Episode 109 Transcript
Heather (00:03.133)
Welcome to the show, Simon. How's it going all the way from Vienna?
Simon Severino (00:07.534)
Hello Heather, I'm happy to be here. Hello everyone.
Heather (00:09.117)
I'm so happy that you're here as well because you have such a great background in what you do. And this show, our listeners are growing, scaling our businesses and are always looking for ways to do it smarter and to not be so married to the business or as you say, working in the business. So we always start with three tangible tips. We're going to find out a lot more about you as we go, but let's start with those tips straight away.
For you personally, Simon, in your business and all your speaking gigs, podcasts, everything that you do around the world, what do you do? What are three things that you do to work smarter and work not so much in your business?
Simon Severino (00:50.318)
I have three habits and I have also three metrics that I look at. So the three habits, daily habit, weekly habit, monthly habit that I use, they became also the strategy sprints methods for other business owners. The daily habit is I wrote down how did I allocate my time today? And there are two reflective questions that I get asked from the template that I use. It says, Simon,
Which of these tasks will you delegate next? So it's in the evening, right? 6 p .m. I stop working, I close the day and I get asked these two questions. Which task will you delegate next? And if you would live more freely and more intentionally, what would you do tomorrow? With these two little reflective questions, and then I write it down, close the day and design the next day.
So I allocate my time for the next day. And then the next day, when I show up to my desk, the day is designed. So that's the daily habit. And this is, of course, working in the business, but it's reviewing how I work. I learned this from my very first boss who said, Simon, it's not enough that you do great work. You also have to improve how you do great work.
Heather (02:17.341)
yeah i like that
Simon Severino (02:20.046)
That's the daily habit. It's called daily flow and people can download it on our website strategysprints .com. Weekly habit is a dashboard, a simple dashboard with the three main metrics. We have one marketing metric, one sales metric, one operations or client delivery metric. And those three things are visualized. So it's every Friday. It's a half an hour meeting. We come together. One of us has prepared those three metrics. There are two lines.
Heather (02:21.629)
Got it.
Simon Severino (02:49.71)
in three images. The one line is the current number and the other one is target number. Those three things, that's what we look at as a team. That's the weekly metric. We call it sprint dashboard. And then there is the monthly habit. The monthly habit, we call it focus card. On one page, there is the three years vision, the one year goals and the 90 days activities.
Heather (02:51.773)
Okay.
Heather (03:05.373)
Okay.
Simon Severino (03:19.662)
with the three metrics that will measure if those activities are going into the right direction and at the right pace. And those three are the same that we look at on a weekly basis. Those are the three habits that in the book we call them CEO habits. And that's the core of the strategy sprints method. And without those, I would be totally lost.
Heather (03:46.237)
And you have kids, right? And I think I read that you have three kids. So you have a family that you also spend time with and does disease habits, does this flow help you, you know, really control that time with your family as well?
Simon Severino (03:50.606)
Mm -hmm.
Simon Severino (03:59.918)
Without those three things, I would be a terrible husband, terrible dad, because nobody would know when is dad here? Is dad coming for dinner? So because of those things, that allows me to have a structure. So my kids know exactly when I'm running. I run every day at the same time. So they go, oh, what's the time? Oh, daddy's running. So there's no confusion around that.
Heather (04:22.781)
Yeah.
Simon Severino (04:25.038)
They know exactly that I will be there for dinner because I never skip dinner except on Mondays. So they know, oh, they know the day they know that is here for dinner. It brings having a process brings that calm and that accountability that a family needs a family with three small kids needs rhythm and cadence and clarity. Who's doing what when?
Heather (04:48.957)
Yeah.
Simon Severino (04:53.326)
Otherwise you have total chaos. It's chaos anyways, but then it's total chaos. So you need a chaos that's enjoyable, right? An adventurous chaos. So you need some form around that.
Heather (04:57.021)
Hehehe.
It totally is.
Heather (05:04.893)
I like that. Yeah, no, I, chaos that's enjoyable. Nice. Okay. So I agree. I mean, owning a business is chaos. So make it enjoyable.
