Angie Colee (00:02):

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, a podcast about leaving self-doubt in the dust, punching fear in the face, and taking bold action toward your biggest dreams. I'm Angie Colee, and let's get to it. And welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, Simon Severino. Say hi, Simon.

Simon Severino (00:24):

Hey Angie. Hey everybody. It's so cool to be here.

Angie Colee (00:27):

Yay. So tell us a little bit about your business and what you do.

Simon Severino (00:31):

21 years ago, I did fall in love with the topic of go to market. How can we enter a market? How can we crush it in the market? Should we enter this side of the hill or that side of the hill? Oh, maybe there is another way to enter from the other side. I did fall in love with these big hard to solve questions because the teams that were asking me to do that, they said, "Simon, we're not going to end this workshop before we have solved. That is so vital to us because if we don't get this market thing, everything else has no oxygen." And so I had their attention. It was vital. It was an intellectually stimulating topic. And I said, "Wow, I want to do this every week now." And fast forward 21 years later, that's exactly what I did every week for 21 years.

Angie Colee (01:33):

Oh, that's awesome. So would you say that was almost a bit of luck that somebody asked you to do that and then you loved solving that particular problem, or was that something that you were always interested in solving?

Simon Severino (01:45):

I love that you say luck because I think it is luck. I have a keynote, it's called Maximize Your ROL, your Return on Luck. And people say, "What do you mean? It's not luck, it's hard work." And so my twenties, my thirties were really luck. Of course, I was making the terrain ready to allow luck to happen. I was standing in the middle of the road and at some point the luck bus would hit me. So my part was relentlessly going into the middle of the road, but the luck bus hit me.

(02:30):

And what was it in my twenties? It was really exploring different roles. Do I fit better in a small team or in a huge team, in a front role or in a back end role, in a more sales and marketing related area or in a more operations development area? So I was really, really, really testing many, many things. And by doing that, I created the chance for the luck bus to hit me. And so at some point, it did hit me and it was this particular workshop where I knew, "All right, this is what I'm here to do."

Angie Colee (03:12):

Oh man, I think that's probably my favorite analogy ever on this show and in this life, to be hit by the luck bus and stand in the street until you get hit by it. That brings me so much joy. I'm very happy today. And I love that too because I know in a past episode I have bristled a little bit against people telling me I'm lucky. And I think the reason that I bristle is not so much that I don't believe in luck, but because they say lucky as if this just happened to me, as if I did get hit by a luck bus. And it's the same thing. No, I went and made a whole lot of preparation and I found out which street it was going to be on next, and I went and stood in the middle of the street so it could hit me when it came around. There was a lot of deliberate forethought and preparation.

(03:59):

And the other thing that I wanted to circle back to that I thought was really smart, I think a lot of folks, especially in their late teens and twenties, they get this message that you're supposed to figure out what the hell you want to do with your life and just stick with that for the rest of your life. And we're here to tell you that's not true. Look at what Simon did with, "Okay, I tried this out and I wanted to see if I'm better here or there with this kind of team, with that kind of team, solving this kind of problem or that kind of problem." You are absolutely allowed to treat your life and your business as a fun little experiment or a game. Try different things and go, "Nope, not for me and run away." That's totally allowed. You get to do you.

Simon Severino (04:40):

This week, there has been a huge acquisition. Adobe, the graphic design software company, which had a problem. They were not born cloud based, and now they had a little company called Figma that was born cloud based and they had a huge problem. So they ended up acquiring this main competitor for $20 billion. And now media was saying, "Oh my God, Figma is so lucky because it's worth 10 billion but it was just acquired for 20 billion." Now yes, it was a very good negotiation and it's a great price for Figma. But that overnight success took 10 years of the hardest work possible. First, to take the right decision from the beginning.

(05:37):

"We are going to start cloud based," which is, we all know, the right thing to be born remote. Born cloud based is right now, 10 years ago, the right thing to do. And not everybody's doing it. But those who do it, they have a harder start. But they persevered for 10 years. They became dangerous enough to be both the biggest in the field, and yes, they were bought for double the valuation. So well done, but it was 10 years in the making. And so now Figma congrats and very, very well done, but it was not something that happened. Luck doesn't happen just by chance, it happens because you prepare the terrain for luck.

