Finding Your Balance With Simon Severino

 

Starting out as a promising soccer player vying for the pros, Simon Severino froze on the one time he had to excel in the field. The universe was sending him a message: “Soccer is not for you; follow your own path.” So he pivoted and started building and helping Fortune 500 companies. This time, he lost touch with his best friends and was eventually kicked out of his soccer club. Another message from the universe: get into balance. Ever carefully, he built a model to help others and founded Strategy Sprints. Now heading in the right direction, Simon sits down with Mitch Russo to share the lessons he learned and how he is now finding the balance in making great progress career-wise and in his personal life. Want to know how he did it? Tune in to today’s show to land better clients and take your time back.

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Finding Your Balance With Simon Severino

If you have a business that is in need of some love, some revenue and profits, then I want you to grab my latest product. It’s called Profit Stacking Secrets. It started out many years ago as a new client assessment, but it became more and more detailed as the years rolled forward. Now, hundreds of clients later, I find it to be what you need right now to grow quickly with very little investment using strategy instead of cash. Does that sound good to you? Good. Go to ProfitStackingSecrets.com, grab your copy now.

On to my guest and his incredible story. Starting out as a promising soccer player, vying for the pros. Everything’s looking good until the one chance he had to excel, but getting on the call, he froze. The universe sent him a message, “Soccer is not your future. Not professionally. Follow your path.” That’s the message he received, and that’s what he did. He realized that his path was building companies and had the privilege to help Fortune 500 companies with their rollouts, all good, but life balance was tilted. He lost touch with his best friends, and eventually, he was kicked out of his soccer club.

Another message from the universe, “Get into balance,” which he did slowly, carefully, step-by-step. He built a model to help others and founded Strategy Sprints. He is now headed in the right direction with many more lessons to learn. He was making great progress, certainly more ups and downs. He leads an incredible group of coaches and helps more people than ever by optimizing their revenue as the CEO. Finally, with his wife and family, he found balance and space. Want to know how he did it? You’re about to meet one very smart and successful guy. Welcome, Simon Severino, to the show.

Mitch, it’s cool to be here.

Simon, I’m glad we have a chance to talk because every person brings a different perspective to the show. Your perspective is valuable and important, but before we get into it, let’s go back to the beginning. How did this all start for you?

The start was being in planes, serving boards, serving people, do good decisions, growing their businesses. I was not serving myself good. My friends were saying, “Simon, how many years are you going to do this? When do you stop this crazy flying around and doing that stuff?” I always say, “Give me one more year. I know it’s crazy.” From year to year, it was giving me one more year until I was kicked out of my own Monday Soccer Rounds, which I had founded.

One key point about improving operations is to make the board scalable. Share on X

You’re in good company here. Steve Jobs was thrown out of his company too. We can go back and look at the amazing people that were thrown out of their own company and later came back to prove their point. Apparently, you’re about to tell us that you did too. Go forward with the story.

I was a bad friend and husband at that time. I wanted to change something. When you do something, you’re good at it, and you get this feedback that, “You helped me.” It nourishes my soul. I get something out of it. I want to be with people. I want to help them grow their business. I want to be in the trenches, and I like to be needed. I like to get the applause in terms of a thank you, in terms of economic thank you also. I was addicted to it, and I still am, but I needed to change something. I talked to my wife about how do we want to live.

It became clear that I want to have much more time where I live, and then came our 1st boy and our 2nd boy. It was easy to stop flying. This was pre-COVID when I said, “I don’t fly anymore.” I had a chance to be on a TED Talk. I said no because it was in Shanghai. They said, “Simon, it’s an in-person event. Come on. Come here.” I said, “I love the idea, but I don’t fly for 25 hours to talk for 20 minutes. I don’t do that anymore. I’m honored, but you will find a better-suited person for that. What I’m trying to do right now is to have an impact on where I am.” It must be possible with this technology right now to help people, but from a centered position, from a more calm place. That was my longing. Can I still help people without destroying myself, thinning out the relationships with my dearest ones? I didn’t want to give up one or the other and to try to go a new way.

