Video - Simon Severino, Strategy Sprints

podcast resources sales and business development Oct 20, 2022
 

 
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Simon Severino of Strategy Sprints.
Simon helps business owners in SaaS and Services run their company more effectively which results in sales that soar. Trusted by Google, Roche, Consilience Ventures, Amgen, AbbVie. He created the Strategy Sprints™ Method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds. TEDx speaker, Contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine, member of the SVBS Silicon Valley Blockchain Society.

Robert and Simon discuss:
Impending crisis is the time to double or halve revenue?
Will an MBA help?
Why can't agency leaders google for what they want to do?
Right now, 3 strategies and 3 habits

COSTS
- move from fixed to variable
- check and double down on your 'winning criteria' and ditch the rest

OPPORTUNITIES: exploit and grow
1) top 25% of activities that speed the buying cycle
2) top 25% of increasing price activities
3) top 25% of conversion activities

Daily - look at your time allocation
Weekly - look at your marketing numbers
Monthly - look at your win criteria

Find out more about Strategy Sprints here:

 

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:07

Hello and welcome to GYDA talks and today I am absolutely delighted to have Simon Severino with me. Simon is known for Strategy Sprints, but rather than me tell you all about him. Let's get Simon to introduce himself Simon watts for people who don't know you, who are you? What are you known for?

 

Simon Severino  00:27

Hey, Robert, hey everybody. I'm Simon Severino, I fell in love with consulting 21 years ago. And in consulting, what became my lane is go to market, I'm passionate about solving the big problems. And that's either, you know, having more time or more cash flow. These are, for me, the most vital, the most interesting problems and so I stayed with them for 21 years. And that's what I do. I serve business owners and CEOs, in improving their go to market and the way I do it, is by coaching, one on one, I started doing the coaching myself. And then over the years, I crafted a team. And now we are a global team called the strategy sprint team. I fired myself from operations two and a half years ago. And now I curate the team and help entrepreneurs globally have more time and have better cash flows and run their business better.

 

Robert Craven  01:30

Which is I think, what we're all about, but the as we said, just before we hit the record button, you know, it's it's, it's kind of one thing, kind of knowing what you need to do, and quite another thing, getting to do it, because after all, a lot of the questions that you and I are asked people can google how do I run a better team? How can I run a better culture? How can I get more sales? How can I improve my brand? They can Google all that stuff? So why why do you think it is that if if people have a rough idea of what they should be doing,

 

Simon Severino  02:07

I googled it a tonne of times. It wasn't that helpful, I found a lot of information, but it wasn't curated in a way that I could, you know, act on it. And especially not in the moment and in the way that I used it. So I remember when I was looking for, you know, a business coaches consultant, it's quite, it's quite a hard thing to find the right one and the right moment. So for me, as a business owner, actually, it's not that easy to find information, you know, you can do an MBA, and I was teaching in MBAs, it's intellectually stimulating, and it's a great network. But afterwards, you don't know how to run a business. And you know, a lot of theory and some good models, but you don't know how to run a business. Then, if you run a business right now, there are 100 moving parts, there are supply chain disruptions coming at you. There, there are volatile markets. And a macroeconomic situation that's not that easy. You might find some historic correlates, but it doesn't really help you decide forward. So you still have to make decisions in a situation where you don't have enough data, and enough knowledge, reliable knowledge. And still you have to make those decisions. So I have a huge respect for everybody who right now runs a business. And plus, you have the topic right now of you know, depreciation of your treasury and of your personal wealth. So how do you actually keep your wealth for future generations and keep it around long term as inflation and debasement of your currency? Also add on top. So it's a pretty tough time. I hope we can share some helpful stuff today. And because it's pretty hard right now. Yeah.

 

Robert Craven  04:08

So from your point of view, you know, we're going yeah, I've been, I've been saying it for a long time, but we're going into a recession, or we're going into a recessionary period or economic times are harder than they've been for a long time. It is your view, batten down the hatches disappear, wait for it, wait for it all to go, have a look in two years time and see if it's all okay. Or you have this is the time to double your revenues sort of school of thought.

 

Simon Severino  04:40

This is the time to double your revenue. Yes, the time recession times stagflation recession market crunches, this is the time where the fortunes are made. This is where the entrepreneurs we are built for. This is the moment where you create empires and the companies that we know today as the strong companies, they were created in this kind of inflection point in history. So, these are also the times of innovation because it's a time of opportunity. So very practically speaking with our clients, right now, we are talking about which competitors to acquire. So how can you grow via acquisitions because they will be insolvent, they will come to you and ask to be both, then how you might buy maybe on the side ADHS, and to your value chain. So people that will be your supplier or cooperation partners that you might want to buy. And same thing with your treasury and with your personal portfolio, this is the time to buy things very soon, when they bought them. And if you just buy at the right moment that the s&p 500 you can be happy for the next 25 years probably. And there are other very specific things that I'm looking at specific stocks and specific digital assets that are definitely on my buy list right now. And I will double down. And we're discussing in our mastermind, how to find the bottom and how to balance the percentages in a you know, in a de-risked way, but that you still can use the opportunities.

