Episode 42: Getting Your Time Back with Simon Severino – Transcript
Rennie Gabriel 00:10
Hi, folks, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money, tips, techniques, attitudes, information and provide inspiration. In past episodes, we spoke about how to build an income and expense report, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you're spending your money, how to track your money in 5 to 10 seconds, what to look for on a net worth statement to see how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®. And today, we have as our guest, Simon Severino. Simon is the CEO of Strategy Sprints, the number one results-based business coaching firm. His team of Certified Strategy Sprint coaches, does only one thing, double the revenue of sales as a service (SAAS) and service businesses in 90 days. Simon, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. And let's get right to it with some questions.
Simon Severino 01:10
Excited to be here, Rennie.
Rennie Gabriel 01:12
Thank you. Describe what you do and why you do it.
Simon Severino 01:18
We help business owners of SAAS and service businesses run their company in an easier way, and also increase their cash flow through better sales. Why do we do it? Because we like to serve and what is needed right now out there in the world. In our surroundings - business owners - we see that people need help in having a good healthy cash flow. Also good cash flow management. And that starts with getting better clients. And the second thing, they need more time, because they work too much. And they are also parents. They're also friends. They're also wives and husbands. They have many hats, and we want to help them stay sane, stay on top of things.
Rennie Gabriel 02:08
Okay, well, because the focus of the work that I do is to raise philanthropists, is there a particular charity that you support?
Simon Severino 02:19
We pick one charity per year, and we give a specific percentage of our profits. Last year it was Charity Water. This year, it will be picked by my team in December based on where we think that it is needed right now.
Rennie Gabriel 02:36
Great. And what did Charity Water do?
Simon Severino 02:40
They help get water in regions where it's not easy to have drinkable water.
Rennie Gabriel 02:47
And I know there's parts of the planet where that's definitely a struggle to get water, you could drink and not get sick. Thank you. When I see S.A.A.S., I say, "Oh shoot, what the heck is Sales as a Service?" Tell me who your target markets are?
Simon Severino 03:04
Yeah, so Software As A Service and service businesses. Software As A Service . . . is people who are building something that you pay for, but you have a recurring usage. And that's usually software. Most of your apps are these kinds of things. So people that create apps, for example - financial apps, apps that work on your phone - these are typically Software As A Service (SAAS) products. And the second is Service Business. A typical that we work with are consulting agencies, marketing agencies, and also Wealth Advisors, Financial Advisors. These are typical service companies, and the problem that they have, it's really people driven. For example, you start as a Financial Advisor, because you do good work people tell their friends about you. And then let's say you reach a certain growth, you are doing now $300,000 per year, you are maxed out. You cannot take one more client. And your friends say, "Hey, we miss you in the tennis court. We miss you at the bowling evening. Where are you? We don't see you around and you look pale." These are the people we work with, because they need a smarter model. They are the center - they are the bottleneck of their business. And so they started it because they wanted more freedom. And now they have the opposite. The business runs them instead of they running the business.
Rennie Gabriel 04:37
That is so typical. Yeah, I see that all the time. And one of my mentors had an expression - 'fish can't see the water they're swimming in'. They started a business to create freedom, they can't even see that they've taken it away from themselves.
Simon Severino 04:54
Yes.
Rennie Gabriel 04:56
What would you say was your biggest failure - whether it was personal or business - and then tell me what insight you may have learned from that?
Simon Severino 05:07
Yet, it's funny, because my worst year was my first year as a freelancer. I jumped off the corporate bandwagon. I created my own company to have more freedom. And in the first year, my wife says to me, "Simon, that's not working. Simon that's not working. You're working so much more than before. And I never see you. You fly around all the time. Come on, we're building a family here. This is not working." And so it was the worst year. And I had to find another way, a smarter way, our second kid was arriving, I wanted to be more present at home. But my business model was broken because my business model was, - I fly to your city, help you create a market strategy, I fly back home. And that was you know, one day in Paris, one day Berlin, never home, never home. And so I went like, "Argh, I can't do it." And this is also the year that helped me innovate most, because I had to find a better way. And it was pre-COVID, but the internet was around. So I was like, come on, I can have impact without flying there. I had a triathlon coach, in my spare time, I would pay him $80 bucks every time we meet. So I said, "Okay, we meet once a month, but I will send you the data, and you can get my Garmin data." And he said, "Yeah, sure." And I was like, that's a smart model. Right? So, what if I do the same thing with my clients? I build a space, where they show me the progress of the work and we discuss the numbers in an easy way - and the internet makes it possible. And whenever they need me, they call me up. That's much smarter than in three weeks, we will have an eight-hour workshop in your city with your team. Right? So, I started building that. I went into cranking mode, started building that. And now we have a very nice thing where basically 15 times per day, you can tag your Sprint Coach quickly. It's like Spider Man and the the guy in the chair. 'Should I kick the left door or the right door?' 'OK give me - give me a moment. (makes sound). Kick the left one.' So this is now the Sprint Coach, and it is super available. It's plug and play. It's 24/7. It's also much cheaper because there are no flights. I don't have infrastructure. And we have Sprint Coaches from San Francisco to LA, to Indiana to Shanghai, without having big expenses. So we are very lean, and we can afford to have low prices and very good prices. And so that was the worst year, but it helped me innovate.
Rennie Gabriel 08:08
And it sounds like that's very similar to . . . And now tell me if I'm wrong here, but I'm thinking if I were to ask you what are the typical feelings that your clients or your prospects experience or the common mistakes that they make, it sounds like it's almost identical to what you went through. Does that sound correct?
Simon Severino 08:30
Exactly. So they call us when they are crushing it, when they're doing 500,000 per year there. "I made my first million, Simon." And then their friends go, "Oh, wow, wonderful." And they go, "No, no, no, no. I'm dying inside here. I cannot scale this chaos. I don't want more of this."