Angie Colee (06:27):

Exactly. I'm so glad you mentioned that concept of overnight success too, because we always talk about the hockey stick of success. We went down into the pit of despair and we worked really hard and then we shot all the way up to the top and there were no... And of course, they don't get to see the wild hand gesturing I'm about to do here, but they can see the smooth clean hockey stick and what it really looks like is this great big jumbled circle going all over the place, forward steps, back steps, down, sideways, and then finally we get to up. And I think the up is really about perseverance and sticking with it and heading through the info overwhelm, getting really clear on what you have to offer. That's why at the very beginning you talked about go to market strategies. And it sounded to me very, very similar to a problem that a lot of creative entrepreneurs face with info overwhelm, too many options. Did you have to develop a system and criteria to help you narrow down what was the right choice and why? I imagine you did. I'm curious.

Simon Severino (07:28):

Yes. So over the last 21 years, the typical problems that I had to solve were the more parts we have, the more breaks. So how can we simplify? And the next problem was people don't get it. How can I simplify my message? So the first part is when you have too many moving parts, of course, the more parts, the more will break. That's just a physical fact. And by the way, Elon Musk is the master at this. He found a way to build cars with just as few parts as possible because he says the best part is no part. And that's genius. From an engineering perspective, it's genius. And if we apply that, and we are applying that since 21 years to businesses, think of when you explain what is it that you do. So for example, if I tell you what we do, we do only one thing. We doubled your revenue in 90 days. Let's say you cannot buy anything else. We have only one offer. It's doubling your revenue in 90 days. Now, could you tell to friends and to other people what we do?

Angie Colee (08:45):

Maybe.

Simon Severino (08:47):

Could you remember it in a week?

Angie Colee (08:49):

For sure.

Simon Severino (08:51):

Yeah, and that's simple, right? That's simple. The more parts I build into it, the harder it will become for you to tell friends, to remember it next week. So this is where we start. And one example there is the team at Slack. Today, everybody sees the success of Slack. But just a few years ago, it's not even six years ago, that they were really struggling. They went almost insolvent 36 times.

Angie Colee (09:21):

Wow.

Simon Severino (09:21):

They were almost bankrupt 36 times because nobody would get it. It was a great product, but nobody was get it. "What do I do with this thing?" And so there was this 37th pitch and the team was, again, collapsing and going home depressed. Okay, they don't get it. But then one says, "Oh, wait a moment, you mean I don't need emails anymore with my team if I use you?" "Yeah, yeah." "All right. Yeah, that's amazing. I need this." And so that was the moment where they got across what it actually is. And so this is one of the typical problems. How can you make it simple and how can you get it across? And especially for creatives, it's hard because they think it will limit their freedom.

Angie Colee (10:14):

Yes. Oh my gosh. I argue with them so much on that. I'm like, "Actually, the surprising thing that I learned from my in-house days as a copywriter was that creativity loves constraints. Put me in a very small box and I'm going to come up with something outrageous." Whereas if I've got blue sky and unlimited options, my brain kind of locks up and goes, "Oh my God, too much," and then I can't think of something. But if I've got space for one word on a box because it's going to go on the shelf in a retail store, I'm going to come up with a great freaking word.

Simon Severino (10:51):

Exactly. The best Instagram accounts are black and white. They need to come up with something interesting. And the best houses are built in the most remote places with the hardest conditions to build a house where everybody goes, "Oh, you cannot build a house there." "Oh wait a moment, I have this amazing architect. They will find a way." And they find a way.

Angie Colee (11:16):

Absolutely.

Simon Severino (11:17):

And then you have a rock in your living room, right? That's a special house.

Angie Colee (11:23):

Yes, one with character. I do like that. I travel across the United States, and earlier this year I drove through a place called Sedona. Sedona is beautiful, known for the Red Rocks. But I think the thing that sticks out the most in my mind was I was driving through these back roads and I stumbled across this house that's literally built into one of the cliff sides. And it's this blue and red and brown hyper modern monstrosity. Your eyes immediately go into it. It's not blending into the rocks by any mean. But I just remember being infinitely curious about that thing because what's the story there? How do you even get up there? I don't see a road, I don't see stairs, I don't see an... What is going on with this house? And I've been fascinated with it for nine months now, ever since I first saw it. It's crazy.

Simon Severino (12:12):

It's the power of constraints.