 

Robert Craven  06:22

Okay, so when how far away from the bottom? Do you think we are? Or we aren't? So when we're talking?

 

Simon Severino  06:30

So our mastermind is 48 people, we are sharing the charts every hour, we are looking at eight indicators. And you know, they need to fire all at once on all eight indicators. It might be next week, it might be in three weeks. There are a couple of things that are near the bottom, like Bitcoin, and the s&p 500. But when will it be exactly? Nobody knows. But we know the indicators to look at when they all fire. The whole mastermind is in Slack. And then we go, Oh, is it now? Is it now? No. One look at this one. The volume is not high enough. Oh, I think we are here. No, no, no, no, no.

 

Robert Craven  07:13

Excellent. I love it. So I mean, let's just let's just get down, down down to brass tacks, it's going to get tough. There's going to be even more volatility, even more push and shove, clients are going to be wanting more value for money, it's gonna get even harder to get the right staff. There's a hole, we know that this store is going on. But I mean, what if, if you are running a digital agency, or if you were working with a digital agency client, what would you be saying? Where do you think they should look? Because there I mean, in your book, there's 13 different ways of making things work. But where do you think people should be looking most right now?

 

Simon Severino  07:59

If I'm a digital agency right now, I'm in a b2b field, I expect there is stagflation or slow growth or even negative growth around me. Now, I would like to focus on three strategies and three habits and to have a very specific approach to my cost management and cash flow management. Let's start maybe with the costs. So I would go through all costs, starting with the main cost blocks, and look at are they fixed or variable? Can I make them variable? This is something that I do anyway, but this time, it's vital. That's the difference if we are still around in three years or not. We believe that will make the difference between our liquidity and our forward cash flow. Now how do you do that? You go through your bigger cost blocks, usually its personnel and in for me, it's software, but for most people, its headquarters right and physical buildings and rent. And so we immediately started a remote, global remote team, we operate from Singapore to Los Angeles and nobody has an office. So that part is where you can turn you know, fixed costs, fixed costs into variable costs. If you need an office, you rent it. You can rent the whole hotel, you can rent beautiful locations if you need them. And when you don't need them. You don't need to pay for it. Same thing with the personnel. There are multiple ways of contracting to each other from adult to adult. There is not just the one model, the traditional model, there are many autonomous entity to autonomous entity ways, which is better anyways for collaboration because everybody's been in their strengths. And everybody comes from a place where they could do it on their own, but it's better together. So that little makes a difference also psychologically, how you make the psychological contract and, and that is tied to your, to your work contract. So multiple ways of doing it, find your way. But the important principle is, when you have more work, you want to have more costs. And when you have less work, you want to have less costs. For example, I have a certification model, which is kind of a franchise model, right. So my core delivery is my strength certified strategy, Sprint's coaches pay per month to be an active franchisee in their country in their vertical. So if I have a very low month, let's say next month, I have zero sales, I also have zero cost of operations. And let's say I have two millions in sales, then I have a higher cost of operations. But it just makes sense. And the cash flow is there. It's secure. This is just an example. I don't think the certification model is the right model for every agency out there, of course. But it's one example of a model that is both resilient and this is important in these times. And it's also scalable. And that's also important when you're an agency having a scalable model.

 

Robert Craven  11:26

So the words I take out of that are resilient and scalable. So do you think the times coming towards us require a different type of thinking from the thinking that people needed going into COVID? Because we're going into COVID, there was no certainty at all about anything.

 

Simon Severino  11:49

We still have a zero certainty environment. But I want to be much more aggressive in terms of catching opportunities. Because we know the known unknowns. So we know that the topics are supply chain geopolitical risk. stagflation, slow growth, negative growth. So you can build scenarios, you can say, Okay, if negative growth, this is what I need to do in terms of costs, this will be my market strategy in a neutral scenario and in a bullish scenario. And of course, after every recession comes the next bullish phase, we all know that it's in cycles, might be six months, might be four years, but at some point, there is also the bullish part again.

 

Robert Craven  12:41

Right. Okay. So you soaked that I got that. So you're saying that we need to have three strap three strategies and two habits that we should concentrate on.