A lot of us have to make this choice. Early in my own life, I did not choose well. I was so intoxicated by business and by building a company. This company was scaling. It reached $1 million, then $2 million, $3 million, $5 million, $7 million. It was all of what I had. I had a beautiful wife at that time, and I wasn’t taking care or paying attention to her. I had to learn the lesson the hard way, basically. I lost my marriage. I had a successful business. I sold that for a lot of money, but in the end, I wasn’t happy living the life I was. As with you when you had that chat with your wife, we come to a moment in time where we say, “We’ve worked hard. We finally got somewhere, maybe not to ultimately where we want to go, but I’m not happy with the life balance. I’m not happy with relationships any more. What do I do?”

You’re lucky, Simon. You reached that point earlier in your life. A lot of readers may be saying, “I haven’t even reached that point yet.” The answer is that’s fine because you will. You keep doing what you’re doing. The best way is to learn from others. It’s far easier to learn from Simon and my mistakes than it is to make them all yourselves. Stay in the game, but be aware of the people around you who’ve done it and learn from them. Simon, what qualifies you to help business owners build their company? Where does that come from?

It is at that point where I decided that I will find out how to multiply myself. That is now my superpower and what I can share with people. I know now that when you start out as a founder, that you become the bottleneck of your own company and that you have to fire yourself from the operations. I did it. Now I have a business that runs itself, and that has much more impact than I could ever have in one life. It is possible because I fired myself from fulfillment. This is what I can share, and this is what we teach at Strategy Sprints, how to fire yourself from an operation so that your business runs itself and can scale.

 

One of the things that I love about what you’re saying is that you mastered something first before you set out to teach it to others. To me, that’s the right formula. Not everybody does that, but you and I have, and many of the people in my community that I consider in my community have done the same. When I think about some of my friends who are super successful, like Jason Hartman and Scott Holman and many of the other people in my community, even some of the amazing people I interviewed, they mastered something for themselves. They solved a problem they had first, unlike a lot of the dot-com-ers who started in the early 2000s who were scanning the universe for things that they could disintermediate, for businesses that they could take online. They never did those businesses themselves. It’s not that’s a bad thing. It’s that if you’re going to teach others how to do it, it’s ideal first if you do it too. You did it. Tell us about what Strategy Sprints is because we hinted at it along the way so far.

We are business coaches. We do one-to-one coaching in exactly growth and scaling. We coach for 90 days and double the revenue of SaaS and service-based businesses by improving operations, sales, and marketing. In 90 days, we double the revenue, improve operations, improve sales, improve marketing. When we say improve operations, one key point is exactly to make the board scalable.

Could you define what you mean because I have an idea of scalability? I’ve done things like that, but what is your company teach or help clients achieve when it comes to scalability?

What we do is, in these 90 days, a diagnosis of the eleven fields of an invincible company. We find how the element work, what’s working well, what’s working not so well, and especially how things integrate into each other, like how well is marketing and sales integrated? How well is the CRM integrated with both marketing sales and operations? How well are operations and sales working together? When we have integrated all the eleven pieces, then you have a simple machine. The next step is to help the CEO get out of the weeds. This is where we help the CEO fire himself or herself from operations, which usually is in the service business model.

It’s a certification program. Amplifying yourself. You’ll still have the same impact, but you are not delivering it yourself, and then comes sales. Sales creating predictable sales instead of the very volatile sales that most businesses have where in some months they are doing a $15,000 and then other months, $75,000. That’s a very bad position in terms of cashflow management when you have that volatility. We try to have a more repeatable and more reliable revenue stream, better cashflow, and then a scalable business model.

I wrote a book about certification called Power Tribes. The whole focus of my entire life since I was in my late twenties has been creating certification programs first from my own software company, which grew to 350 certified time slips consultants. Later, for people in our industry who have then created scalable, profitable with certification programs would multiple streams of recurring revenue. I’m a big fan of certification, and I love that you use that. I’d love to help you optimize it, and you will, once you read my book and see some of the nuances that I’ve discovered the hard way over many years. One of them is culture.