Angie Colee (12:14):

Yes, I love that. And I love that you mentioned the complexity of message too because just like we were talking about with creative folks, they want to have all of these options. And so they talk about this. "Well, I could help you with your website and I could help you with your emails and I could do your social media. And, and and." And eventually the person's just so overwhelmed with all of the ways that you could help them that they're just like, "No." So for everybody that's listening to me, you're speaking my love language, Simon, when you say simplify because I am ruthless about cutting out any kind of complexity as well. The simpler you can make it for someone, you are actually doing them a favor. You're not cutting out any opportunities for yourself. Because if you can come up to somebody and say, "I'm an email marketing expert," and they go, "Oh, I need email marketing," bam. Look at how simple that conversation was. Whereas if you're like, "I'm a copywriter and I write blogs and articles," their eyes glaze over and they don't retain how you can help them at all.

Simon Severino (13:08):

We were working with a creative agency from Berlin, and like most agencies, they were keen on doing everything from the logo, the website, the video, everything, and even maintaining the website afterwards. And we said, "All right, guys, and how happy are you?" "What do you mean Simon, happy?" "Happy, happy. When a new client starts working with you, how happy are you? Does your face light up? What's the atmosphere in the first meeting?" And they go, "Ah, no, we are a bit overworked." "Why?" "Because yeah, the profit rate is not so high. Every project begins from scratch. We have too many projects going on and there is not so much that stays with us in terms of profit margin."

(13:57):

And I said, "I can't imagine because you are offering too many things at the beginning. You can still notice all these things, people, but we will have to pick one favorite offer and then put it in the front and we will productize that thing. We will automate it like BMW building a car." And they go, "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. We are creatives. We don't want to lose our creativity." And I said, "The opposite will happen. Every new client, you will be actually enjoying to take on. The only difference is you will have the chance to pick and choose. And so the ones that you pick, then you will be happy to work with." And so what we did technically was that of all the 17 different things that they were offering, we picked the winning horse. "So if you could do just one thing at the beginning, what's the one thing?"

(14:55):

And so they picked the video, they are amazing at creating a three minutes video that comes onto the hero section of the website and it tells the story of the brand. So they called it the hero video and three minutes video. And we said, "All right, let's package it. So what do you stand for?" "We are the best at getting across in a three minutes video what you stand for." We packaged it and said, "All right, it takes three weeks and it costs 10k." That thing we totally standardized as if it was BMW's production process. And so there were SOPs in day zero, day one, day two, day three. It was literally written down, repeatable as hell, scalable as hell, very profitable because it was always the same thing. One click, voosh, the process starts. But before we did it, they were like, "Oh yeah, but it will be so hard, Simon, to really modularize it and standardize it." I said, "All right, I'm going to interview you. Okay, it will take me a couple hours. So let's say I work with you. What do you do at the beginning?"

(16:10):

"We interview your team." "All right, team interviews. How many hours does it take?" "30 minutes per person." "All right, what do you do then with those interviews?" "We create a first draft and show it to you." "All right, so round one and then feedback round and then implementation round, and then it's done. Okay, you have a process made of four simple stages. How long does it take?" "Two and a half weeks." I said, "All right, let's make it three weeks so you have some wiggle room if there are holidays or whatever. So in three weeks, can you deliver it?" "Of course." "All right, what can you exactly deliver? Let's write it down and that will be the core deliverables. Now you are de-risking everything on the other side. Do you have five people who can say, "Yes, we did it. It was amazing." All right, can we get a video?"

(16:58):

Boom, went on the website. So now you go to our website, there is just one offer. This is what we stand for. This is what you get in three weeks, click here and you can get it. They don't even have a phone call anymore. People buy it directly. And because it's so modularized, so standardized for them, it's so easy to sell that they're happy to sell it. And so they were five people when we started this sprint. The sprint is 90 days. At the end of the sprint, they were 47 people. That's how much it scaled because you have just this very simple, very clear start. And then now the cool thing is in the back end they can still, after three weeks, pick and choose their favorite clients and say, "You know what? You are cool, we vibe. If you want, we can do the whole site, rebrand the logo, and also maintain your website. Are you in?" And now you get the expansion package.

Angie Colee (17:58):

Oh, yeah.

Simon Severino (17:58):

But they have three weeks to see if they vibe with those people, if they actually want to work with them.

