What if there was a way to do less—and gain more?
What if you could accelerate business growth without bulldozing your personal life?
This episode’s guest, Simon Severino, figured out how to achieve his business goals while maximizing time spent away from work.
And he wrote his book, Strategy Sprints, to help you do the same.
Listen now to hear Simon’s story and find out how his blueprint can double your revenue–and give you more time to build a vibrant life.
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Simon Severino: People, you don’t have to accept that your business bulldozes your life. You can have both the cake and eat it and you deserve it.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the vibrant coach and I am here with none other than Simon Severino. Simon Severino is the author of Strategy Sprints, you can find his book on Amazon, and he helps business owners run their company more effectively, which helps result in sales that soar. He is trusted by Google and various sundry people, check out his website. His website is www.strategysprints.com. He created the strategy sprint method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting leaders and owners out of the weeds. He’s a TEDx speaker, and you can actually go on the Google and find Be a Category of One, that is his TED Talk. He’s a contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine and a member of the SVBS, Silicon Valley Blockchain Society. Please welcome to the show Simon. How are you?
Simon: Hello, everybody. Hello, Nicole. Hello vibrant community. So cool to be here.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m grateful that you’re on the show. It’s absolutely going to be delightful. So I want to talk about your book, don’t miss it. It’s Strategy Sprints, 12 Ways to Accelerate Growth for an Agile Business. Say that three times fast. It’s difficult. And so you can get it on Amazon. So first of all, tell me what, what prompted you to write this particular book? How did you get started?
Simon: I started because I was passionate about something, like most people listening right now. And I wanted to do it all the time, all the time. So I started my own thing. I get all my courage together. I started first year I crush it. Half a million in revenue. I think I’m doing fine. My friends started telling me you’re not doing anything, Simon. You’re you don’t have a life. We miss you. You’re not there when we play soccer. You are not there when we need you. Where the hell are you Simon? Yeah, I, you know, I it’s the second year of my business, this thing needs me. And they go, yeah, and your life. So my business was running me, I was not running my business. So I was miserable. And I had to find a better way.
So the first step was to fire myself from operations, and to get myself two levels above fulfillment. And that was a long process. And I wanted to share this with the world. People, you don’t have to accept that your business bulldozes your life. You can have both the cake and eat it and you deserve it. And there are blueprints for that. Just take the blueprints, shortcut, make your life better. How can I do it? Everybody, yeah, well write a book, and I go, I cannot write. Okay, it will take you forever. Team up, get editors, get publishers get help. And so I teamed up and I created this book, it took me forever to write it. But now it’s a work of love. It’s out there and people say it’s helpful.
Nicole: Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. And it is chock full of ideas and strategies and tools that you can implement immediately. And I also want to let everybody know, just simply go to strategysprints.com/tools, and you’ll see all the goodies that he talks about in the book. So it’s fantastic. All right. So start us out, you know, right at the beginning, you say you know, in your TED Talk be a category of one. And in your book, you say first thing you need to do is eliminate the competition, which I absolutely adore that. Like let’s you know, let’s get on with it here. So how do you actually do that? How do you eliminate the competition?
Simon: You did really read the book. That’s cool. So if you compete against others, you are putting the energy in the wrong place. You don’t want to be obsessing about your competitors. Because who are you here really to serve? You’re here to serve your clients. So stay obsessed about them, how can you make wow moments for them? Now, of course we have to defend your business we have to create moats and we have to swim you out of competition. So I find it much smarter. And you will find that template also how you can do it in half an hour to out swim your competitors instead of obsessing about your competitors.
There are really five things. Think about your top three competitors. Think about what else can your customers do? Then go through your top 10 features, see where they are winning and where you are winning, and then it will create three buckets. This is the bucket where you’re losing. Cut costs from there. Save 20% from that bucket this month. So in the next month, you will spend less time and money, 20% less time and money on that. In the middle, it says you are meh, they are meh, you are all mediocre, just reduce the time and money that you spend there. And then on the right side, right now you are crushing it.