Culture is less important at 10 or 11 people, but when you start getting to 50 to 100 members of your community, without culture, it will implode. There’s not an if. The reason is that we’re all people. We all have our way of thinking things. We all think we know what’s right or wrong, but without a culture to guide us, we have a term for that called entropy. Everything reverts to the chaos of how life starts. I’m glad that you’re using certification. I assume that would be considered a more advanced technique for some of your clients as well. Is that right?

Be courageous and double down on where you are currently winning. Share on X

We start with operations, making them simple and smooth, then messaging more relevant, more repeatable, then sales, less volatile, more predictable, more outsourceable and delegatable, and then marketing. “You’re doing good. Now tell the others.” These are the steps.

You mentioned the eleven fields of an invincible company. Could you name what those eleven fields are?

It’s vision. Without vision, nothing happens. It would need a strategy, then execution, then the offer. Is it simple? Is it relevant? Is it repeatable? It’s then price, and then you go sales systems, marketing systems, CRM system, systems in general, the playbook, the plays where all processes are, and then comes team and mindset. At the very center is culture. I love that you said culture is the most important thing because the very center is culture. These eleven elements are around it because there is nothing you can do to shape culture but by doing these eleven things directly. These are the eleven things that you can do and have to do as a CEO, by doing them, how you do them creates culture because the fastest way to create culture is via structure, values, rules, etc. These eleven elements, the way you do it, that creates culture over time.

There’s another element of this. You’ll find out when you get deeper into my book. We build a culture in advance of creating a community. We have perfected the process of setting up culture through a series of exercises. Usually, it’s me and the CEO working together. What we do is we go deep into the core values of what the CEO believes, CEOs why, CEOs purpose, and from there, we have what we call the structure of the value, which is then supported by the pillars of ethics. When I work with a client, I give them a 38-point code of ethics, and we then customize those codes for each and every company. If you could think of the way the Parthenon looks, I’m stealing a Jay Abraham idea here.

The roof of the Parthenon or the values of the company, CEO, and the pillars of the Parthenon are the code of ethics that allow people to have total freedom within the structure that we have created. We could do this completely before we even admit a single person. If you add all of what you do, the vision, strategy, execution, pricing, sales, marketing systems, playbook, and the future, which I know you mean when you say playbook, that creates a powerful business-building scenario. I love what you’re doing. Simon, this is the segment of the show where we lay it out. We share the stuff that you normally pay people. Pay people normally pay you to get. Let’s get started here. What can you teach my readers that they would benefit from immediately?

I want to share one of my most powerful tools, The Equalizer, which is how I learned to become a CEO because I wasn’t. I was a consultant. I was good at doing, but I was not good at growing companies. I had to learn to become a CEO. One of the things that I had to learn was cashflow management and how to innovate without spending more. The Equalizer is exactly this. The picture for me is that entrepreneurship is the play of all roles. I see a DJ who’s doing his magic by putting more of this, less of this, and he creates the magic that way. That’s The Equalizer. I see the CEO as having this spreadsheet, which in my case is The Equalizer spreadsheet.

 

I’m thinking, “We are doing less of this, more of this if I can take some of these expenses and invest it into debt. What about I try and put something from here and amplify it there? If I cut here, I could give even more there.” That’s my picture of it. The tool that we do every month for one hour, as a team of eleven people, is The Equalizer. The question is, “How should we budget the next month?” For most people it’s, “Where do we cut costs, and where do we invest in?” This is exactly what we do every month, for one hour. I shared this in a TED Talk, but it’s simple. Step one, think of your competitive arena, your clients, the people who do not buy from you, what else can they do? Alternatives. For example, they can buy from competitor 1, competitor 2, competitor 3, but also what else can they do? They can do maybe let the intern do it, or do nothing at all, or outsource it or hire somebody to do it. Do not stop at doing a competitive analysis and also behaviors they can do instead.

