
Steve, talk to me about Bluefish. I’ve always wondered, how did it start? Tell me about the origin of it and maybe give a little history, what you do as a consultant connector, et cetera, what Bluefish is.
Steve Sims:
Quite simply, I grew up like most entrepreneurs, without money. My family had a construction firm. I was a brick layer and I just thought to myself, aggravatingly, that I want more money. I want to be successful. Of course, when you’re 16 years old, you focus on success being monetary. No 16-year-old says, “Hey, I want the right mindset.” You go, “I want a big bank account.” So, I went out to try and hang out with rich people. The only way to hang out with anybody is to have something they want. I was a big ugly lad. I was a doorman of a nightclub. I started paying attention to the more affluent members of the clubs, getting them into private members areas, getting them into other clubs. For want of a better word, in the early nineties I was a club promoter. You know, I knew Billy was working on this club, “Go up there, tell him Sim sent you, and have a good night.” It was that kind of thing. I went from getting rich people into clubs, to throwing private parties in mansions, penthouses, yachts, ended up working for some of the biggest events in the planet from the Grammys to New York Fashion Week, Kentucky Derby, Formula 1, Star Polo in Switzerland. It was all to do nothing more than have a conversation with an affluent person. That’s all I wanted. Of course, when I started off, my questions were things like, “Hey, how come you are rich and I’m not? That was a horrible question. I tweaked it and it ended up becoming, “How come you are successful and I’m not,” and then eventually, “How come you are successful and so many people are not?” So, I was using it in the nineties for what you use a podcast for. I was using my ability to get you into something, you know, hanging out with the Pope, piano lessons with Elton John, drum lessons with Guns and Roses, going backstage, onstage. I was using all of that concierge business only to have an hour-long conversation with some of the most powerful people on the planet, on what made them tick, how they saw opportunities, how they view success. The concierge was nothing more than a Trojan Horse. I wanted to know anything that I could know to make me successful and less poor. Then four years ago, I wrote the book on it and it just took off. I didn’t expect it would absolutely take off. That’s what I coach, and train, and speak about now.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Talk to me about some of the biggest things you learned in asking that question over and over again. What were some of the main lessons and then what were some of the outlying things that you go, “Wow, I didn’t expect to hear that?”
Steve Sims:
Well, the first lesson I learned was how to ask the right question. As a snotty little kid with no filter, my question was, “Hey, how come you are rich and I’m not?” I realized very early on that that was a terrible question because it got people stutter. If I say to you, “Hey, how rich are you,” it causes concern because straight away you start thinking about that question as monetary. You start thinking, “Well, how much money have I got in my portfolio, in my bank, in my assets.” It’s a horrible question with an answer that doesn’t benefit me. So, then I tweaked it. I realized very quickly, if you are getting a bad answer, it’s probably because you are asking a bad question. The first lesson actually never came in the answer. It came in the fact that my question was so bad. So, my second question was, “How come you are wealthy and I’m not?” I thought, “That’s it. That’s a great question to ask,” but then I got people going “Well, you know, it’s because I met my wife and she supported me and I joined this church and I have kids,” and I thought of myself, “I’m not going to marry your wife or join your church. That doesn’t bloody help me at all.” So again, I learned again that if you’re getting the wrong answer, it’s because you are asking the wrong question. It was the third attempt at that question of, “How come you are successful, and I’m not,” that started to unleash the goodies. It actually came down to three things. The first thing is relationships. People of affluence, they get relationships. You know, they hire relationships. They don’t hire your resume. If you don’t share the same beliefs, same culture, same mindset, it is never going to work. I can teach you technique. I can teach you skills, but I can’t teach you the same belief. I can’t teach you to share my vision. So, they book on people’s relationships first, and CD second. That was the first thing. The second thing is the way they look at opportunity. They are constantly open-minded to opportunity. They’re never shut off. They’re always eager to listen and they’re very quick to dismiss, but they’re always eager to listen first. The third one that I really got was time. This was something that really hit me. I’ve had conversations with Bill Gates, presidents, with Elon Musk, with Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis. I’ve had conversations with some of the most powerful people in the world and they are strenuous. What I mean is when you have a conversation with someone like Elon Musk, they want to know what you’re working on. Why are you working on that? Why is it that you think you can do that and no one else can. What impact is that going to create? What jobs? What’s the fallout going to be? What is the resistance going to be? It’s like you’re being interviewed. Very early on, they realized they can make more money. They can make more impact, but they can’t make more time. They don’t give a shit what you had for dinner last night. They don’t care what you’re watching on Netflix. They care about how what you are working on is going to create impact. Those were the main things that I learned.