This week you are winning. So double down put the 20% that you did cut on the left side. Maybe you take 5% and reinvest them in Bitcoin, but then you took you take 15% what you just saved and put them on the right side and invest them in where you are already winning. Now imagine this week you are already crushing it. You are winning. And now you put 15% more resources, time and money into that. How much are you crushing it next month? That’s how simple strategy can be if you do it right.
Nicole: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And so he said stop obsessing about your competitors and start obsessing about your customers. I love that. Make a sign, hang it up, put it where people can read that. That is fantastic. And I love what you said, meh. Okay, so that’s meh, everybody. I love it. Okay. Eliminate the competition, zero in on what’s working, double down in that area. Okay, so that’s step number one. Okay, so step number two is to nail your message and your brand. And you talk about defining the hero, picking a villain and calling people to action, so tell us all about that. It sounds very exciting. Sounds like a movie we should watch.
Simon: It is because it’s based, all movies are based on this. There is a hero, where does the hero want to go? They are on a mission, they want to go somewhere, they want to accomplish something. But there is an obstacle. What’s the obstacle? Ooh, is the nemesis. Look at this bad guy. So if you have a if you watch good ads, let’s say I have a cleaning products that I want to sell. There will be a monster behind my rock below my rock. Ooh, there is a dirt monster, look at the dirt monster. And then comes ooh la la, but I have a plan. Look at this. Oh, everything is clean by this. Right? And it works. If seven seconds you get it if you need it, you buy it, if you don’t forget it, but it was fun. And it gets through you. Right?
So if you started all the best ads in the end, make your website this way. And we have blueprints for our clients. But it’s really okay, who’s the hero? It’s your client. Where do they want to go? What’s the obstacle? Who can help them? You. Why should they listen to you? Logo, logo, logo logo. Where did you bring other people like them? Client testimonial, client testimonial, client testimonial. What happens if they work with you? Step one, step two, step three. What’s the next step? Click this button. That’s it. That’s your landing page. Everything that you add to it will weaken it.
So if you’re listening to this, go back, it was I don’t know, 12 seconds, and you have your website blueprint right there. And it’s just one of the 207 blueprints that we we do this every day with our clients, right? You need to get sales right marketing right and operations right. And these are the simple things that you need to do. And it’s and you saw it, it’s 12 seconds. So you get basically the shortcuts by having a sprint coach. You will get there on yourself. If you experiment on it for three years and measure every week the difference in conversions. Well, we did it. So you can go directly to the shortcuts.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. All right. So we’re gonna we’re going to experience serious growth, and figure out who the hero is, who the villain is. He gave you the blueprint for the website. So you just gotta go back and listen to that 12 seconds. All right, and I loved what you said about making sure that you’re capturing client testimonials. I think we’re always after the new customer. Make sure the new customer knows about the existing customer and make sure you’re you’re definitely working those existing customers to get more sales. Right.
So we’re gonna be doing that. So you talk about your growth plan in chapter three. And in the growth plan, you say there are four levers. So would you share with us what the four levers are and what leaders need to do to get their sales up? Now, don’t don’t miss. We’re building a vibrant culture here and people you can’t have a vibrant culture if you’re not making any money. Okay, so that’s why we’re talking about money today. All right, so what are the four levers, Simon?
Simon: Money is the oxygen and so one job of every CEO, and I call you CEO even if you’re one person but you are running the business, somebody runs your business. So I call that person the CEO. Okay. And so you are the CEO listening right now. And there is one job that you cannot delegate. It is keep things simple, because most people run too many projects, too many activities. So what we help people do is reduce. We call it the project list, having just 10 projects. I learned that from David Allen, who invented the GTD method, which is an amazing method for personal productivity. And we are applying this to executive teams. So you have just 10 projects that you are allowed to have in the next 90 days.
So when they do their first draft, usually they’re come 60, 70 projects, 80 projects, 120 projects, because everything is a project like improving the website is a project, of course. Improving my Instagram appearances, everything is a project. And if you list out all the things that you are doing, you will have over 60 projects. So we go through that project list with three questions to trim them. The three questions are, is this project moving your sales frequency up by 25% in the next 90 days? Yes, no? If it’s no, it doesn’t qualify for the top 10 projects of the next 90 days. And what is sales frequencies? Either reducing the sales time, so how long it takes from hello, here I am to oh, I’m interested, oh, please give it to me. Okay, let’s go.
