Kevin Stafford 0:02
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the conversations with coaches podcast. I’m your host Kevin recording Fast and Furious here in January 2023. And today, I have the privilege of speaking with Simon. Severino that pronounced that right Severino. Very good. I’m always self conscious about named pronunciations even when it’s dead simple. Simon helps business owners in SAS and services discover how to be able to run their company more efficiently, which results in sales that soar. He created the strategy Sprint’s method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds. Oh, my heart responds to that phrase getting out of the weeds. Simon is the CEO and founder of strategy sprints, which is a global team of certified strategy sprints coaches, that offers a customized strategy to help clients gain market share, and work in weekly sprints. Obviously, that’s in the name, which results in fast execution. He’s also a Forbes business council member, a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine, and a member of Duke corporate education. Simon, I feel like I get to read your bio for 20 minutes. It’s fantastic. I’m so grateful to have you here today. And I’m excited to talk to you.
Simon Severino 1:12
Hey, Kevin, I’m excited to be here. Hello, everybody.
Kevin Stafford 1:16
Well, let’s, uh, let’s begin at the beginning, as I sometimes like to say, how, how did you get your start as a coach and I the kind of differs for different people. But often there’s a moment of realization, where they realize that all the skills and abilities and passions they’ve accumulated over the years have led them to realizing that you know, what being a coach is, the best expression of this is the thing that I want to do the most, where I can do most, have the most impact and do the most for myself in the world. And then sometimes there’s like a mentor, who at a key moment comes in and says, you know, you kind of, you know, you sound like a coach, or you sort of are already a coach, there’s so many different ways this happens. And I always love to get the superhero origin story of how you got your start as a coach. So how did you realize discover become a coach? And how did that lead you to where you are today?
Simon Severino 2:07
You know, there has been a period where the big management consultancies were looking for different people, the only thing they were looking for, were you, you had to have top grades. But they wouldn’t. But it wouldn’t matter so much, which kind of grades you had, as long as there were just top grades. And so I came with top grades from philosophy and psychology. And I became part of a global consultancy. And so I said yes to every project. So they would say who comes with us, we have to go to New York and do market entry strategy for Boehringer Ingelheim. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. Oh, by the way, and when that is done, who comes with us to Shanghai? And then we do with the BMW strategy, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. It’s me, it’s me. And so I was always like, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. I was learning a lot. It’s an Eldorado for learning. And management consultancy is really where you learn the craft, you can if you want work every day for a couple years in a row. And that’s what I did. Basically, for a couple of years, including the weekends, I was always in some workshop room, tackling some big problems of executive team alignment, or how do we enter this market? How do you how do we win against that competitor? And so this is when I did fall in love with these topics, especially the market related topics? How do you enter a market stay in the market? How do you how do you sell. And so those things I did fall in love with, and I’ve been doing every day ever since for the next 21 years.
Kevin Stafford 4:00
I mean, when you find what you love, that’s fantastic. I love and I think some people I think a lot of people understand, at least on some level, that there’s going to be a moment whenever you’re pursuing your passion, or you’re trying to trying to get to where you want to go, there are going to be stretches, sometimes long ones of hard work, you’re going to put in the hours. And there are some people who try to like skirt around that, or there are some people who believe that it always has to be like that, like that. It’s always, you know, 12 to 16 hour days, six or seven days a week in perpetuity. And until they arrive at some point. It’s like, I like the fact that you were just you said yes to everything in those early days because you knew that was the best opportunity to learn and to grow personally and professionally. And so you were just like yes, yes, yes, yes. And then you just continued to pursue and develop and evolve beyond that, but I just love I love your, your complete embrace of the work from from very early on. It’s, it’s, I mean, I don’t mean to blow smoke up your butt. That’s very admirable. I think it’s very Well, I think it’s a message, it’s important to share that there’s no skin nose key early stages, especially, the best thing you could do is just say yes and work
Simon Severino 5:11