Angie Colee (18:05):

I love that. That's so smart on so many levels. One, it's creating a productized service. We always talk about a productized service. It's still a service. It's still something that you or a team member has to do. But it's so systematized that you don't have to think about it and you don't have to reinvent the wheel with every new client. And that's another myth that I want to smack right out of your head if you're a creative person listening to this, that if you have a process that you follow and you do the same steps in the same order every time, that you're somehow cheating or you're not doing creative work. That actually allows you to do your best creative work because it reduces the element of decision fatigue where you are constantly making decisions in your brain. It's actually using energy every time you're making a decision.

(18:49):

So you only got a limited bandwidth each day before you have to fuel that brain and take a nap. And it's interesting how serendipitous all of this is. Because I was just at a conference last week with somebody who was talking about systems and processes and she said something that struck me too that was very similar to what you said, which is you have already got a process and all you need to do... You've got to process whether you've consciously created one or not. So all you have to do to consciously create it is write it down, get in there and document every single step. Examine all of this and see if it all still makes sense, where you could cut things out, where you could add things into better flow. Practice this a couple of times and now you got a system for this one problem that you know how to fix really, really well.

(19:34):

And then I loved how you brought it full circle too because they can do this productized service with so many people now it's a super clear thing. These people can jump in and jump out and it's almost like dating. So you could date your client for a little bit and go, "Okay, well that was nice. Never again." We did our video. Cool, wished them well. But you could also do a project where you're like, "Oh my gosh, that was so much fun. How else could we work together?" And then all of a sudden that client is a full body, "Hell yes, how do we work together?" Versus needing to be sold into something.

Simon Severino (20:12):

Exactly. And you said many, many important things. One is somebody from your team needs to do it, so it's not you.

Angie Colee (20:21):

Yes.

Simon Severino (20:22):

And it's also not the most important people on your team. The key people that need to build the next S curves, as we call them, the next growth engines, because this is now written down. So you can teach now anybody. You can hire people, and in two weeks, they are able to deliver this on the highest quality level because you have mapped it out. And so now it's scalable, now it's teachable, it's scalable, you can hire, you can scale this thing. And this will create enough. Even at 10k, this has created enough to hire up to 47 people. So 42 additional people because it's enough cash flow. Even if it's just 10k, but it's so easy to sell that you can sell many per day and it's so easy to teach that you can bring in more people and they will deliver it.

(21:12):

And you might say, "Oh, but that sounds like a production company. It's not creative." Hey, it's for the client. It's highly creative. On your side now, you can take out the most creative people and let them build the next thing. So think of a designer that I admire and that many people might know, Stefan Sagmeister who is in New York, is from Austria from where I live, and he's now in New York. And when he started, he was doing the work, but now he has a studio obviously. And now it's 10 years that you don't get him to deliver the project anymore, but you get his people, his studio, and he makes sure that the spirit and the creative culture is there so that you get exactly what you would get from Stefan Sagmeister. And he makes sure that he curates the spirit and the quality, but he's not involved into every project.

(22:20):

And so the same thing I did in those 21 years. In the beginning, I was the coach. Then I wrote it down, I wrote the process down. As soon as I had the process, I wrote it down, I created the sprint university, it's now 274 modules, plug and play ready, blueprints, checklists, templates for our clients. Plug and play ready, swipe copies even. And then I started teaching other people, they became certified strategies sprints coaches. Every Monday I coached them. So I became now the head coach. I fired myself from operations. I say [inaudible 00:23:00] I am now two levels above fulfillment. I coach the coaches and I train the coaches and I supervise them. Every Monday, we go through the spring dashboard of all clients. Their marketing number says operations number. So I make sure everything is working exactly as it would if I was the coach or even better, sometimes even better.

(23:23):

And now I have time for the next creative levels of the same thing. So I was able now to start writing the book about that process because not everybody can afford us with one to one coaching. But now, I could write the book. Now the book is on Amazon. It has the same name as our only product and the same name as our company. It's called Strategy Sprints. And now many more people can get the methods because they need it. There are so many businesses right now that need liquidity, that need cash flow, that need a resilient, competitive, strategic advantage. And it's hard to do when you run a business, especially in these months. So I gave it away, I wrote it down, now everybody can buy it, 20 bucks, and people can improve their cash flow in Korea, in South America. Wherever they are, they can afford it, they can do it, and they can run better businesses. So that was possible because I wasn't 40, 50 hours per week in operations.