Rob Kosberg:
A lot of your questions and times with these people, sound like, once the ice was broken, I imagine there’s always that icebreaking time. It sounds like the conversations were intense. Like they got deep very quickly. They were not just surface level conversations.
Steve Sims:
Well the funny thing is, I’m not very good at having conversations. I’m actually not good with people. I just dislike most people I meet. You’ve met me, you know? I’m not the kind of guy you walk into a bar and you go, “Oh, I’d like to have a little chat with that guy.” I’m the guy you avoid. If this face makes you avoid me, great. Like me and you, I want to have a conversation. I don’t want the wooly kind of, “Oh, how are you? You having a good day?” I don’t care about that. You know, me and you got into it quick and hard.
Steve Sims:
I like that. My demeanor means that when I’m working with these clients, it’s a case of, “What do you want, what do you need? Let me help you get that.” When I get it, I kind of, not only have you paid for it, but now I’ve got a bit of chance to get some of your time. When I come in, I don’t want to ask a billionaire, “What did you have for dinner last night?” I will literally go, “Hey, did you enjoy meeting Elton John last night? Fantastic. Hey, Rob, I wanted to ask you, how are you looking at this op,” I’m straight in. Because of that straight in entry, they reciprocate, they come back to me in that just as harsh and as direct and as forthcoming. When you are that direct, you know what you avoid? Confusion. Now, today we are in a world of mass distortion, distraction and noise. Is it fake news? Is it politics? Does COVID really exist? Is the world flat? There’s so many. This is the time of the conspiracy theories. We’re very confused. What we want is clarity. Wouldn’t it be absolutely wonderful if I said to you, “Hey, COVID will end on April the 17th at 3:00 PM in the afternoon.” If you had that clarity, you’d go great. Now, I know this is what I’m going to plan for because now you’re set. The sad thing is, we haven’t had that. We’ve had to lead our own kind of version of clarity, our own version of control and focus. It’s been very hard and that’s why there’s a real big divide these last couple of years between them and us. The entrepreneurs that go, “Hey COVID is a phenomenal opportunity,” I launched an entire media company with my son Sims.media, shallow plug, right at the beginning of COVID and it’s done exceptionally well for us. Here’s a little fact for you. There have been more millionaires in 2019 to 2020 than there were in 2018 to 2019. When my team came to me and said, “Hey, you should do this on the mindset of entrepreneurs during a stark time, i.e. COVID,” and they went, “Did you know, 2.251 million millionaires were born just between 19 and 20, and it was more than 18 to 19,” I’m like, “Shut up. That’s got to be wrong.” They went off to double check. It came back to me and it was valid. More millionaires built and established during a time where we couldn’t even leave our house.
Rob Kosberg:
It has been a couple years since we connected, and I know you’re doing all kinds of different things. I want to dive right in. Talk to me about the coaching thing. Talk to me about the speakeasy. What have you been doing and building the media company? What does that even mean? Talk to me about the details of what you’ve been up to.
Steve Sims:
Well, this is all around a book and let’s be completely blunt, if I didn’t have the book, I wouldn’t have any of those other things.
Rob Kosberg:
I love that. You know I love that.
Steve Sims:
I wrote the book and honestly thought to myself ignorantly and I got friends like Tucker Max and JJ Virgin and Jay Abraham and Tim Ferris. These guys make money out of books on a day to day basis. Me, I just wrote the book because I wanted to write it. It was the right time and let’s be blunt, Simon & Schuster paid me a shit bucket of money to write this book. I thought that was it and then all of a sudden people were like, “I like the book, but what’s next, Steve? How can I get more of this?” If you write a good book, then you don’t own that. The person that bought it owns it and now demands to be fed. All of a sudden people were like, “Do you do events?” This was my thing. What would an event look like to you to make it worth coming to? They told me what they want. All I did was build it. I’ve been running an event called a speakeasy and it’s become refined. This is our fourth year of doing it. It started six months after the book. We actually look at it as a reverse mastermind. You see you all go to a mastermind because so and so speaking, or it’s at that hotel, it was on these days. You’ve got all the information. I run a speakeasy and I’m not trying to pitch this, but I want everyone out there to do this. I want you to visit simsspeakeasy.com. There’s only one M in Sims. The reason I’m asking you to, because you are going to get to that page and go, you’ve got to be kidding me.