in the evolution of a coach, I think, and at least for me, it was this in the beginning, I wanted just to have as many miles as possible, just seeing many industries, many topics, many different themes, so that I also learn what is my superpower? What is my specific contribution here? What is it that makes me unique? You know, there are hundreds of smart people in such a consultancy, what is it that I bring to the table, in order to do that, for me, it was really doing as many hours as possible. And so for four years, I didn’t have a weekend. And that was fine. I was learning I was, I was seeing the world seeing many cities for the first time, Paris, New York, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, I was seeing them for the first time. So everything was super interesting for me, and I was in a kind of flow, very intense period. But it was the right for that period. Next period was starting my own consultancy, because at some point, you know, I wanted to express who I am now I did know who I am and what I can help with. And when you have that clarity, I think it’s time to do your own thing. So it started as a one person, company. And it was just me coaching. And so I specialized on entrepreneurs, on small teams, agencies, because that’s what I knew best. So consulting agencies, marketing agencies, PR agencies, and, and I said, Alright, I’m gonna coach small agencies, on on the things that I know best sales, marketing, and running the business. So when we did that, when I did that, very soon, I was at top capacity, I think it was the first year where I was maxed out. And I also started not liking it anymore. Because I said, Hey, I’m doing this for the freedom. But I don’t have any freedom right? Now. If I say yes to the next client, I’m again, in a rat race. I wanted to escape that rat race, what’s going on here? I now have a starting to build a business, but I don’t have a life anymore. And so I realized, something’s broken in this model. If if my dream client comes and says, Hey, coach me, and I say, No, I can’t, because otherwise I don’t have a life. There was something broken with my business model. So I started thinking, how can I tweak the business model? I hired a business coach. And he immediately said, Simon, you have to be two levels above fulfillment. You have to fire yourself from operations. How do I do that? Then I told my wife, I say from next week, nobody can book me as a coach anymore. And she says, But you are the company. So who are they going to get as a coach? I said, I’m gonna, I’m gonna build a team. And she goes live, but they come for you. And I said, Yeah, I don’t know. I will tell you on Monday, what happens? But build a team quickly. Yes, Monday, we onboard this to the next sprint client. They say, Yeah, I’m here to double revenue. Let’s go and say, Alright, let’s go. Here’s your coach. It’s ready. And they go, Cool. All right. See you later. See ya 90 days for the review. It wasn’t a problem at all. So it was a lot of emotions and Ego. But for the client, actually, they don’t come for us they come. Of course, it’s easier to trust the person that you that you trust, but they come for a problem that they want to solve or a goal that they want to achieve. So they come for the process that gets them. You’re the person who has the process. But if you give the process to somebody else, they are fine. It’s like a yoga teacher. You can go to every yoga teacher on the planet, you get a good process. These are your eight asanas. You do them, you feel fine. It’s such a
Kevin Stafford 9:41
love. I love how you navigated that, that classic entrepreneur trap because that’s, I mean, I’ll pretty much anybody and everybody who did who does who does what you did and go off you realize that you know what to get the freedom I want. I’m going to have to build my own thing. I’m going to have to go and start it out myself. And that first trap usually fall into it and it’s a very six stressful trap to fall into is that you hit capacity you hit your ceiling, the limits of, of temporal life, like I have 24 hours a day, I have seven days in a week I have these many days in the year. And there is just a hard cap on how far I can go alone. And is that realization and I love that the business coach came in, it’s like, alright, this is what it is. You basically have to fire yourself. And I liked that framing too. It’s like we gotta get we gotta get you to levels from fulfillment. I was like, Yeah, heck yeah, that’s, that’s a good way to think about it. And I love once again I’m I’m completely unsurprised based on the the beginning of your story, you took action immediately. You’re just like, oh, okay, this needs to change, if I want to get to where I want to go. And if I want to have the freedom that I want, and you did it, and I love how, how quickly you go from identifying the and I’m obviously you’re probably compressing time a little bit here. It’s not like happening in five minutes in history. But you go very quickly from the realization of what the issue is to seeking out a solution. Again, and you contracted with a coach, which is a great, great, great and honestly, necessary step many times, like get with a coach, have them identify, you know, what you maybe already know, but maybe you’re just too You’re too filled up to really realize you have too much going on, you can’t stop to reflect you need someone to come in and kind of help you there. And then taking action immediately. I just, I love that. And I feel like that is such a good lesson for people to like who are trying to go on their own, it’s like, just understand that you’re going to hit these walls, there are going to be these barriers. And you’re going to have to remember why you’re doing this in the first place. What it is that you want out of this experience, and make sure that you’re getting it and as you get to a point where you’re not anymore, your freedom becomes restricted, whatever, whatever it is, your main goal is your your primary objective, engage with it, find out what you could do, because there’s there’s you’re never trapped, not really, you just need a little bit of help. And then that’s honestly that’s where coach comes in, I find that the your your story is maybe one of the best reasons why people should get you as a coach. Because you’re like, you practice what you preach. It’s like you know what, there are times where you need a coach, you need someone to come in, tell you what you maybe already know, maybe can’t see and get you moving, or at least give you the opportunity to move in the right direction.