Rennie Gabriel 08:50
So I'm going to guess that the reason they went into business and what they ended up not getting is what they actually do get out of working with you and following you or your coaches advice. Does that sound accurate?
Simon Severino 09:07
Yeah, so they feel that they need a smarter way to scale and especially - it's now about scaling. Okay, growth, we've done that - check. But we want now - we don't want more clients we want better clients. And we want more time, we want our life back. So usually the first thing that we do is, 'now founder, please write down how are you are spending the day.' So, they started writing down. At 6:30, I go running, 8, first meeting, etc. And then we say two reflective questions. The one is, which one of these tasks could you hand over to somebody that can do it better than you? And the second question is, if you would live more freely and more intentionally, what would you do tomorrow? And with these two simple questions, 5 minutes every evening, they start finding their time wasters and things that they shouldn't really do. And then we ask them, okay, what do we do delegate, outsource, delete, or automate. And then they check one of the boxes and bit by bit, we help them write down the system. And then when the system is written down, now you can hire somebody. Now you can hand it over in your team, or you can start hiring somebody. And bit by bit, you create a system out of what you're doing. And this is where the magic happens. Now you start week by week, having more time again.
Rennie Gabriel 10:33
Let me have you slowly say those four things that you need to choose when you're looking at the activities.
Simon Severino 10:41
Yeah. So you have identified that this activity should be done by somebody else. It's a time waster. And then we say, "Can we delete it? - nobody does it anymore. Delegate it - somebody else does it. Systemize - we need to write it down because later then we can delegate it. Or Automate - some things can be done by machines better.
Rennie Gabriel 11:08
Yeah. Like, yeah. Is it - like Infusionsoft sending out emails?
Simon Severino 11:12
Yes.
Rennie Gabriel 11:13
You set up the program, it just does it.
Simon Severino 11:15
Yes. And there are more and more of these beautiful little things that take tasks from us.
Rennie Gabriel 11:20
Exactly. Okay. The reason I wanted you to repeat that as if someone's not driving, and they want to take notes, those are the four things to actually focus on. Do you have a case study that you could talk about without violating someone's confidentiality?
Simon Severino 11:38
Absolutely. So a consulting company started three months ago with Sprint - because our Sprint's are always three months, because you need 20 days to break up patterns, and you need around 80 to 90 days to build up new habits, new routines. So, 90-day chunks. A consulting company - IT consulting company - started Sprinting with us. They said our sales are low, and we feel like reinventing the wheel with every new client. Okay, so we start making this time analysis with the CEO, but also those responsible of operations, of sales and of marketing. They start doing it and they identify a lot of time wasters. So we help them write the things down and delegate them more. Now we have freed up, in the first two weeks, 13.6 hours per week for these four people. They have now time . . .
Rennie Gabriel 12:35
Is that 13 hours each?
Simon Severino 12:37
Each per week.
Rennie Gabriel 12:38
Hmm, oh okay, so we're talking . . .
Simon Severino 12:40
Which s really good.
Rennie Gabriel 12:40
Yeah, we're talking about a whole week's worth of work between the four.
Simon Severino 12:44
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they were working around 60 hours, and now everybody was around 46 hours. And now they have time to work on the business instead of in the business.
Rennie Gabriel 12:56
Yes.
Simon Severino 12:58
Which creates a different, more space - and now you can think clearly. And now we started thinking about joint venture partners, we started thinking about who could we collaborate with that has a bigger leverage in that market and that market. So we started having tasks that were now much more impactful with less time. And this created over the next weeks, of course, a lot of opportunities, and we executed upon them, and they had an ROI on these 90 days of 1,575% of what they paid - in terms of additional revenue.
Rennie Gabriel 13:40
And good ROI, spend $1 get 1000
Simon Severino 13:44
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That was pretty cool for them. And they are now starting their second Sprint, because they said Wow, now that we have done that, can we double again? Yeah, sure.
Rennie Gabriel 13:55
Great, great. Okay. Is there some valuable resource that you can direct some of my listeners to that can help them solve the situations that they're in?
Simon Severino 14:07
Yes, all our tools are open source because we want the world to use them and to have a better life. So you can go on our website www.strategysprints.com/tools and we have always a selection of our tools open source there. You can use them, make them your own, feel free, they will help.
Rennie Gabriel 14:29
I will have that link in the show notes for anybody who's driving, jogging, or just doesn't have pen and paper handy. Is there a question that I should have asked you, that would give some great value to the audience? And obviously, you could tell me the question, but I also want the answer. So what would that be?
Simon Severino 14:50
Maybe what COVID has taught me that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
Rennie Gabriel 14:56
Okay, and what's the answer to that?
Simon Severino 15:00
Hey, now I have to think about it. (laughter)
Rennie Gabriel 15:04
I can give an answer for my son. ..
Simon Severino 15:06
Yeah.
Rennie Gabriel 15:07
because he's a Chartered Financial Analyst, but no, let's have it from you.
Simon Severino 15:13
I have really realized that we are dependent on each other much more than we feel during the day. And that has humbled me - how much we need each other. We need connection. We need sharing vulnerabilities, what doesn't work - what we need, but also what's going well, and what can inspire others and give energy to others. This was something that I was not aware of when I was just jetting around the globe. I am now aware of it in these lockdowns. I'm much more open to this.
Rennie Gabriel 15:50
Terrific. Thank you, Simon. Thank you, Simon for being on the show. And to my listeners. Thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review and subscribe. If you'd like to know how books, movies and society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is. Then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/tedx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice® and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money. Again, that's wealthonanyincome.com/tedx. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.
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