Watch the full conversation with Steve Sims below, which starts at the interview itself, then use the sections that follow to put his methods to work.
This page covers Art of Charm episode 682 with Steve Sims. To make the impossible happen, build relationships before you need them, then ask for access through someone those people already trust. Steve, the founder of Bluefish, uses that approach to arrange experiences such as Vatican weddings and a private dinner beside Michelangelo’s David (00:02:47). Below you’ll find his methods for warm introductions, keeping up with a large network of contacts, reading people by gut feel, and framing a big ask so the other side wants to say yes.
Key takeaways
- Relationships are your fuel. Steve calls relationships “fuel, as breath, as food” (00:06:57). He has turned down people who offered him a lot of money to get next to someone, because they were too volatile and would burn the relationship he had (00:06:49). One wrong introduction can undo years of relationship building in a moment.
- Warm introductions beat cold outreach. Steve says nine times out of ten he piggybacks on a relationship he already has (00:04:53). In his words, “there’s nothing stronger than someone whispering in your ear” who you trust, telling you to take a call from someone you may not know (00:05:12).
- Your gut is smarter than your head. Steve says his stomach is more intelligent than his head, and he looks for the butterflies when he meets someone (00:24:07). He believes we all had that instinct as kids and had it diluted out of us, so we spend years training it back (00:25:49). You can retrain yours.
- Choose transparency over authenticity. Steve puts his faith in transparency over authenticity (00:24:38). He says he can get along with a difficult person who is upfront about who they are. Transparency builds real trust.
- Frame your asks around what excites the other person. When Steve wanted to close the Academia in Florence, he opened with the passion and the story and kept money out of the first conversation (00:52:44). He asked whether it had ever been done before, and when they said it hadn’t, he answered “Fantastic, we’re making history” (00:53:26).
How to get impossible things done through relationships
Steve Sims has sent people to the Titanic, put clients on stage with a favorite rock star, arranged weddings in the Vatican, and set up a table for six at the feet of Michelangelo’s David with Andrea Bocelli performing during dinner (00:02:47). His company Bluefish specializes in experiences that sound impossible until they happen.
Access to the Vatican and to the Academia in Florence comes through relationships. As the conversation puts it, you could be a billionaire and still lack the ability to make that happen on your own, because you need those relationships, and Steve has been building them for pretty much his whole career (00:03:36).
“There’s something that happens when you start getting to that kind of fantastical stage, the money becomes secondary. You walk up to the Academia in Florence and say ‘hey I want to shut it down on Tuesday for a dinner party…’ They’re gonna hang up on you because quite simply, a lot of people at that level don’t want to be bought and sold.” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:03:54)
A museum like the Academia weighs a request by what it means for the museum. Steve frames the question as the museum would: why should they open up, and why should they let you in at midnight (00:04:17)? Your approach has to answer that before anything else, with a reason that is a great idea for them.
That conversation happens through relationships built over years. Steve’s edge is the network he has spent his career building and protecting.
Curious what it takes to become the person people remember after one conversation? Take a look at X Factor.
X-Factor Accelerator (XFA) is The Art of Charm’s program: a personal starting plan, lifetime training materials and 90 days of weekly group coaching.
The power of warm introductions
Steve starts from existing relationships. When he needs something, he looks through his pool of contacts, partners and vendors and asks who knows someone in the other person’s world (00:04:53).
“There’s nothing stronger than someone whispering in your ear that you trust and you think is credible that says ‘hey, you may never have heard of this guy before but take his call, listen to what he says.'” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:05:12)
The clip below starts at the moment Steve describes that trusted whisper.
A warm introduction arrives with credibility already attached. Steve says that when you get that call, you’re open to listening, and the person who calls after an introduction gets a more open hearing than someone who found the number and got past the gatekeepers cold (00:05:26).
The process has four steps.
Identify who you need to reach
Aim for the decision maker, and treat the gatekeeper as a path toward that person.