Simon Severino 12:21
That was the step that brought me into the next stage. The next stage was I was now teaching coaches. So I now was a head coach, the coach of the coaches. And I had to empower them and to make them ready for to deliver the sprint and the sprint, they are expecting doubling revenue. So you it’s it’s a underpressure it’s it’s an intense coaching, it’s not just you know, talking, it’s really it’s doubling revenue 90 days. So there needs to be a good high quality of understanding the models and knowing in which order to apply them. And so I said, Okay, I need to create a certification that takes at least 60 days to make them ready. I want them very committed. So it will be a paid certification like a franchise, I teach you a business, you can do millions with it. And there will be a franchisee fee per month. And then but you use the brands you use the models, the technique, the processes, and you create a huge business for yourself. And you pay a flat fee. And every Monday we come together we discuss all sprint dashboards. All clients sprint dashboard is this week’s marketing number, sales number, operations number of the client. So every seven days, we measure the progress on those three things. That’s why it works. Yeah. And so every Monday, all coaches come together, we discuss all clients. And that was my way of having quality control and being there for the coaches. And so now I was the coach of the coaches. And so my wife says Do you miss it? Not not coaching? Not at all because I’m coaching the coaches, they have been asked questions. And also I had new things to do now taking the podcast seriously writing a book, starting big joint ventures with started a joint venture with Google. So I had now much bigger toys to play with. And and now my job was to scale the whole thing and to ensure the quality completely new skills. Again I hired a coach again they they helped me find out because it was a completely different job actually. So this these are three stages were very, very different from each other. Now I’m again, in a stage where I have so much free time that I’m trying to find out what to do with the answer. I’m learning, investing. And I’m studying the new technologies, AI and crypto, and seeing where the world goes. But I have also three kids. So I have enough to do here. But this is the evolution of things. And the most fun thing was, for the first time in my life, to write a book, I had no time to write about the method. The daily habit, weekly habit and monthly habit, and the daily, the weekly habit is this spring dashboard. And so I said, well, with the book, this is now much more affordable than a one to one coach. So with the book, we can now help everybody from, you know, from Los Angeles to Korea, to run a business with less headache. So let’s write a very good book, a practical something like a cookbook, that you really you open it up as to how do I do this? Marketing? How do I do sales? How do I do Client Onboarding? How do I do hiring all the big problems that we all have, as entrepreneurs. And, and when the book came out, I was I was quite happy, because that is helping a lot of small businesses out there.
Kevin Stafford 16:24
I like thinking of it as a cookbook, because yeah, there really are, I mean, obviously, their situations are different, but there are recipes for success. And it it can be the it is that straightforward. There are recipes where it’s like, add this much of this at this heat for this long, and you will end up with a souffle, or whatever it is that you’re cooking, like I feel like a cookbook is a really good way to think of it because a lot of times people fall into this other kind of trap of thinking that it’s a lot of high concept stuff. And they’ll read books that like they benefit from perhaps they learn something or they develop, but they’re largely just conceptual. They don’t ever really go from concept to execution. They don’t go from idea to action. And I love I honestly I’m I’m very much appreciate the fact of thinking about this like a cookbook, because yes, you learn something and learn how to do something, you get a great result at the end. But it also gives you the steps, it’s like this is how you take these concepts that you can clearly see are valuable, and put them into action, cook them to completion and actually get something at the end of it. And I feel like too many, I feel like too many, maybe not coaches, but too many people who are trying to help are more about talking about the ideas, and the concepts and the high level stuff, which again, like I said, I don’t want I want to poopoo that it can be very important. It can be life changing. But I’m just I’m I like cookbooks, I like cookbooks, I like the recipes. And I like I like I like to, I like to have a real guide to how I’m going to get from where I’m at now to the loaf of sourdough bread to the dish that’s going to nourish me and my family for days and months and years to come. Very, very taken with that. And also, if you don’t mind, there was one your your your step from step from Stage Two to stage three, where you had evolved into a position that you no longer really had the right skill set for that you had gotten. So you were so good at what you initially learned to do the coaching, and you’d built that up. And then you basically built yourself into a position that required you to really change and evolve. And once again, bring in a coach. And that’s something a number of coaches I’ve spoken to, for this podcast specialize in that particular step. Because that’s one especially there’s a coach I spoke to not very recently I recorded with who specializes in particular with engineers, and like like very, very scientific scientists, engineers, technicians, who are essentially very, very, very, very good, maybe elite at their job, their skill said lots of formal education, lots of experience, lots of technical expertise. They know their stuff, and they’re so good that they eventually move up to a position that requires them to have leadership skills, team leading skills, team building skills, company, you know, department wide management skills, all sorts of stuff that really they haven’t had to do before. And that’s those moments, those gaps, where you’re really transitioning and evolving, are so crucial, I think, to bring a coach in, the sooner the better the moment you realize you’re in that kind of evolutionary state, that transition period. A coach is, in my opinion, ideally positioned to help you navigate that because a lot of people get lost there and a lot of people will stall there because they won’t know what to do or how to change in the way they need to change and their growth will be stymied and I just once again, your your personal journey is a billboard for why coaching is crucial.