What you’re saying is the part that I had a hard time learning is you’re helping people understand how to delegate, how to shift the workload from themselves, or even their higher-level executives to lower-level executives, which has two effects. The first is giving you and your team for more time to focus on what’s important. Here’s the best part, you’re helping others scale up by learning more when you give them work to do that is either challenging or requires some coaching and mentorship. Both of those are very important, and that’s how a company scales up.

I took too long to understand that. I struggled with this for a long time which is when you listen to my interview with Tom Peters, you remember me telling you that I followed him around all over the country, listening to him rant and rave from the stage because I needed what he was saying. I didn’t know how to do it, but he gave me the courage to go home and try, and I did. That’s a fantastic element of what The Equalizer can do. What other strategies do you feel are super important in employing your structure?

The first step was the alternatives. Step two, you list all the things your arena is currently investing in. What are they investing in your competitors? Maybe in technologies, AI, or data-driven dashboards. Step three, you grade yourself 10 where you’re winning and 1 where you are losing, because you want to know, “Where are we winning right now?” Now you have a list of where you’re winning versus where you’re losing. If you use our spreadsheet, it will calculate automatically. It will cluster three things. “This is where you should invest more in. This is where you take the money from because you will cut this, and this is what you will reduce.” If you do it manually, you have to cluster these three things, but the good thing is now you have your budget for next month because now you know, “I will cut 20% in this category where we are not winning. I will reduce 15% in this category. Everything that I saved on this site in the middle, I will put it on the left side. This is the double-down category because we are winning here. That’s why we will double down on that.”

You used the word that I have not heard before and in the parlance of strategic planning, and the word is arena. I would like for you to define that word so nobody gets a headache later.

I heard it for the first time from Rita McGrath. She was working a lot with Clayton Christensen. It might even be his thing. I don’t know exactly, but I heard it from Rita McGrath, who was also on my show, and she’s a strategy guru. The problem was before that he would do competitive analysis and look at three competitors. She came in and said, “The client cannot just only buy from other people. They can also do something in a different way. They can also do it themselves. They can also do nothing. Let’s call it the strategic arena instead of a competitors’ arena because it’s more than three competitors.” That’s where we picked it up because it’s helpful.

You’re taking into account not just what your competitors are doing, but what’s your own company or even what other companies could do without employing others or getting others involved on their own. I remember years ago when we had acquired a product called Timesheet Professional. The reason we acquired it is because time slips were for people, meaning personal practices, like lawyers and accountants, but we needed corporate tools. We tried to build it from what we had, we couldn’t, and the bottom line is that we didn’t want to hire another team of programmers. We bought it. We found a company that had exactly what we’re looking for.

When you become more unique, you make the competition obsolete. Share on X

We made them a godfather offer, and we bought the company. Here was where we started to have these very interesting conversations. We walk into a company, we do a presentation, and we blow away most of the management team. Remember, this goes back a lot of years, nowadays, it’s quite common, but we would create an integrated online timesheet that would roll up into thousands, if not tens of thousands of people all at once. I remember several times I’d be sitting in a presentation, and someone would say, “We could build this ourselves. Give us six weeks. We’ll knock this out.”

After I heard that a few times, and after the people who said it a few times came back and bought, I then became quite cocky. I would then say, “You could, but you won’t. The reason you won’t is because you don’t have the bandwidth. You could barely handle what you already have on your plate.” You see the management nodding their head. That’s how we would make sales because we had to compete with internal capabilities, and very few people were taking that into account. That’s what you’re saying is brilliant.

I’m many years now in the field. I’m channeling what’s happening out there and what the CEOs need to solve. This is a common thing. This is what you are competing against.

I also want to divert our conversation because you used another phrase, which I want to focus on. You said that you’re channeling some of these things. Maybe you didn’t mean it this way, but I do that too. There are many times where I am involved in a consult and thank God, they’re all being recorded because I don’t remember from moment to moment the words that are coming out of my mouth or specifically what I said. In many cases, what will pull me out of that is when somebody says, “Could you repeat that?” I come back into my body, if you will, or into my mind and say, “What did I say? I don’t remember, but don’t worry, you’re getting the recording,” and then I have to get back into that place again. Do you experience that too?