Map your network
Who in your circle might know them or someone who knows them? Write the names down before you write a single message.
Make the request personal
Explain why this matters and why you’re the right person to make it happen. A line like “I’m working on something I think she’d enjoy, and I’d value your read on whether an introduction makes sense” gives your contact an easy way to say yes.
Follow through flawlessly
Your referrer’s reputation is now on the line too, so every promise you make along the way gets kept. Steve explains why people hesitate to make introductions: if they have a middling impression of the person asking, an introduction to someone like Shaquille O’Neal’s manager could go poorly and make them look bad (00:06:20). Earn a strong impression with your contact first.
When you ask for an introduction, you’re asking someone to stake their reputation on you, and that responsibility shapes how you show up in the first conversation.
How to systematize relationship management
Steve keeps fewer than three hundred clients, and he keeps them on a spreadsheet alongside his top vendors, partners and suppliers (00:09:13). A list that size still needs a system as well as good intentions.
His process has three parts.
The six-month cycle
Steve goes through his entire contact list over six months, then starts again. Every week, he goes through ten connections (00:09:39). Ten a week is a pace almost anyone can hold, and a short, specific note to each person keeps the whole list moving.
The Outlook appointment trick
After a client call, Steve makes notes in an Outlook appointment (Microsoft’s email and calendar app) and forwards it six months into the future (00:10:58). When it pops up, he can see exactly what they discussed last time and follow up naturally. Because it lands on his calendar, he sees it when he looks at the week’s appointments and has nothing extra to remember (00:12:01).
His example is a client who mentioned wanting a dog. Six months later Steve asks whether they ever got that dog, and nine times out of ten the contact has forgotten mentioning it and has to think about it, so the question starts a real conversation (00:11:34).
Tagging by interest
Steve tags contacts by theme, using a contact program called Contactually, where he can search by theme and add sub notes to each contact (00:09:45). Searchable tags and sub notes let him pull a list by interest in seconds, which is why a tool like this earns its place next to the plain spreadsheet. If he learns a contact is a fan of Ferrari, he tags them, and when a party for a new Ferrari comes up he searches that tag, which gives him the list of people to reach out to (00:09:54). He invites a contact in Melbourne even though that person is unlikely to travel, because the thought behind the invitation is what lands (00:10:24).
His check-ins reach vendors as much as clients. He asks whether they got over an injury, lost the weight, or made it into London as they planned (00:10:48). Every message is about them, and that is why it feels personal.
A system like this makes building meaningful relationships a predictable process with room for luck on top.
Why physical mail still matters
In a world of email overload, Steve uses physical mail, and the reason comes down to how differently you handle an envelope than an inbox. His logic is to go where it’s quieter, since everyone emails (00:12:53).
“How many fingers does it take to delete an email? … One. How many fingers does it take to delete or open an envelope?” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:13:03)
The clip below starts with that question about deleting an email versus opening an envelope.
When you read email, you’re often reading while you check your phone or wait in line at Starbucks. A letter takes two hands, so you’re engaged with it: you can handle it, hear it, and see the hotel name on the envelope (00:13:26).
Steve has three favorites.
Hotel bar tabs
A bar tab from the hotel with a note on the back, like “I had four whiskeys tonight, two of them I was thinking of you” (00:13:57).
SkyMall clippings
A page ripped from SkyMall (the in-flight catalog) with a silver Sharpie note about the dolphin letterbox: if you’re ever going to move, you need one (00:14:19). People call or email him to ask why on earth they need a dolphin letterbox, and the engagement has started (00:14:42).
Local postcards
A note from wherever he’s traveling, such as “I was in Croatia and I just thought I’d send you that bar tab” (00:14:51). Steve writes them on planes, which he treats as dead time, and posts them all after landing (00:14:11).
Physical mail works because it’s different, personal, and memorable. Steve still uses email for qualifying and confirming details. For real communication he ranks one-on-one voice first, then letters, video, text and voicemail, with email last (00:15:02). If voice is out of reach, get other senses involved.