That’s the sales process, right in four words. And can you reduce that sales time, especially important in the b2b business, when sometimes they have like 30 months before they land the big deal? So can you reduce sales time? Or can you upsell cross sell more? The upselling system cross selling systems, and sometimes people don’t have a system for upselling cross selling? It happens ,they improvise. So that’s the sales frequency, if it can improve sales frequency by 25%, check, okay, it passes. The next question is, can it improve the price that you are charging for the same thing by 25%? You do that by better positioning, by better storytelling, by better framing.
There are eight things, eight homeworks that that you need to do. And with our shortcuts, you get done a little bit faster. But doing these eight things, you can increase your price by 25% without losing anybody, right? Because now you’re better positioned. You are not compared to the wrong things. And now they say oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Nobody’s negotiating when they buy a Tesla. Nobody’s negotiating when they buy a MacBook. So why, because it’s well positioned is not even the product. The product is as crappy as every other product. And I say it as a fan of both products. But I am much more a fan of their of their positioning.
You know what they stand for, and you would never even try to negotiate. Because they will say, well, come on, go to Microsoft. So they will not negotiate. It’s clear what they stand for. So that’s a good positioning. And so if the project moves, the price increase by 25%, it stays in. And if the third question is does it move my conversion rate up by 25%? Conversion rate is same amount of leads that jump on your phone, but you close 25% more. Same amount of unique visitors per week on your website. But they click that thing until purchase or until they land on your phone and then you close them on the phone.
But you have a higher conversion rate on that website button. And that’s, that’s 25% conversion increase. So you go through 60 projects, and you pick the ones that tic most of those boxes. Now you have fewer things that you’re doing. But believe me, you have more impact. So you are doing less you are enjoying the business more, it’s easier to do it because it’s less activities, you are done faster. So you will enjoy your family. But when you come back the next day in the morning, there is more cash.
Nicole: Right. So your growth plan lever one is get your price your packaging your positioning, correct, correct. Reduce your sales time, your sales rate. Get some systems in place, and then you’ll have exponential productivity and you get to sit on the couch with the one you love. Is that what you’re telling me?
Simon: Exactly. Yes, you have more time for the things that really matter. You started your business in the first place because you wanted more freedom. Now you have maybe more cash but what do you do with it right? Are you not or maybe you don’t even have that, that’s the worst position ever. You’re working all the time. You don’t even make more income. So what would the hell did you get into? So get back on track right, regain your freedom regain your time and systemize the business so the business can serve, people then can serve you. You do deserve it.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, then you talk about in chapter four, that there’s some serious habits that leaders need to have in place. So you’ve got them kind of listed out in terms of like daily, weekly, monthly. Can you share with us some of the habits that you’ve put in place that have helped you move your company forward?
Simon: This is relevant, especially in funky times, like this one where you don’t know what’s going on next week. Like this week, I don’t know what the markets look like next week. I just don’t know. Nobody knows. So what do you do? When there is 100% uncertainty right there, how do you decide this week? And there are really just three things that a CEO has in control. It’s only three things. You don’t have revenue under control. You don’t have, pretty anything under control. Product launches, no control, hiring, no control, firing. Yeah, kinda control. Not what do you really have under control, three habits, daily habits, write down how you allocate your time. And then before you close your computer, to go to you to dinner, or to close the work day, it asks you two reflective questions.
One is of all the things that I did today, which one will I delegate tomorrow? And the second question is, if I would live more intentionally, and more freely, what will I do tomorrow? That’s a daily habit. And people can download it on strategysprints.com, for free. It’s a template that I use every day, there is an iPad version, there’s a spreadsheet version for everybody. There’s the right version. And we do this every day in the strategy sprints team, everybody does it. And by doing that, we identify what to delegate, automate, what to cut what to outsource next. And this is how you start scaling your company. It’s these little things, but they they add up, they compound over weeks.