Simon Severino (05:10.478)
Yeah
Simon Severino (05:18.094)
Yes. Yes. And three small kids and running a business, it's the same thing. It's absolutely unpredictable, absolutely uncontrollable, wild, volatile, and impulsive. So bring it into a form that you can enjoy. Those are really big waves that are coming in unpredictable fashion. And so you have to learn to write them and to enjoy them. Otherwise, they will crush you.
Heather (05:23.101)
It's a lot. Yeah.
Heather (05:47.165)
Really good. We're going to talk a little bit more about you and your backstory because I know you have this book which we're going to get to and you're a triathlete and you're Ted X speaker and you've done incredible things with your career. But how did you get to where you are now? Where did you come from Simon in your past?
Simon Severino (06:05.006)
I started the wrong things. I majored in a really irrelevant area, which is philosophy and psychology. But then I had the chance to jump into a global strategy advisory because they were just looking for the best grades. And so that was my second chance at having a real job. And then I had a job and I was flying around.
Heather (06:13.917)
Okay.
Simon Severino (06:34.862)
and sitting in the board meetings having to solve their go -to -market strategy problems. Like how do you enter a market, crush it in the market, stay competitive against others that are trying to eat your market shares? How do you stay defendable in a market? And I did fall in love with those topics because they're both very emotional. Every executive cares about market share.
Heather (07:01.181)
Yeah.
Simon Severino (07:01.326)
And they're also intellectual because you have to get the numbers right, the timing right, the resources right. You have to align everyone. It's really intellectually stimulating, emotionally highly intense. So I love that. And that is now 22 years ago that I did fall in love with the topic of go to market. And I've stayed with that one thing every day.
Heather (07:18.013)
Okay.
Heather (07:25.725)
Got it. And then now with what you do, what do you do? How do you help people through all your work?
Simon Severino (07:35.406)
So online entrepreneurs call us and they say, hey Simon, my pipeline is weak. I need more pipeline certainty. I need more leads. I need more chigging, chigging going on here. I need the sound of deals closing. And for some reason it's harder to fill pipeline or it's harder to close right now. So they asked us for a sprint coach.
Heather (07:48.765)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Simon Severino (08:02.19)
A strategy sprint is 90 days and we coach them online. We become the Jarvis to the Iron Man and Iron Women. They are in action, right? They're in action. They're doing stuff. They don't have time to sit down, read a book, sit down, watch a video. So they have to do stuff. They're building websites. They're filling pipeline. They're solving problems. And we become their Jarvis for those 90 days. We are on their phone and we are...
a very probably the most intense partner on their team because we will communicate 24 seven with them. They will say, okay, I need to send an email. Help me. Spring coach. Is this the right subject line or another? Do you have a better subject? Um, he's spring coach. The landing page is not converting. He's pretty good. We're in seven days. We have this launch. Can you check that? Hey, sprint coach. I had a
Heather (08:49.885)
Ah.
Simon Severino (08:59.374)
sales call today that I didn't close. Can you watch the recording? Give me feedback so that I close the next or maybe even is there a chance that I win this lead back onto my calendar? What would be the language for an email that you would use or would you call them? So the main thing is really we get their sales recordings, we improve sales material, sales flow, sales conversation and that is done in 90 days because we have 12 sprints of a week each.
And in each sprint, we can course correct. The goal of each sprint is to double revenue. And the way we do it is by improving three things by 25%. So we increase by 25 % the price that they can charge for their offer. We increase by 25 % their win rate. And we increase by 25 % the velocity of their sales, which means shortening the sales time from awareness.
closing. And if we increase by 25 % those three things, now you have effectively increased by 99 % the revenue. That's the goal of the 90 days.
Heather (10:00.029)
Okay.