Trust your stomach intelligence
Steve believes his stomach is more intelligent than his head, especially when evaluating people. When he meets someone, he looks for those butterflies (00:24:07). The clip below picks up right at that moment.
“You can look at someone and they’ve got an expensive suit, they’ve got an expensive watch, they’re looking good, well manicured, but something’s just grumbling in your stomach… and I’ve come to learn to trust that.” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:24:13)
Steve thinks we all had this instinct and it got diluted early. He describes kids walking into a schoolyard, looking around and deciding who they want to play with (00:25:56). Then a teacher steps in, and the child learns to dilute the truth for fear of offending, so we spend the rest of our lives training our gut back to trust our feelings (00:26:16).
Steve still values manners and keeps them separate from instinct. He is talking about the gut feeling that makes you want to resonate with certain people (00:27:08). When someone leaves you uneasy despite seeming perfect on paper, treat that signal as information and write down what you noticed.
When his gut says something is off, Steve walks away from it (00:24:32). You can always work out later why you got those warning signals, and in the moment he says to trust the feeling and step back (00:25:29).
This instinct works best alongside social intelligence, the skill of reading people accurately in the first few minutes of meeting them. Steve describes what the gut picks up as a smell, a tone, a feeling (00:27:28).
Transparency beats authenticity
Steve puts his faith in transparency over authenticity (00:24:38). The conversation points out that people who try hard to be authentic stop being authentic, because they are busy performing “myself” (00:23:20). Transparency means being clear about who you actually are and leaving the version you think you should be at the door.
“I’ve met intelligent people that are pretending to be rocket scientists… that makes them a fake.” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:24:58)
Steve says he can get on with a difficult person if he knows that is who they are. He prefers someone who says “I think I’m pretty smart but I don’t know” because you can relate to that (00:25:06).
Steve learned this the hard way. About four or five years into the concierge business he began second-guessing what his clients wanted, swapping the black t-shirt and motorbike for a suit, a tie and an expensive watch (00:42:08). Weeks later he looked at a photo from Monte Carlo of himself in a suit next to a Ferrari and realized he had left the building (00:42:58). A man at a monthly party told him he hadn’t seen him there for months, even though Steve had never missed one (00:43:49). His wife helped him catch it, and he went back to being himself (00:44:16).
The two terms work differently in practice.
- Authenticity often becomes a performance, an effort to prove you’re being yourself
- Transparency is being clear about your motivations, limitations, and intentions
If you’re smart but not brilliant, own that. If you’re ambitious but inexperienced, say so. If you’re nervous but excited, be honest about both. People can work with transparency, and pretense breaks trust.
The chug test for evaluating relationships
Steve says he invented the “chug test” (00:28:42). The clip below starts as he explains it.
Picture yourself walking down the street and seeing someone from your circle on the other side: a vendor, a partner, your accountant, a salesperson, a girlfriend or boyfriend.
You have two choices.
- Look left, pretend you’re interested in a new mattress in a shop window, and wait for them to pass
- Run across the road and suggest a beer, a whiskey or a coffee
The test is simple. If you’d pick the first option, that person needs to come out of your life.
“If someone’s in your life that’s not complimenting it, assisting it, growing it, being a value in it, entertaining you, making you smile. It’s a cancer. And you don’t politely ask cancer to leave your body, you cut it out as harshly and as rapidly as possible.” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:22:02)
Steve applies this to salespeople, partners, vendors and clients (00:22:35). He also says the energy you spend on one bad relationship spills into the people you love, since you carry that negativity into the next conversation (00:31:11). For anyone who stays negative while offering a solution or a reason, he says to get them out of your life because they are holding you back (00:30:02).