What I did was I gave you the city, the dates, and a button to pay me $2000. I gave you no information. I wanted to see if my credibility was strong enough to get someone to commit to going to an event where they didn’t even know the location or who’s going to be there. That’s where it gets really good. Every single person that pays, they get a call from us and they get a call and they’re like, “Hey, thanks a lot for signing up for the speakeasy but I’ve got to ask you, why did you do that? What is your problem?” We accumulate everyone’s problems. Once I know what the problem is only then can I find someone to come in to speak that’s going to give that solution. Now, if you think about it, how many people go to events and they’re going because of them? Wouldn’t it be good to go to an event knowing that your problem’s going to be answered? We started it, I’d say, three and a half years ago. It did really, really well. We’ve been running all over the planet and as you know, our next one’s in New York but we are coming over to a Florida one. We were just chatting about that earlier. They’ve done really, really well and we’ve had some insane people turn up to answer your problems.
Rob Kosberg:
Tell me a little bit about it. Give me a little taste. Who are some of the folks that turned up and what does that look like?
Steve Sims:
The last one we had was in Austin, Texas and the one before that was in San Diego. We had people saying about how do you make decisions during these times of massive stress? You haven’t got clarity. We’re all being inundated with, where should we go? Where should we move? How should we do this? How do we make a decision? At the beginning of day one, now, bear in mind, you get told the location of the hotel to book. So, you know the hotel, we’re not leaving you high and dry. You know what hotel to book. We tell you the location and they are never in hotels, always in quirky, kind of, creative environments. We tell you the location on the Friday. So, you’re in the hotel. You find out where it is. On Monday you turn up. So, we had them all turn up Monday morning, eight o’clock, nine o’clock it starts. Two big guys walk in the room with carrier bags and with Glad bags, Ziploc bags, see-through Ziploc bags and marker pens. Everyone’s laptops, iPads, and cell phones and any recording stuff is put in these bags with your name on it and then they’re put on the shelf by the side of us. So, no one could have any recording stuff. We had the head of the current Navy Seal Team Six, come into our room to talk about how to make decisions under heavy, stressful situations. Now you are worried about how you tweak your Facebook ads, and this guy’s telling you how to handle not dying. That’s the level. We’ve had the head of production for Victoria’s Secret and Ralph Lauren talk to you about how to do 60-second videos on your Snapchat. We’ve had Jim Quick talking about remembering things. We’ve had Ari Mizel talking about structure. We’ve had Roland Frasier talking about mergers and acquisitions. We’ve had gang leaders talking about loyalty. We had the head of Tiffany talking about selling experiences. We have some very, very powerful people come in to answer your problems, but we get the absolute top of the game person to answer your problem.
Rob Kosberg:
What a brilliant idea. I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. Now I get the idea of the speakeasy. You know, the first time that we hung out was, we did that old-fashioned thing and we invited 300 people to a bar.
Steve Sims:
It was ridiculous. We just said we’d go to a bar. We just said should we invite a few people and all of a sudden, we had half of Orange County turn up. It was ridiculous.
Rob Kosberg:
It was awesome, that feel like no one knows where they’re going until the end and then they show up and the experience is going to be a powerful experience that’s kind of modeled exactly for what their needs are. I love that. Brilliant.
Steve Sims:
If during the conversation, we realized that we don’t have the answers to that problem, quite simply, we tell them that and we refund them the money. And we weren’t even ones that came up with the name speakeasy, we didn’t know what to call it and someone turned around and went, “This is like a speakeasy. You don’t know who’s going to be there, but you know that’s the place where everything happens.” Everyone knows me as a degenerate alcoholic, speakeasy makes complete sense. So, that’s how it started.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s good. Where does it go from there? You’re doing coaching. I think you were just starting to do that after the book. Talk to me about what your coaching program looks like, how the book has led to that. Give me some of the groundwork on that.