Angie Colee (24:34):

Exactly. That whole concept of work on the business versus in the business.

Simon Severino (24:39):

Exactly. And my fear was, "Oh, but I love it." I get this energy back when I coach somebody and then they say, "Wow Simon, you have improved not just my business but my life. I can enjoy my kids more and my friends." I was like, "Oh my god, yeah. This is why I do it." So that's what I get back in terms of energy and feeling proud. And I said, "I will miss this." So if I just work on the business, that's a cold, analytical thing. Will I still feel the people and how we improve their life? Yes, you will still do it.

(25:17):

You might even have more time and go deeper into what they really need because now I have the time to research stuff. I can give deeper research, create, curate, and then come back, hand it to the coaches and the coaches hand it to them. And then we still got get love letters, "Oh my god, my sales doubled in just 90 days, et cetera." And I still get those feelings and this energy back even better because I have time now to dive deeper, to create bigger things that are then helpful again. So you will not lose your creativity.

Angie Colee (25:55):

Oh, that's amazing. And something super brilliant that you said that I just want to circle back on is this, and I want to unpack it a little bit for everybody listening. There is a lot of fear that if I take myself out of this thing that brings me joy and I replace myself, I bring somebody else in to do this, that I'm going to lose that energy. And then I love how you swung that pendulum the other way and said, "But what if I gain even more energy just by changing the way that I'm doing this same thing?" I was working with a coaching client not too long ago who she is super, super enthusiastic about sales calls. She loves them and would do them all day long if she could. And I said, "Okay, so one of the first things that we're going to need to do as you grow, it's not a right now problem but I need you to keep your eye on this, is we're going to have to write down your sales process and find somebody that you can cross train and feel comfortable letting take over sales."

(26:49):

And she was like, "No, I can't do that. Nobody can do sales calls the way I can." And I said, "If nobody can do sales calls the way you can, then heaven forbid you get hit by a bus. You're going to be in the hospital needing life support and your business falls apart without you because you can't be the one making sales calls." And she goes, "Why would you say something so morbid?" I was like, "I don't painting that picture. But it is a possibility if you're not thinking ahead about replacing yourself in your business. You are going to get sick. Things are going to happen that are outside of your control. I had four laptops die this year and it's been insane how much time I lost replacing laptops." But there are things out of your control that will take you down. And if you're not building the systems exactly like Simon is saying, you're setting yourself up for a real fall. Just saying.

Simon Severino (27:36):

Totally. And just a normal vacation is so much guilt. If you don't have the systems in place and you go on vacation, let's be honest, we all experience this. We are on vacation and we try to sneak around the corner to check emails. And if the kids see us, we go, "Oh no, no, I'm coming, I'm coming. Just five minutes." So that's the guilt feeling creeping in. And so yeah, you might enjoy this for a couple years, but if you want to be in business over long time, and this is what's actually fulfilling when you see something growing over decades and then you shift from being the business operator to being the business owner and you're enjoying like a gardener who sees something growing over time in a healthy way and long term, that's actually the good thing of running a business.

(28:34):

It's not the first years of excitement and overwork, it's more of those later decades where you earn and you harvest. And this is the part where systems are your friend. And especially for creative people, we are highly creative. We only work with creative agencies, very creative consultancies, even if they are financial advisors, et cetera. But they are creating solutions out there. So even if they don't call themselves creators, they create solutions, they create value. And I'm a very creative person myself. Don't fence me in. I'm a freedom guy. Don't fence me in. And still, systems are the most helpful thing. Especially in those pandemic years, in these very disruptive years, systems are what keeps everything afloat and what helps you react to staff and that stabilizes everything so that on top of that... Hemingway had his routines, Picasso had his routine, Immanuel Kant. Very creative people, they all had routines. They all had systems. And we see their work and go, "Oh my god." But that work was all built on routines, habits, systems.

Angie Colee (29:56):

Yes.

Simon Severino (29:57):

And that made it possible.

Angie Colee (29:59):

Yeah, that decision fatigue, reduce it. After a while with routines, I know I rebelled against that for a while as a creative person because I was the same thing. "I need freedom, do things differently every day." But the cool thing about a habit is once you've got it ingrained, you're not thinking about it anymore. You just got up and all of a sudden the bed is made, the teeth are brushed, everything's done for the morning and you're ready to go. It's not having to go, "What do I do next? Right, brush teeth. Okay, what do I do next? Right, eat something." You've just got a system down for it and they don't have to be complicated. I think what really opened my eyes to it was systematizing this very podcast which brought my joy back to it. Because at first, I built it myself and I was taking care of all of the production minus the editing.