Heather (10:11.773)
In 90 days as well. That's an incredibly short amount of time to, to accomplish that. A couple of things that you've said in that conversation, which I really liked was that the business owners that you work with, they don't have time to read. They don't have time to learn and they don't. And so I love that you meet them where they are and literally just are there for them and support them and hold their hand and guide them. Um, you said a sprint coach. So does each person you work with get their own individual coach or do they tap into a network of different coaches?
Simon Severino (10:41.486)
They have one dedicated coach for 90 days. That coach has head coaches and colleagues, et cetera. So that coach can tap into the full world, in the full sprint world, in the community, and they can bring in people for specific topics. Like, for example, we have sometimes we have webinar specialists or landing pages specialist. They get brought in or copywriting experts. They get brought in and say, hey, look at this. Can you refine this? But everyone gets one coach for 90 days.
Heather (10:44.573)
Okay.
Heather (11:00.733)
Yeah.
Simon Severino (11:10.862)
and I make sure that they have the right coach in the right time zone with the right skills. And for those 90 days, they are like Jarvis and Ironman. They are really in the corner where the action happens, in the CRM, in the sales recordings, where the action takes place.
Heather (11:30.813)
Excellent. I mean, hearing what you're saying, you have almost two things going on here. You have a community of coaches that work with you and for you. And then obviously you have the clients. So you have these two groups of people that you are responsible for, right?
Simon Severino (11:46.702)
Yes, I'm the CEO of Strategy Sprints and the founder and the inventor of the method. Yes.
Heather (11:50.109)
Yeah. Yeah. So you have these two groups. I am, we're going to talk more about strategy sprints and that method in a moment and go a little bit deeper, but I just hearing you talk, I was intrigued around the community aspect of what you have because you do have double communities and that always intrigues me. So what's some advice around you as a leader and a CEO around building a community, whether, you know, it's a team or, um, clients, what are some tips on, on how to really improve that?
Simon Severino (12:20.686)
Community is the new marketing. I think it's a better way to market. Because you shouldn't be selling your product. The people using it should be telling other people, hey, this is cool. I'm using this. You should use this. It's a more elegant, more, it's an organic flywheel. If you get that going, it's organic. So it doesn't cost you extra dollars.
Heather (12:23.101)
Ha ha ha.
Well said.
Simon Severino (12:49.87)
It is real and true and trusted. So you don't have to build trust. Trust is already in there. And people love to buy from people like them, not from salespeople. So when you hear, oh, yeah, you're a solopreneur, I'm a solopreneur, you're in this community, you're doubling revenue. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, you should join. It's every Monday. Cool. Let me have let me check this. That's a good flywheel to have.
And we have eight modules on how to start a paid community. And it's much easier than people think. So I don't have time to go into all eight modules, but let me try to share some misconceptions. People think, oh, I cannot start a paid community because I need more content. Not true. Oh, I cannot start a paid community because I need a huge audience.
not true. The first, you need to sell five seats, five seats at the beginning and then you can take it from there pretty quickly. The next misconception is, oh well, I need then to create content every week for them. That's also not true because a community, everybody has superpowers in there so you can tap into the superpowers.
of the community members and that is also content. And then really a community is not really about teaching anything, it's really about being the safe space where they can work on whatever they need to work on in the area of your expertise. And then you can supervise and you can coach, but you don't have to do everything. It's a community. Everybody is a leader in a community.
Heather (14:42.205)
Hmm. I really like that. Thank you. So I want to talk more about your book and your methodology and how you work. I mean, I know you briefly mentioned how you work with clients in a 90 day sprint and the different, you would have 12 sprints in that 90 day period. Is that actually your methodology? Talk, talk us through. So what is the, the whole, how does the whole thing work and how does it, you know, how do I get involved in it?