Every quarter he sorts his list into three circles. The first holds the people he is dedicated to, the second holds people he is interested in and likes, and the third is the group that goes. For the people in the middle he works out how to shift them one way or the other (00:30:09). Try the same: set a quarterly reminder, write your list, and place each name in a circle.
How to frame asks so people say yes
Steve’s rule for asking is to word each question so the answer opens a conversation (00:51:34). The clip below starts with him demonstrating the Academia ask.
The Academia bars food and drink inside, yet Steve wanted to bring in catering staff and set a dinner for six at the feet of the David (00:52:05). He led with excitement and history and brought up logistics later.
“I want to do something that involves you that’s so passionate, so wonderful that you alone are going to be talking about it for the next few months. Do you mind if I continue?” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:52:44)
Once they were engaged in the passion and the dream of it, he asked: “Has this ever been done before?” When they said no, he responded: “Fantastic, we’re making history” (00:53:26). He sees “can I take over your museum on Tuesday night?” as the weakest way to ask, since the shortest answer in anyone’s vocabulary is no (00:53:02).
The framework works for four reasons.
Get them excited first
Steve gets them engaged in the proposal, the passion and the dream of it before any other topic comes up (00:52:52).
Make them part of something special
The aim is to compel them to want to be part of making something wonderful happen (00:54:06).
Position the ask as their opportunity
Steve tells them it benefits them through media, marketability and branding, by telling people about their location, their charity, their event (00:54:12).
Create advocacy
The best outcome is a contact running through their own office telling everyone why this needs to happen, which makes them your cheerleader (00:53:53).
When approaching a rock star to meet one of his clients, Steve mentions that he has heard they are doing 16 shows. Then he says: “I’d love to let my team know about this, but before I get into that, let me tell you what I want for my people” (00:54:30).
He puts value on the table before making the ask, giving a give before the ask (00:54:58). He shows what’s in it for them before explaining what he needs, and that shifts the dynamic of the conversation.
This approach mirrors the principles behind effective persuasion, where you frame requests as mutual opportunities.
The art of overdelivering
Steve deliberately sells clients less than what he plans to deliver, around eighty percent of the game they have in mind (00:20:40). When a client wants to meet a rock band, he sticks them on stage with the band (00:20:51). The clients who closed down the Academia were told to expect a local singer, and Steve kept the Andrea Bocelli surprise to himself (00:21:11).
“I always over deliver.” (Steve Sims, episode 682, 00:21:29)
Overdelivering builds a buffer and gives you a story worth repeating.
Room for imperfect days
Steve says this gives you wiggle room: if something doesn’t work out, you can fill the gap with something else (00:21:04).
Word-of-mouth
Decide in advance which part of the experience you will keep as the surprise, and leave it out of the promise. The Bocelli reveal works this way: the client expected a local singer and got a detail worth telling other people about (00:21:11).
Loyalty
After you deliver, note what surprised the client and mention it when you reach out at your next check-in. A client who remembers receiving more than was promised has a reason to come back to you.
Set expectations on the front end so you have room to exceed them. Steve calls this curating on the front end, as opposed to trimming after you’re already in a relationship (00:21:37).
Screening before the problem starts
Steve interviews every applicant before taking them on as a member (00:19:49). His website lists application or referral as the only ways to reach him (00:19:22).
He says difficult clients stay difficult, so he interviews at the beginning to find out what they want. Award season brings in people who just want a seat next to a star at the Oscars, and he tells them Bluefish is the wrong fit (00:20:02). His conclusion: interview them before they come into your family and you save 99% of the problems (00:20:29).
To build your own screen, ask these questions.
- What do they really want, and does it match what they say they want?
- How do they treat the process, with respect or entitlement?
- Do they understand the value of what you offer beyond the surface?
- Will they represent you well to your other relationships?
Because Steve’s business depends on relationships, he has turned down people who offered him a lot of money because they would burn the relationship he had (00:06:49). Saying no up front is far easier than cleaning up messes later.
The same screening mindset applies to building executive presence. The people you associate with either enhance or diminish your reputation.