(30:39):

I sent it off to the editor, but I was the one creating show graphics and writing the copy and sending out the emails. And after a while, just like you said, I panicked one night because it was the day that the episode was supposed to... This was a year and a half ago. It was the day before the episode's supposed to release and I'm sitting there at 11:00 o'clock on a Tuesday night going, "Crap, I got nothing." I love writing about this stuff. I love this show. And I was just so overwhelmed from all the tiny little steps that had to happen to get it live that I shut down. So I made a 20 minute brain dump of a video for my executive assistant and I was like, "I think I see the problem because in my mind I've got four steps to get this thing live, record it, edit it, write the copy, send it out."

(31:24):

But when you break it down, each one of those steps has several steps underneath it. There's setting all the calendar, getting all the interview assets, everything, preparing you for the recording. There's so much that's happening in the middle of that that I was not acknowledging. So I had a system, I just hadn't written it down and hadn't figured out what it looked like. I carried it all in my head so I was kind of doing this from the ground up with every episode. So what I love about her is she's brilliant, she's systems minded like you. She took that panicky 20 minute video and turned it into a process. And I have actually hired a writer who helps me produce all of the podcast assets, and she's a genius. I have an editor and I have a VA that keeps the entire thing running. So literally all I do now for this podcast is show up and record it and talk to really awesome people and it's brought so much joy back. So much.

Simon Severino (32:13):

You're a media company now. You will be a TV show soon.

Angie Colee (32:17):

Yes. Speak it to the universe. I definitely want it. The Permission to Kick Ass show. Yes. That's so great. That's so great. Oh my gosh. I'm looking at so many notes here. Actually, I want to go back because the way that we've talked about this business, obviously it sounded a little bit like the hockey stick. But I imagine there were some struggle points in the growth. Do you want to tell us a little about what that was like as you were growing?

Simon Severino (32:40):

Oh, every day we have multiple failures. And if I don't have multiple failures per day, in the evening, I really ask myself, "Did we even explore the limit today?" So there's always wrong decisions. I have hiring decisions that they are just wrong and I hire the wrong people. I hire the right people, but then they jump off after a couple of months. Then I pick the wrong CRM, I have to change it. But we have an annual contract but I want to change it after two months. So many mistakes, wrong decisions per day over the last 21 years. And so every day, I guess today I made many mistakes and they will pop up in a couple weeks. And also because now we are in many time zones, there are multiple legal situations with contracts, and everywhere there is something popping up and there are fires to be managed. The interesting thing is we have a process for dealing with that. We have the daily habit, weekly habit, monthly habits.

(34:09):

That's the most important thing and that is the core operating system of our team and that that's also what we share with our clients. It's the strategies sprint method. So daily we write down how do we allocate our time today? What did suck energy from us and did not really grow the business? That one thing I will pick to delegate tomorrow. So I review how I did allocate my time today and I pick one thing that I will delegate tomorrow. So every day, each of us do this. And when you find something once, you can forget it. But as soon as it pops up twice, you will delegate it. And that's now the trigger for the next SOP, for the next thing to systemize. You can outsource it, you can delegate it to a software, delegate it to a colleague, to a virtual colleague, whatever it is. But it starts with you reviewing how you allocated your time and picking the one thing. And we have a template for that. People can download it at strategysprints.com. It makes your life easier to identify what's the one next thing that you should delegate.

Angie Colee (35:25):

Yeah.

Simon Severino (35:26):

It's the daily habit

Angie Colee (35:28):

I love that. I think so many people get rigged out over hiring too, hiring, training, SOPs. I can see, especially if you're a creative person, how people management and running a team and all of that gets really intimidating really fast. But there's a couple things to unpack here too. One, delegating doesn't necessarily mean that you have to hire someone. We live in a wonderful modern era with lots of technological solutions that you could just buy a subscription to and have Zapier, Zapier... I never know how to pronounce that. Whatever the hell it's called can talk to all of your little software programs and do all of these things for you. And then all you just need is somebody that watches the tech and makes sure that it functions and can jump in and fix it when it's broken or misfiring. Two, hiring people, oh my gosh, what an adventure. There's so many things to learn from hiring people, finding people that you thought were a perfect fit.