Simon Severino (15:04.59)
Yes, the strategy sprint method is having those three habits daily, weekly, monthly, so that you have some calm in the chaos. And now with that calm, you use the time that you have saved because you will save 10 to 14 hours per week, just doing those three habits. And now that you have these 10, 14 hours per week, okay, let's say six of them, you enjoy your family, your friends, and more sports. And you still have eight hours.
per week to work on the business. With these eight hours, if you follow the Strategy Sprints method, now you will first, month one, improve by 25 % the amount you can charge for the same offer. So you don't change your product, you don't change your service, you just charge 25 % more without losing anyone.
because you will have done eight things to refine your positioning. And usually that's the problem. People don't have the right positioning. The position is set wrongly. But if you position it right, you can charge 25 % more without losing any people. Like for example, Netflix is absolutely well positioned to keep me and my whole family has a Netflix access. And if they would...
Heather (16:09.533)
Love that.
Simon Severino (16:31.022)
now increase by 25 % what they're charging me per month, I would not think one second about leaving Netflix. So it's well positioned, it's working, you can increase by 25 % without losing clients. That's the first step. The second one, increasing the win rate, that's the sales conversation itself. You need eight steps in that conversation and most people are doing this terribly wrong.
The eight steps for people watching, it's this yellow pyramid here. And there are eight steps in there. Those eight steps will teach them how to start really with step one, two, three, four, five. And we have an AI that helps them and coach them live while they're doing it. Jarvis to the Ironman. Just by doing that, it's not a huge change. They will change when they talk about the price, how they talk about the price.
how they talk about the offer and how they get people to sign. But it's not a huge change to what they're doing and it will increase the win rate by 25%. So if they talk to 10 people now and they close five, they will close seven and a half of those 10 conversations. And then the third part is shortening the sales time or sometimes it doesn't work. This is the part where sometimes we don't get that 25 % effect.
But we have two chances. The first attempt is at the beginning of the funnel from awareness to closing, can we shorten that time by 25 %? Now sometimes that doesn't work because it's very complex B2B sales and you have to get on the calendar of the marketing head of Red Bull and that cannot be shortened for some reason.
Then the second attempt in month three of the sprint is to go the other side of the funnel and say, okay, your current clients, they came for a solution, but maybe they want to stay for a community. Maybe they want to stay for an upgrade, an upsell, a cross sell. What is it that they need in addition to what they're getting right now? And so that's the second chance. And if you improve that, you are now increasing.
Heather (18:47.741)
Yep.
Simon Severino (18:53.55)
the retaining, lowering the cost of acquisition of a client and it has the same effect of increasing sales velocity by 25%.
Heather (19:03.581)
Mm. Love that. And so the book that you wrote basically outlines the process of what you just told me. Yeah.
Simon Severino (19:13.518)
Yes, the book is what I just said, but in 13 chapters, each chapter with examples from Ali Abdal, who was a YouTuber at that point, starting his first program, trying to price the program. So how do I find the right price for my cohort to the part of YouTuber Academy? That's chapter one, chapter two. So each chapter is those principles.
Heather (19:36.541)
Okay.
Simon Severino (19:40.43)
but also the checklist and the real systems and checklists and swipe copies, and also examples of people in the sprint who had to solve a pricing problem, a sales problem, and what they tried and how it worked out for them.
Heather (19:56.669)
Excellent. It's such a great entry point introduction to what you do. And I can see the tremendous amount of value that you've put in that before I've even read the book myself. Um, when people come into your world and they want to work with you guys for the 90 days, do you have different tiers or packages? What, what's your flow of helping a client long -term?
Simon Severino (20:20.718)
Yes. So the commonality is everybody will double their revenue. That's what we work towards. And then there are different formats for different people. We have formats for solopreneurs, formats for small team and formats for enterprises. We work with all these three areas and they need different things. So we have different ways of working with them, but yeah, we can have solopreneurs, we can have small teams.
Heather (20:38.653)
Okay.
Simon Severino (20:50.606)
and enterprises.
Heather (20:52.829)
Wow. Okay. So you really do run the full gamut of business owners and all different types of sizes of businesses as well, but it sounds a bit. Um,
Simon Severino (21:01.55)
As long as they are a high ticket business and they sell online via Zoom, Teams or Google, we can help them.
Heather (21:03.965)
Yeah.
