Mr Aaron Simpson of Quintessentially shares his tips for dealing with high-net-worth people.

Mr Aaron Simpson understands what makes the wealthiest and most successful people on the planet tick. He isn’t a celebrity shrink, nor does he hack voicemail messages for a living. He runs the high-end concierge service Quintessentially, which he co-founded in 2000, and now has 70 offices worldwide. With an aim to “make the impossible possible”, the company provides, well, just about anything, at any time, for its coterie of high-net-worth and extremely influential clients. But how exactly does he keep all the high-flyers in his little black book happy? Throwing a $40m wedding sometimes does the trick. Mr Simpson explains more, below.

“When we started Quintessentially, we found out pretty quickly that people value time over money and material things,” he says. “Our service allows our clients to access certain privileges and go to certain places. We serve a time-poor, cash-rich community that want things done quickly. We look after people who can afford to buy time.”

“Since about 2008, when the world went wrong financially, the era of bling transformed into an era of mindfulness and you see more people acquiring things that are more experiential than shallow and material. In travel, we’re moving away from that fly-and-flop mentality to experiencing different parts of the world and being charitable. We’ve just sent a group to Costa Rica where they’re learning about new bio trends in one of the most advanced ecological lodges in the world.”

“The requests we deal with range from getting a client into a restaurant in central Paris through to someone saying, ‘I’ve just bought a pedigree poodle in Tokyo and I need it flown by private jet to New York.” We once did a wedding with a $40m budget that involved circus acts and horse-drawn carriages. We organised a 400-person flash mob in Times Square for a proposal and changed the digital ticker tape to pop the question. We do weird and wonderful things all the time.”

“If you look through The Sunday Times Rich List you’re probably 30 or 40 pages into it before you’re not hitting a member of ours. Ultra-high-net-worth individuals tend to network and stay together. We primarily market through word of mouth – conversations around dinner tables. People often come to us, but we also have lots of events all around the world. We do some PR and marketing, and we do some online work, targeting people who fit into our section. We have 70 offices around the world so we understand the cultural nuances in various locations.”

“We operate 24/7, 365 days a year, and in 42 languages. It’s all about excellence in service. We have built a network of people who provide services to our clients that is second to none. We have more than 40,000 contracted relationships with suppliers around the world. We boil cities down to around 300 individuals that run the entertainment spaces – restaurants, bars, spas – and develop relationships so we can provide access. And our lifestyle managers get to know our clients extremely well – they can meet with them once or twice a month. We’ve done more than eight million requests over the 17 years we’ve been in business.”

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