(36:22):

And then they actually start doing the work and you're like, "Did your doppelganger show up to the interview because you are a completely different person from the one that I spoke to? I don't know what's going on here." Then there are folks that you adore them, they're the same person that you interviewed, and they go to do the job, and for whatever reason they just don't get it. No matter how much extra training and supervision you give them and how much autonomy you give them to do the task. And I like to give my teams a lot of freedom to make mistakes, exactly like you said, because I don't think that a workplace where people are scared is really going to help people innovate or come up with ideas on how to do better because they're scared of my reaction. So I'm always telling my teams, "Look, a mistake is a mistake. It's not the end of the world. We're not operating on people here. Don't repeat the mistakes, don't make them habits, but we're free to make mistakes. That's perfectly fine."

(37:16):

Hiring can be a challenge. But every once in a while, you luck into stuff too with people that really impress you. Like I mentioned, my writer, I was really scared to hire someone because I didn't think that people could write like me. Angie's got a distinctive voice. The show's called Permission to Kick Ass. Nobody can capture my voice right even though I've been a copywriter in doing that for over a decade now. I made a video, said, "I'm looking for a writer. This is what I need help with." And this particular writer stood out so hardcore because she made a video mimicking me. She made a tinfoil headset, she pinned some paper Jack Skellingtons to her sweatshirt. She mimicked all of the hand gestures that I didn't even realize I do when I'm doing coaching calls and whatnot and she turned it around on me and was like, "Can I write like you? I don't know, that's your question to answer."

Simon Severino (38:07):

Nice, I love that.

Angie Colee (38:08):

She's been working with me for 18 months now on doing the show. So sometimes it works out really well. I don't want to scare you on hiring. It definitely is blessing upon blessing when you hire the right person. And it also can be a little bit of a struggle when you're cycling through people trying to find the right fit.

Simon Severino (38:26):

Hiring is tough. Out of the 13 chapters of the book Strategies Sprints, chapter 12 and chapter 13 are about hiring. I couldn't even just finish that whole thing in one chapter because it's so much. I had to split it up what you do before you hire because you have to prepare. You have to think about the role, you have to define the role, and you have to post it in a certain way. And that's actually marketing when you post the job description. Absolutely. So that's chapter 12 with all the checklists and blueprints, exactly what the things are that you need to avoid and exactly how to do it and why if you just skip one of those, you will pay much, much more later in time and in money. And then chapter 13, okay, now people are applying, now how you interview them, how you make a quick demo to see them work so that you don't have that doppelganger situation later. So you want to see them work. Not just see them perform, you want to see them work.

(39:32):

So if you are hiring a developer, you will have a 10 minutes life coding demo. You will say, "All right, can you share screen? Can you code this please right now?" In a specific way so that it's a little bit hard and they have to solve it and you will specifically observe the language. And the way they ask for more information because they don't have enough information to do it. And you will observe how they handle that. Do they stay polite? How do they collect this information? Are they able to collect this information, and in which way? Because that's actually what will happen. They will have to do their work, there will not be enough information because that's life, and then they have to find out how to solve it. And that's what you want to see. How do they find out? Do they have a process? Can they think on their feet? Do they have a process to find out what they don't know? And in a way, that is still charming and according to your company, to your brands, to your values?

Angie Colee (40:38):

Not losing their crap. "What's wrong with you? You didn't give me everything I need to do this."

Simon Severino (40:38):

It's on you.

Angie Colee (40:42):

All right, well that's somebody that's not going to work really well with me, bud, if you're losing your crap every other day because I didn't even realize that you didn't have that piece of information. I love that because there's a lot of debates, especially in marketing and copy circles, because there's a copywriting test. At least for every team that I've run and every team that I've joined, I've done a test or I've given a test to folks that join the team. And there's so much backlash against that. Free work, you're trying to take advantage of me. No, I'm trying to see exactly how you operate on this assignment. I'm not giving you work that I'm actually going to use. So this take advantage of you crap is not accurate.