The weekly habit, get your three numbers that tell you if you are moving in the right direction at the right pace. It’s a sprint dashboard that we have built for our clients. There are just three visuals, you see your three marketing numbers, your three sales numbers, your three operations numbers. You see current, you see target, and you’ll see the difference. But the most important thing is everybody sees if they’re going up or not. So whatever they’re doing, let’s say they are coding a part of your website. And they think, oh, I don’t need to be in a strategy session. I’m just coding a part of the website, right? So I’m not connected to the business. I bet you are, you’re getting paid. So you are part of this whole mission, whatever you are doing.
In an in an orchestra, I live in Vienna. So in the Vienna Opera, we don’t just respect the main singers, we respect also the musicians, we respect the audience who gives energy by clapping. And by showing up in their best dress. We respect everybody who is cleaning the floor, everybody who is handing over tickets, everybody who is cleaning the glass, these are all elements of one great experience when you go to the opera house, not just the main, the lead singer. So it’s all these elements create the opera experience. And then you know, you have the artists that create the scenes etc.
So there are so many hundreds of activities that contribute to a two hours great event. And so that’s that’s why it’s important that you have a dashboard, because everybody in the team, whatever they do, they need to see these in real time. Because when do they know if that part of the website is done? They know by watching every seven days, everybody sees those numbers and they go, oh, my button is not done yet, because it didn’t increase conversions by at least 1%.
So I’m not done yet. When is your task done? When one of those things goes up? And that, again, helps everybody to align and helps everybody to reduce the number of activities but to have more impact, because now they will challenge you. They will say, okay, I should change the color. I should change the terms of condition for the seventh time, changing one word, okay, which of these numbers will go up? None of them. Okay, maybe it’s not that important right now.
Nicole: Right. Pick one of those projects you put on the someday maybe list from David Allen.
Simon: And you pick them up in a downtime when when you cannot do something that really matters. All right, let’s do the stuff that we have to do.
Nicole: Absolutely. Okay, so what he just downloaded to you was a way to finish your day. I really think that leaders need to reflect, so I love this. And so there are two questions at the end of the day. One is what what can I delegate? What did I do today I can delegate tomorrow. All right, I absolutely adore that. Right? Who else could do this so I could free up my time and do something that’s more important. And that really is nice. Because Simon said at the beginning of this podcast, you know, take yourself up a couple levels, right? I fired myself from operations. And so that’s what you want to do. When you’re delegating, you’re slowly but surely firing yourself from operations. Alright, so I love that. And again, you can go to strategysprints.com/tools and get the dashboard, right, where I can put these things on there. Okay, so that’s fantastic.
Well, we only have just a few minutes left, I don’t think we’re gonna get through the whole book. So I’m gonna invite you to come back and hang out with me, Simon. But before we go, let’s at least do chapter six, and or excuse me, chapter five and chapter six, and then we’ll be through half the book. So you talk about the project list, which he kind of talked about, but then you also talk about a daily flow. Will you kind of dial us into what a daily flow looks like? What does what does yours look like? Help us get a flow.
Simon: So everybody’s flow is different. But ask yourself, and I’m happy to share mine. So ask yourself, when do you need uninterrupted time, deep work to finish, let’s say, a video an article, something that is bigger, the vision of your company, the dream list of your dream 100 affiliate partners. I like to have for that three hours of uninterrupted time that nobody can book time with me. And I pick for that the mornings. So I have heads down work, I have heads up work and I have heads together work. These are my three types of work. And I have different energies for that and different blockers during the day.
So I have three kids. So my day starts two hours before they wake up. Because first things first, I start with me time, nobody else than me. I get briefed five minutes about what’s going on in the world. And then I run in nature for an hour. Because that’s what I love. I love to see the sun going up and hearing the birds and being in nature, while I run. That’s my me time. Then, of course, family stuff. And then first three hours of work, they are called top three, let’s say it’s a blocker, it’s called top three, and nobody can book anything in there. That’s my deep work, I will finish stuff that needs time to finish.