When people quote you, and then you said, “That was me? Could you please repeat it? I want to write it down.” Every consultant and every business advisor is channeling because you are in this business for many years. I am many years too. I was in five planes per week. I saw a lot of businesses from the inside. We have memory, and there are eleven elements of an invincible company. It’s not 174 trillion, but it’s 11. When you have seen over 1,000 CEOs, you can tell what the path is, where they are at and what’s next. Sometimes you will remember. Patterns come together. The unconscious is much faster than the conscious. Eighty percent of ourselves is unconscious. We have that memory. We have the patterns, and they come quickly together. It’s faster than our cognition can do. It’s nothing spooky. It’s your intelligence work. Thank God we have the recording machines, and we can learn from ourselves.

I want you to focus on this when you do your own consulting. Simon and I are sharing something that you might call a little esoteric, but I want you to pay attention when you’re working with your clients, when you’re working with your team, not to divert your thought away from what you’re doing, but be the reader, be the observer for a moment. Notice that all of this beautiful, wonderful, powerful information is arriving for you to use. That, to me, is the beauty of life. That’s where synergy, life, work, and purpose come together. You and I both have a very similar purpose in that we love to help people. That’s why you have an incredible business that’s all around focused on helping businesses. You also have an incredible podcast. Share the name of your show, please.

It’s The Strategy Sprints Podcast.

 

Simon, let’s end this segment with something that you believe I, or anybody can use immediately to spot a problem, to increase revenue, or to get more efficiency in our marketing. What comes to mind?

Find out what’s currently working, where you’re not winning, cut from where you’re not winning. Be courageous there and double down on where you are currently winning. You are sitting on a gold mine now. Whoever you are, wherever you are, you are unique. There is something that is working and double down on that.

For those who are reading this, everything that you desire is on the other side of fear. I know that I heard those words from Tony Robbins. I don’t know if Tony borrowed them from somebody else, but when I heard those words, it resonated throughout my entire being that I changed even at the age of when I first heard those words, into seeking opportunities to be afraid of moving forward, because I knew then I would be on the right track. Comfort was not my objective. My objective was to grow as a person, to grow financially, and to benefit more people, the people around me.

I love what you said. Find out what is currently working, find out what you’re not willing to do, and then start doing it. We’re now going to go to the next segment of the show, which is all about you. The reason I say it’s all about you is because we got to know you somewhat, but there’s an element of you that I think would be a lot of fun to better understand. Here’s how we do it, we ask a silly question. Here’s my question, who in all of space and time would you like to have one hour to enjoy a walk in the park, a quick lunch, or an intense conversation with?

I had mostly philosophers and mystics. I had Arthur Schopenhauer, Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Meister Eckhart, Plotinus, Plato, Socrates, etc. I picked one, and I would love to go with Meister Eckhart on a one-hour walk and talk about what matters, what is eternal and what is coming and going?

We’re going to arrange for you to have a walk in the park with Meister Eckhart, but under one condition, you let me tag along. I would love to be there for that conversation. He is somebody who, years ago, I spent some time getting to know through his work. I was quite impressed with it and the same with Schopenhauer. He became an element until I evolved to where Eckhart Tolle, who became one of my teachers many years later, was an element of how I chose to understand my own life. Great choice. I’m not going to ask you why you chose him. I understand that the real question to me is when you speak to someone of that caliber, what would you ask him?

It’s funny because I don’t know how he is as a person. I have read all his sermons. I can imagine him being on higher ground and talking to us, and we are hundreds. I don’t know how he is as a person. I would approach that situation in that context. I would listen and see which signals he gives if he wants to teach while we go or if he needs questions at all. I guess he would just do it. He would start, and for one hour, he would do a sermon.