(41:19):

I'm giving you an assignment with exactly like that, some parameters that don't necessarily make sense to you because I want to see if you ask me about it, I want to see how you ask me about it, I want to see if you can follow the directions. I want to see what you can put together within the parameters of my company versus just the generic samples that you've done for somebody else. All of this stuff is designed to gauge how you think, not to get free work out of you. And it's so telling to me how few people will even accept a test like that, first of all, without berating it. And second of all, if they take the test, they just don't get what I'm asking them to do.

Simon Severino (41:59):

Exactly. Exactly. Yes. And then chapter 13 is how you do that interview, including the demo and then the test, and then how you onboard them so that they can run pretty quickly. Ideally in the first two weeks, they can work completely autonomously and build great stuff. And you feel already after two weeks like, "Ah, oh my god. Yeah, it was worth the interview time," because it takes a lot of time to screen people, interview them. But then after two weeks you should go, "Oh my god, I'm glad I did it because from now on, that part is off my plate. Let's celebrate. And next week, I have more time. And let me think about what do I actually want to do with that time next week?"

Angie Colee (42:49):

Mm-hmm. Ah, that's so great. I want to keep talking about this all day, but I know that we're running up against time. So tell us more about this book because I think I need a copy of it.

Simon Severino (43:00):

You might love it. Strategy Sprints is a work of love. It took me 21 years to create the content because the content is me in the trenches with the real teams, with the teams at Google and BMW, the real teams solving real marketing problems. And then as soon as something worked in different industries, in different contexts for different teams, I was saving it and saying, "Oh my God, the next time somebody asks me about launching a product in this kind of market, I have it." And so I started naming those things and saving those things. Now, it's 274 templates plug and play ready. And so they're saving so much time. And so people said, "Hey Simon, you are now out of operations. You have time. What do you? You go on podcasts, write a book?" And I said, "Oh yeah, cool." And so I started writing it together and I'm a terrible writer.

(44:01):

And I'm not even a native English, I'm an [inaudible 00:44:07] English speaker. So I was humble enough to team up. I had a proper editor, a proper publisher, a graphic designer. It was really a team work. And it took us two years to build and finish the product and now it's out there everywhere. It's on Amazon and on in every airport, et cetera. It's called Strategies Sprints. You might love it. It's 13 chapters and they're all very practical.

Angie Colee (44:35):

Excellent, excellent.

Simon Severino (44:36):

I try to simplify things as you can see me right now. It's very practical. We go directly to stuff, no fluff. And it has the blueprints, the checklists that I use every day. If my marketing is not working in a specific week, I have it here on my desk, I take it chapter four, marketing. What did I skip? Which part did I skip? Because I always try to cut quarters even of my own method. But I have to pay the price for that. So I have to go back to the checklist. "Oh, I tried this one, step seven. I tried just to jump over step seven," and then I have to do it again properly.

Angie Colee (45:15):

Yes, I love that too. And see, if you don't have your own systems or you're afraid that your system is not accurate, it's totally okay to borrow somebody else's system and see how that works for you and edit and adapt it to what works for you. Just don't get intimidated by this whole system process. You already have a system. Just write it down. And if you need some inspiration, it sounds like this book is a good place to start. Do you have a website where people can check you out?

Simon Severino (45:42):

Strategysprints.com is where people can also download all these templates, like the daily flow and the things that we mentioned. People can download many of those open source at strategiesprints.com.

Angie Colee (45:55):

Excellent. For all of you creative folks out there that you think that this is years beyond where you are now, get the book and start reading about it now. Trust me, you are going to thank us and sing our praises later on when you realize that you needed this stuff all along.

Simon Severino (46:11):

Yes.

Angie Colee (46:12):

I'm so excited. Thank you for being on the show with us today, Simon.

Simon Severino (46:16):

Thanks Angie. Thanks everybody. Keep rolling.

Angie Colee (46:21):

So that is it, another awesome episode of Permission to Kick Ass on the books. If you want to know more about the show, if you want to know more about me, Angie Colee, and the mission I'm on to help entrepreneurs punch fear in the face and do big bold things, then head on over to permissiontokickass.com. That is all one word together. Permissiontokickass.com. Make sure to sign up for my email list so that whenever there's a hot, fresh, and ready podcast episode out for you. And also on Mondays, I like to send out a little newsletter called Kick Monday's Ass. I'm sure you're totally, totally surprised by that. So thank you for being here with me today. I'm Angie Colee. Make sure that you share this with a friend that needs to hear this message today. Like it, share it, comment wherever you're listening to this today, and let's go kick some ass.