Heather (21:09.373)
Yep. Excellent. Okay. I'm just curious, how long do people tend to stay with their sprint coaches and on average, is it beyond the 90 days?
Simon Severino (21:22.862)
So only a few people ask for a second sprint. The goal of the sprint is after 90 days, those systems are implemented. And when systems are implemented, they stay with you. You don't need to book a second expensive sprint because you have the systems already. You have your docs, checklists, your CRM is structured in a way, you have your email templates. It's working. And so you can just continue doing it on your own.
Heather (21:27.389)
Really?
Wow.
Heather (21:35.229)
Yeah, of course.
Heather (21:41.341)
Yeah.
Simon Severino (21:52.014)
What they tend to do is they ask me, Simon, but I would still love to hang out with this sprint folks. They are cool folks. They are the pacemakers. They are, they bring some clarity and energy and we're just, we are faster when they are around. So is there a way to still be in contact, maybe less intense, maybe do you have something that goes over an annual membership, but we can have more touch points. And so this is how the 200 K club.
was born because now every Monday we come together it's a group setting and You can there is it's a longer less intense work. It's an annual membership and we have once a week a Session it's called the sales booster. We come together. We look at each other's pipeline and say okay, what can we help move forward here?
Heather (22:23.645)
Okay.
Simon Severino (22:45.326)
Oh, Simon, I'm trying to close this deal, but it's slipping away. All right, let's go there. Show me what's the plan. Who is this? Who do we know there? And then we do tactical sales pipeline work and also working on the strategy and on the business. Who to hire next, how to scale without adding headache.
Heather (23:07.389)
That's really good. And you said to me earlier as well, that a lot of the business owners that seek you out don't have time to read or learn. So good question would be, do they actually come to you because they've read the book if they don't tend to have time? How do, how do the people that find that work with you, what's their main sort of entry point into your community?
Simon Severino (23:32.814)
They come from YouTube, from LinkedIn, from the book and from the many events that we do. Speaking gigs, being on a podcast.
Heather (23:46.877)
Yep. So we'll talk about that now. So, um, talk to me about events. Do you do your own events or do you just go around and speak on different stages or both?
Simon Severino (23:56.174)
Both, we do some select events on other people stages and we have our stage. Once a month we solve a sales problem live and the people who see that as a, oh wow, that was really effective. He solved a real sales problem live. I want to have this more often.
Heather (24:05.117)
Ah.
Heather (24:15.069)
That's nice.
Yeah, try before you buy. And do you do this? Is this an online event that you do or in person or both?
Simon Severino (24:28.878)
It's a 60 minutes online event.
Heather (24:31.293)
Excellent.
Cool. Good. Okay. And then, so you do that and then obviously you said podcasts. I know you're on podcasts like mine, of course, but do you, do you have your own podcasts where you're saying?
Simon Severino (24:44.398)
I have my own podcast and I am on two, three podcasts of other people per day.
Heather (24:51.293)
It's incredible what you do to get yourself out there. I'm very impressed. It's a lot of work that you put into it. What's your podcast called?
Simon Severino (25:00.334)
Oh, it's called Simon Severino.
Heather (25:02.717)
There you go, you guys, it's his name. And on that podcast, do you talk specifically around strategy sprints or what else do you share?
Simon Severino (25:11.79)
I share sales insights that I had that week, a specific tool, a specific way to solve either filling the pipeline or closing the pipeline. And then because in our community now after 22 years of getting sales right, now we have some money and now we had to learn what do we do with that money? None of us was really good at investing or keeping money and having money work for us.
So there is another format that started on the channel and this is Simon as a beginner investor. How does he keep his money? Now that he's making a ton of money, how does he keep that money? And that became a journey in itself, a journey inside the journey. And that portfolio started with minus $50 ,000. It's now above a million US dollars and it's a live portfolio. I'm showing it live when...
when I'm buying something, when I'm selling something and the reasoning behind it. So how do you do an intrinsic valuation and the relative valuation? The relative is with competitive analysis, which is part of our coaching. And so that's one thing that has emerged now over the last years, because turns out my friends, my community, et cetera, they don't know how to invest. Nobody was taught that at school or even at university.