You can never change the outside world; focus on changing yourself. Share on X

You’d start by asking him a question. It could be anything from what is the meaning of life to any of those elements. At that point, you’d want to be quiet and absorb for the next hour. It’s a great choice. I would want to do that with you. A lot of people have said, Jesus Christ. Everybody who has said Jesus Christ as the person they would like to spend that hour with did so for a completely different reason, and I love that. Perry Marshall gave a great answer on my show about spending an hour with Jesus. He has a whole different vision of how he sees Jesus from many others. I love this perspective. I’m not going to spoil it for you. You should read the episode. Here’s the second question. In some cases, potentially the most important. For you, it will become an element of who you are. It’s called the grand finale, the change, the world question. What is it that you were doing or would like to do that truly has the potential to change the world?

That’s a tough one because, on the one side, we are changing the lives of single people, and because we are scaling, this can have an impact on more people. The real answer is the work is inside of me. What I am doing every day is trying to change the world that is between my two ears. My teachers are my kids and my wife because they are in the present moment, and they give in every second. They are here, and they give first. They risk to open and lose themselves. By starting with that, they create a magical moment. At this moment, things emerge, things begin, and that’s the beginning of a play or the beginning of the teaching, but this is the magic of life. This is what happens at this moment between people.

Am I trying to change the world? Yes. Are we doing this? Sure because small business owners, our fathers, our mothers, if they are more relaxed because they know their business is going well, they will have a better dinner moment. They will have better breakfast, better weekends, and better vacations with their dearest ones. We are doing it. That’s a fraction because you can never change the outside world. My focus is changing myself. I try to start the day with meditation with exercise. I think about diet. I think about eating right, speaking right, and doing the right things. I hope that by doing that, I can have an impact on the people that then have a ripple effect. Because I’m out of fulfillment, I now have coaches out there that do it. It’s a ripple effect, but it starts inside of me.

You are channeling Buddha here because that’s what Buddha said. He said, “In order to change the world, you must change yourself first.” I’m paraphrasing. Don’t beat me up if I got the quote wrong, but it’s the same idea. Both of us are on that same path. I’m not trying to change the world by writing a book or by teaching a course. Like you, I focus on myself because I believe as a better person, I can have a much deeper ripple effect to everybody that I come in contact with. Simon, I’m not going to let you get away without telling us more about this free gift of yours. I’m a little blown away. I can’t wait to dig in. Can you tell us more about what this is and how people can use it?

We talked about how to cut costs the smart way and how to innovate. Become more unique, have less competition, and even make competition obsolete because you are unique that people find you, and they don’t compare it to others. The tool to do that is The Equalizer. We give away The Equalizer for free. It’s a spreadsheet that calculates your monthly budget for you based on these questions. You can grab it at StrategySprints.com/tools. There is The Equalizer there and also some other tools that will help you on your entrepreneurial journey. Enjoy.

Are these tools part of your program or free as well?

Our program is 274 templates and tools. On the page, we gladly gave away always the top twenty that are currently most helpful, but we have many. We are glad to share.

I am rarely impressed by a free gift. This takes a lot of thinking, craft, and experience to create these tools. I don’t mean just one, and I’m talking about an amazing array of twenty of these tools. Do not even finish reading this episode. Go directly to StrategySprints.com/tools. You too will be blown away by what you see now. Simon, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve covered all about what it takes to raise yourself up out of failure to success. We’ve covered what it takes to move from being a successful person to a successful company. We talked a lot about the success of the individual and how he can have that ripple effect by changing himself. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we end the episode?

I started reading your book Power Tribes. I want to share that it’s a wonderful book. Because I am exactly on that path, it is a checklist to use. If you are in a business that can be scaled via a certification, people get that book. It’s amazing. Otherwise, keep rolling. 2020 was a funky year, but years come and go. You are here to stay.

Remember, you’re never a failure until you quit. As Simon says, keep rolling and pivot at every opportunity to see what’s around the corner. Thank you, Simon. This has been an awesome episode. I appreciate your time and your wisdom. We’ll talk again soon.

 

Important Links

• ProfitStackingSecrets.com
• Strategy Sprints
• Jason Hartman – Past episode
• Power Tribes
• Tom Peters – Past episode
• Rita McGrath – Past episode on The Strategy Sprints Podcast
• The Strategy Sprints Podcast
• Perry Marshall – Past episode
• StrategySprints.com/tools

 

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