So I think things through until they are done. I write an article for Forbes magazine, or something like that, until the end, it’s not semi finished, it’s completed and sent. And three hours is enough, right. And I’ve even breaks in there. So then comes lunch. And then I have heads up work. Now I have three, four interviews with podcasts with journalist. I have three four interviews, hiring interviews, right. And then comes heads together stuff. Now I have meetings with my colleagues, my teammates, whoever needs me in the team, I’m two levels above fulfillment. So I don’t have direct clients anymore.
So I’m the CEO, but I have my feet, you know, and it’s a global team, and they need stuff. And so I’m, I’m there for them. I coach, the coaches, the strategies sprints coaches. So I’m there for them, solving whatever pops up on that day, because stuff will pop up. If you don’t have problems popping up. You are not you are not going for the whole thing. Go bigger until something breaks, okay. And then in the afternoon, you have stuff to repair stuff. You have time for repairing what breaks, but please break stuff. Otherwise, you’re not really going big enough. Okay, go bigger than you can. That’s growth.
Nicole: Yeah, I love that. That’s another great sign to hang up. Please break stuff. I love it. Test the limits, right? All right. So we’ve just got a few minutes left. But also it says find traction instead of distraction in your ideal week. So you just talked about your daily flow. And now we’re talking about the week. So how do you help leaders map your ideal week? Let’s let’s kind of finish with that thought.
Simon: Yeah, the smallest module is the day. The next module is the week. The next is the month and the next is the quarter. So we break down our quarterly goals. We plan always in 90 days, three goals, three numbers that we want to achieve, and everybody is aligned on them. So all activities are prioritized by every single person according to these three things. How does everybody know what’s the right flow for their day? They look at these three things. How does everybody know if they are done for the day? They look at these three things. How does everybody know if they are productive or not? They look at their contribution to these three things.
And so the next thing is the week, how should each single person prioritize their week because I don’t I don’t prioritize the week for anybody, right? We are all grownups and we are all sprinters. So I expect everybody to be their own leader, and to lead their part, their tasks, their department. I also encouraged them to hire, and I make sure they have the budgets to hire, right? This is how you scale, everybody. Everybody’s the leader, not one person. Everybody is the leader. And I really encourage that. And I think it’s the only intelligent way of organizing, because now you have many, many, many brains awake, not just one, it’s not enough to have one. So not in these funky times.
So everybody thinks, okay, how do I break these three big goals down into this week? What are my priorities of this week? And that’s the traction exercise. Because if you do that, now, you design your ideal week. And we have in our calendars, we have, you click a calendar, it’s called ideal week, and everybody has their ideal week, then of course, you click the other one, the real calendar, and there is a delta, and there shouldn’t be a delta. But you are working towards that delta. So when somebody asks you, hey, can you do that tomorrow afternoon?
You say, well, tomorrow afternoon, I can’t, but I can do you know, Wednesday 8:30 because that’s when I blocked time for that. What about that? And so now everybody is prioritizing is making sure they are doing the right things first, and then you know, the secondary things later, because there are a ton of secondary things. But if you don’t make sure if not everybody is a leader. When I say you, I mean everybody in every team. If you don’t make sure that you’re moving the big things forward first, you will just not have time for the secondary things.
Nicole: Fantastic. Fantastic. All right, everybody. We have gotten through six chapters of Simon Severino’s book, and you can find it on Amazon. It’s Strategy Sprints, 12 Ways to Accelerate Growth for an Agile Business. Simon, will you come back and finish this up with me sometime? Can we get you on again?
Simon: Absolutely. We have some more chapters to go through. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah, I wouldn’t like to leave my group hanging. The vibrant community as you said, I love that. Hey, everybody, if you want to find out more about Simon, here’s what you need to do. You need to go to his website. Will you tell us your website again, Simon?
Simon: Strategysprints.com.
Nicole: Fantastic. All right. You can find him there. He’s also on LinkedIn. You’ll just go to LinkedIn and look up his name Simon s i m o n and his last name, s e v e r i n o. Link in with him there. He’s also on Facebook, under strategy sprints, his business page and also on Twitter at strategy sprints. All right, Simon, it’s been an absolute pleasure to be with you. I appreciate you taking time out of your very busy schedule to share with my leaders who are trying to build a vibrant culture. I appreciate you so much.
Simon: Thank you, everybody. Keep rolling.
Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.