Putting it together: how to make the impossible happen
Look at the pieces side by side and they form one sequence. You screen the people you let into your world, so your network stays full of relationships worth keeping. You maintain those relationships with a simple system, so they stay warm. When you need access, a trusted person introduces you, and your gut tells you whether the people on the other side are right for you. Then you frame the ask around what excites them, and you overdeliver once they say yes.
Steve describes the Academia dinner in those terms: the ask framed as making history (00:53:35), a local singer promised, and Andrea Bocelli delivered (00:21:11). That is how a request that sounds impossible turns into a conversation someone is happy to have.
The skill underneath Steve’s approach
Steve’s relationship mastery sits inside a broader skill, which is reading people accurately and adapting your approach in real time. His stomach intelligence is one form of it, and his own story shows the other half: reading yourself. When he lost track of who he was in the suit, the people close to him were the ones who called it out, and he says it is good to have people in your camp who can do that (00:41:14).
His way back was to return to the basics, the way a karate student returns to the kata and a golfer returns to fundamentals, and to find out where things had broken (00:46:30). The warm introductions, the transparency, and the relationship management systems all rest on that same foundation. Understanding that personality types and communication styles differ, and learning to calibrate your approach to different people and situations, is what lets these tactics work for you the way they work for Steve.
You can practice this week with three small moves. Pick ten people from your own circle and send each a short, specific note about something they told you last time. Choose one person you would like to meet and list who in your network might know them. The next time you feel that grumble in your stomach around someone, write down what you noticed so you can compare it with what you learn later. Do all three and you will have a warm list, a target, and a written read on a person, which is the raw material for every method above.
Related reading
- How to Build a Social Circle: The Architecture of Intentional Friendship: Steve’s systematic approach to relationship management applied to personal networks
- The Psychology of Influence and Persuasion: How to frame requests so people actually want to help you
- Executive Presence: How to Command Respect in Any Room: Building the credibility that makes warm introductions possible
- How to Be More Likeable: The Science of Personal Magnetism: The psychology behind trust and transparency in relationships
Frequently asked questions
How do you make the impossible happen?
Steve’s answer is to build relationships long before you need them, then reach the people you want through someone they already trust. From there, frame your ask around what excites them, show what’s in it for them first, and deliver more than you promised.
How do you build relationships with high-level people?
Steve’s approach is to build on existing relationships for warm introductions (00:04:53). Focus on being genuinely useful to your current network first. When you need access to someone new, you’ll have credible people willing to vouch for you. Remember that you’re asking them to stake their reputation on you.
What’s the difference between authenticity and transparency?
Transparency means being clear about who you are, what you want, and what your limitations are. Steve and the host both dislike the word “authentic” because people try so hard at it (00:23:20). Steve can get on with difficult people who are honest about who they are, and he steps away from people who pretend to be something else (00:24:58).
How do you know if someone should stay in your network?
Steve uses the “chug test” (00:28:42). If you see them across the street, do you want to run over and chat with excitement, or do you want to hide until they pass? If it’s the latter, they belong outside your life. Relationships should add energy.
What’s the best way to make big asks?
Frame the ask around what excites them. Steve gets people engaged in the passion and possibility first, then positions it as making history or doing something unprecedented (00:53:35). Make them your advocate by showing what’s in it for them before explaining what you need.
How do you systematically maintain a large network of relationships?
Steve cycles through his network over six months, going through ten connections every week (00:09:39). He makes notes after each interaction and schedules follow-ups six months out with personal details. The goal is to stay genuinely connected to what’s happening in their lives, so every touchpoint stays personal.
Want to build your own network of meaningful relationships? Take the Influence Index Quiz to discover your networking style and get a personalized plan for building the kinds of relationships that make impossible things possible. The Influence Index is a 15-question quiz that scores five skills (read the signals, read the room, choose the moment, make it clear, follow through) out of 100.