Simon Severino 19:53
And it’s it’s still going on so out of this main program, which is the 90 days we coach one on one with double your revenue. Many have asked, Hey, can I meet the others who are in this sprint? Because they have the same problems that I have. I want to hang out with them, I want to exchange experiences with them. And it’s a good idea. Actually, let me bring you together. And so I created the mastermind and now and so the first 10 started discussing and turns out, it’s really useful to say, hey, where do you find the video editor? How do you hire a PR agency? How do you renegotiate contracts to be performance based, they have very similar questions, and they’re answering them to each other. So that became something bigger and is now a community. It’s the JVC, the joint venture club, they start doing collaborations bringing each other on on each other’s podcast, doing summits together where they are the speakers. So there’s a lot of collaboration going on there. And now I am, again, at the level of, of a beginner, a beginner Community Manager. So I was a good community builder, it seems so because the community did grow, but I don’t know how to manage it. How How to be a good host to something like this, what are good processes, tools, techniques, frequencies, that that are conducive to them doing six figure collaborations easily. So I don’t know. And so I’m, I’m right now starting a journey with a community building Pro. And they are they are teaching me how to do this and how to hold the space, how to keep the space safe. How so that, you know, everybody can open up about the things that don’t work in their sales, because otherwise it’s just a community where everybody says, Oh, I’m so great. I’m so great. That you are on Instagram, right instead of being in a real community
Kevin Stafford 22:07
Yeah, it’s not it’s not all sunshine and roses. It’s not all a framed and produced pictures. Yes, I was quite as as opposed to perfect. A perfect analogy. It’s not it at that point. It’s Instagram. It’s just everybody posting their wins. It’s like, that’s not you know, it’s that’s nice, but that’s not going to be that’s not gonna help anybody get anywhere.
Simon Severino 22:25
Exactly. And so now I’m learning the community aspect and who knows, in a couple years what I will be learning then
Kevin Stafford 22:33
that’s, that’s that’s the perfect attitude. And I feel like that might be the perfect place to end the podcast I just realized we’ve been I’ve been I honestly I’d like I love your journey. I love the way you’re you’re so the precision of the way in which you share your steps through and the way that they reflect your actions and your business that you’ve grown. I honestly I could listen to you talk for for hours. Jealousy, I will keep you on but it’s already been a little bit past how long I usually like to go for these episodes, the short and sweet version. So I will regretfully say thank you. But before I let you go, I will ask you where I kind of to park this? Where can people find out more about you? Like where do you like to send people to just like where’s the hub where they can just learn more about who you are your business your approach? And then also where can people best connect with you? Do you have like a preferred social media that you’d like to be reached on? Do you prefer to send people to a website to kind of reach out to you there? So yeah, how can people find out more about you and connect with you?
Simon Severino 23:31
The main hub is strategies prints.com There you find also a ton of tools that you can download. And you can also talk with my team to see if we can mentor you coach you. I also you can buy the book on Amazon. It’s called strategy sprints. And, and I’ve also a YouTube channel where I share every week some questions that I’m exploring and what I find out about entrepreneurship and and financial freedom. And it’s called Simon Severino.
Kevin Stafford 24:07
Easy to find. Well, Simon, thank you again, for your time today. It’s been fantastic to talk with you and I, quite frankly, I’m I’m excited to see what you’ll not know how to do and learn how to do next. See what you do with with communities and then see what comes next because your your approach in my in my estimation, in my opinion is is exactly the way I want to be in my own life and exactly the way I feel like other people want to be as well just meeting problems as they come addressing them sometimes with coaching, often with coaching, and enthusiastically embracing the next thing and just going all the way in and learning what needs to be learned and building and growing. And wash, rinse repeat on and on and on we go so thank you for being you. And thank you for being here today. I really appreciate it across the board.
Simon Severino 25:00
Thank you Kevin for showing up consistently for your community and holding the space for these things.
Kevin Stafford 25:06
It’s that thank you. And quite frankly, when the community is like this, where it’s coaches who are all invested and passionate about impact, and growth personal and professional and just committed to the rising tide of the coaching business and of people just progressing in general, it’s one of the easiest things is to show up consistently, although it can be hard but for me, but for me, it’s become the central joy of my life because I get to I mean, again, I don’t mean to blow smoke up your butt, but I get to talk to people like you about really meaningful things that I find to be just tremendously impactful. So anyway, thank thank you for the compliment and again, thank you for being here and for being you I’m just I’m I’m kind of beside myself. I’m like I’m excited to like pause podcast recording for like, you know, an hour and just go like start exploring strategy sprints cuz I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, but I will. So thank you again.
Simon Severino 26:00
Keep rolling, Kevin, keep rolling everybody.
Kevin Stafford 26:04
And hey, keep rolling everybody and we’ll talk to you again here real soon.