Steve Sims:
So, the downside is, as everyone knows, that nine times out of 10, the biggest problem is you. Either what you think, what you feel or what you react to, is you. So, the book actually led people to go, “Hey, can you help me with my mindset? Can you help me visualize, can you help me focus,” and so I started doing phone calls and I would do three phone calls a month under a coaching program. In that coaching membership, you would also get to come to the speakeasies as well. So, there was all of these ways of me being able to fine tune your focus while also introducing you into an environment where you would grow with people that can support you but then it led to one more thing. It was a case of, “Well, okay, now you’ve got my mindset. What’s the next movement? How can I put this into my business? How can I actually activate this? How can I grow this? How can I do this? How can I implement the strategies that we are now discussing?” I was kind of leading them halfway to the water, but then going, “Oh, there you go. Enjoy the rest of their journey.” That was silly. So, Henry had a media company that was focusing on algorithms and scalability. I’d always worked on branding with some of the biggest events and brands in the planet, so we married them together so that we could get your vision correct, get your mindset, get where you are going, and then be able to introduce you to a resource that could actually implement it and activate it for you. It all started off with the book. If the book resonates with someone that’s got the same problem that you can show that there’s a way out, then the coaching helps them define what that vision and future looks like. Then the media company actually gets them to complete that journey to actually achieve what they need to be doing in order to get to go where they need to. So, it was all a knock on and a growth. There was no way in the world you could have gone backwards on this. I could not have built the media company without the consulting, without the coaching, without the phone calls. None of that could have been done without the book.
Rob Kosberg:
You know, normally towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask how you’ve used your book, but that’s kind of all we’ve been talking about.
Steve Sims:
I think that’s the problem. There’s a lot of Field of Dreams moments out there. A lot of people think, “Oh, I’ll build this website, the clients will come. I’ll get this front-page news; my phone won’t stop ringing.” We know that’s bullshit but if you write a good book, you will get swamped. It just happens. Your damage, your downside, is if you’re not ready to feed the beast that you’ve given birth to. And again, that’s the entrepreneur, the opportunist that goes, “Hang on a minute, you’re asking me for A, B, and C, I’ll give you A, B and C.” You know, just imagine if someone knocked on your door in the morning and went, “Hey, can you sell me a blue checkered shirt and a lovely pair of black glasses?” If they’ve given you that accuracy and you know where to get it, you’re in business. It couldn’t be any better than that.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s interesting the way you put it, because you wrote the book and the way you described it, it didn’t sound like you had a lot of expectations and plan even to move to coaching, speakeasies, media company, any of those things and yet the opportunities just showed up for you that they did. I mean that’s just brilliant to take advantage of all those opportunities that came to you.
Steve Sims:
I think you got to be an idiot not to. I remember as I mentioned to you earlier, I named dropped earlier, Jay Abraham’s a good friend of mine. I remember when I got the contract. For a start, my wife’s like, “Do you know how to write? Do you know what you’re doing,” and I went, “No, I don’t, but I know people.” I went down to see Jay and as I walked through the front door with my contract in hand, and we’d only shaken hands, the door wasn’t even shut. Jay looked at me and he’s very, he can do this. He can drop something on you, will just get straight into your toenails and he just said to me, “Are you ready,” and I thought he was talking about dinner. I was like, “Yeah, yeah. What are you doing?” No, no, no. “Are you ready for what this is going to do for you?” Of course, being arrogant, I was like, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” He literally put firmness on his hands, and he went, “No, seriously, you have no idea what you are about to unleash. You need to be ready or you will miss out.” At the time he said, “This book is not going to buy you a house on the beach, but everything it opens for you will.” I remember, and we hadn’t even gotten through the door and I don’t know where we’re going with this. Then we sat down and had dinner and then it just started to unveil. I was like, “My God, he’s so right.” I’m not on the beach, but I am lovely up in The Hills and it’s not from the sale of the book. The book did really, really well for me but everything else did 400 times that. It’s a good thing.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it, brother. Thank you, man. Thanks for the things you shared today. So good. You gave a couple links already, but let’s give them again. Where do you want to send folks? Where can people go to learn about the speakeasy? Maybe sign up on a list. Obviously, they can get the book on Amazon, but tell us where they could go to get more stuff from you.
Steve Sims:
Well, this is the first thing a lot of people have a problem with. They go well on Twitter I am ABC one, and on Instagram. I am SteveDSims everywhere. SteveDSims.com, steveDSims on anywhere that you watch, whether it be TikTok, Instagram, and I’ve got a free Facebook group called An Entrepreneur’s Advantage with Steve Sims but if you hit SteveDSims.com, sign up for my newsletter there by texting me, you’ll get all the information you need.
Rob Kosberg:
So, SteveDSims.com that’s the place to go. Steve, Great to have you on, man. I really look forward to seeing you again. I hope you make it down to Florida for the next speakeasy and I will totally be there. I can’t wait to see who you’re going to bring in to fix my problems.