Heather (26:38.845)
No.
Simon Severino (26:39.246)
And so I'm sharing that part too, because we need to keep the money because it's not enough to make money. You have to keep it too.
Heather (26:43.069)
Yeah.
What a smart evolution to your lessons. That's, um, that's so good. And is that on your podcast as well? Or where, where do people learn about that?
Simon Severino (26:55.31)
Yes, it's on the podcast and the live trades, they are in the 200K club in the Slack group, but on the podcast, I give a weekly update of what's going on in the portfolio.
Heather (27:02.973)
Got it.
Heather (27:07.741)
Very good. Now I have to ask before we start to learn a little bit more about how people can work with you. One other question, because you are a TEDx speaker and that is not exactly the easiest role to have. So what, what was your topic? I'm guessing strategy sprints was what you spoke about.
Simon Severino (27:31.182)
I didn't hear you. Can you repeat the question?
Heather (27:34.301)
Sure. So for Ted X, when you were a Ted X speaker, what was your topic that you spoke about?
Simon Severino (27:42.574)
It was about my core topic, which is strategic advantage. What is strategic advantage? And because TEDx speaks to a very broad set of people, not just to entrepreneurs, I wanted to show just from a real life example, what is strategic advantage for you as a person, even if you don't run a business. And so I talked about that and it's basically being...
awkward in social situations. You're strange, you're weird. That is your strategic advantage. Don't let other people tell you that that's a negative thing. That's actually your positive thing. If you just learn to embrace it and leverage it, use it, because that's your uniqueness. And so the TEDx talk was about how you find your uniqueness as a person, because there is one.
You're just right now labeling it in a negative way, but you might find the opportunity in that it's actually your asset.
Heather (28:48.317)
Really good. I feel like in our conversation, we've really gotten to uncover Simon, who you are and your business and all the different facets of what you do and how you help people. And I really like what you said around how, once you make money, how do you keep it? Um, really smart move that I didn't know up until now that you did. So as we start to wrap up, I'd like to ask you, uh,
people are listening and they're thinking, okay, so Simon, I'm loving this 90 day strategy sprint concept. I'm in, I want help. I know you have a podcast, I know you have a book, but where would they go if they're actually genuinely interested in working with you?
Simon Severino (29:30.83)
First step is the book Strategy Sprints, grab that on Amazon. If you want to talk to us, come to strategysprints .com and then click something that brings you on our calendar and then we can talk.
Heather (29:45.021)
Excellent guys. Of course, we're going to have all the links in the show notes as always. So you can click on that and check Simon out, go check out his podcast and his YouTube he said, and get the book for sure. So much value in that. And, uh, as we start to wrap up any words of wisdom, last pieces of advice to people that are really trying very hard to grow their business right now. And they're struggling and they just need something from Simon that says, this is what to do next.
Simon Severino (30:15.31)
Simplify, if it's hard, cut the number of activities in half. How do you know which half to cut? Use the focus card. The focus card is a prioritization tool that I use whenever I feel that I'm doing too much. I go to my focus card, put in half an hour, and then I know which half of the activities to cut. If you're wondering where to get it, you can go to Strategiesprints .com and then click Tools.
and you can download some of those prioritization tools. You map out what you're currently doing and you identify in half an hour guided review with the tool. You identify what's actually half of it that's really moving the needle and just focus on that half for three months. You can restart all the activities if you want after three months. Usually people don't do that. They stay with those few relevant activities.
Heather (31:15.133)
Excellent. What a perfect way to end the show. You guys simplify loved all your advice around positioning and pricing and just community and how it's the new form of marketing. So many gold little nuggets and takeaways for our listeners. So thank you, Simon, for being here and thank you for sharing all the words of wisdom.
Simon Severino (31:34.51)
Thank you Heather for showing up so regularly for your community.
Heather (31:40.157)
Thank you so much.