 

Simon Severino  12:52

So you need three scenarios, a bearish and neutral and bullish and you have to pick your base case, which one is your base, and which one is an improbable one at tail risk one, you have to be prepared for all the tree and have a plan for all the tree that you can quickly use. But this is basic scenario planning, you don't know what's coming, but you have to be ready for all the three variations. And then the three strategies there are very specific. So on the cost side, you go through them, you check your costs, First, turn the fixed ones into variables. And then also think where you can cut costs month per month. So what I do is, and this is the monthly habit. So I use a tool called the equaliser which basically helps me do it faster at three buckets. This is the bucket where this month we are winning against our competitors. So let's say you're a digital agency, let's see, Oh, nobody does websites the way we do. We are the best in website quality. The other ones may have the best price. So you're winning and quality, you're losing in price. And that tells you something. So that's your positioning. And now month by month, I want to cut the costs. I will invest less money and less attention in what I'm losing. So if I'm losing the price battle, I don't want to even compete in that battle. So I will completely leave that field to my competitors who want a cheap website. And I will reinvest those 15%-20% from this month's budget in whatever makes us cheap and fast. I will reinvest that into that part where we are winning. Okay, what exactly is the quality that makes us different? Oh, it's the combination of texture and colours. That's unique. We use texture. It feels like a texture. Oh, that's what makes us unique. Okay, so let's do more texture. So those 15 to 20%, I will reinvest immediately next month into whatever makes us even better in texture. I'm just making up an example. But just to show you that I go through specific 10 features, and pricing quality is always in there and then your specific features. And you pick the one where you're losing your cut, you're immediately reinvested in the other side, that's the monthly habit and what we will do anyways, with our clients, we call it the equaliser it's the monthly habit. But in these times, it's just even more important.

 

Robert Craven  15:36

So if you're saying that there's 10 criteria we're competing on and you're doing that every month, then you're going to end up competing on two or three criteria and not worrying about the rest. Is that the logical extension of that?

 

Simon Severino  15:52

Yes, you're always measured for all the time because the competition is always from the perspective of the client. So the client always measures you and judges you and compares you on all the time, but you pick the one where you want to be the best. And that will be max 1, 2, 3 features. For example, you might find that you as an agency, your uniqueness, as you have only seen your advisors, you don't have juniors, some other agencies, they work with juniors, and that's their strength. But your strength is a different one. And then you will cut from having juniors and you will invest into keeping your seniors or even adding senior people to the team. That's the monthly. And so these are the two cost related things that I would do. That's on the risk side, rather than on the cost side. Now, let's go to the opportunity side. These are the three strategies, I would make a list of all the projects that you have and all the activities that you have. And for the next 90 days, if you want to go really focused. And by the way, this is how you double your revenue if you want, this is how you do it. So of all the lists, you keep only the activities for the next 90 days that check off at least one of the three boxes, do they increase by 25%? The frequency of your sales that can be shortening the sales time, for example? Do they increase by 25%, the price that you can charge for the same offer? Or do they increase by 25% the conversion rate from your existing conversations with your existing people? So no marketing known lead gen, just your existing conversations per week. And now you keep having all those activities, only the ones that really contribute to these three boxes to one of these three boxes. Now what happens is that you are doing much less, you are more focused, you are less stressed out. That's also important, it will have an energetic and emotional impact. Your whole team is focused on a few things, your team will love it. And you will measure now every seven days, those activities because it's fewer activities, now you can measure them weekly, which again will give you the team more feedback. And you will know more about the impact of what you're doing and if it's working or not. And that's psychologically very important. In an environment of low certainty, you will have now micro certainty. And that's psychologically important. At least I have micro certainty. I know what I did this week is working. So I look forward to next week.

 

Robert Craven  18:48

So so as a as a simple example, if we're looking at business development, and we're on LinkedIn, and we're doing pay per click, and we're also networking, and we're also speaking and we're whatever the the list is you go okay, it's like we're in effect, we're at 75-25 and it we saying of all the stuff we've done, what what was the best? Okay, we now do more of that. And the rest of it, we leave behind and so you're constantly tidying and cleaning and improving. And always looking to maximise those, those that list three, I get that.

 

Simon Severino  19:27

Yes. And the tougher the tougher the environment. The more you focus on just what's working and double down on that. Later on, you can differentiate again in the next bull run, you know, you can splash it out again. But right now it's important to get the next curve and to win the liquidity game to stay in the game. It's like Monopoly. You want to make many rounds. It's not that important if you do 70,000 or 80,000. In that round, it's important that you do many rounds.

 

Robert Craven  20:00

Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, so I really liked that whole idea of focus. monthly, weekly, what works? What works? Do more of it, do more of it. What's not working? No excuses. Let's drop it. So it's a tough, tough approach isn't a to actually saying yes or no, you mean? Well, we can't wait, we can't wait for six months for this to work, we need to see the results. Now.

 

Simon Severino  20:26

It's a very disciplined, very focused approach. And it is the best approach into situations either first, it is about survival of the fittest, and you want to be in the next round, which is exactly a recession. Or you want explosive growth, which is the people we work with, because we are the guys who say we double revenue 90 days. So we get the people who say, how much can I intensify the growth? How fast? How fast? Can we scale? So if either that environment survives or hyper growth, then this approach is helpful.

 

Robert Craven  21:08

I love it. I love it. And have I got a name to give that approach name. That's

 

Simon Severino  21:11

The strategy sprint method. It's a 90 days programme. And it's a very specific programme with in total 274 blueprints and checklists. It's described in the book, people can grab it on Amazon. And it's the one to one coaching programme that we do there are modules. And there are very specific, you know, daily habit, which is how you allocate your time and how you delegate. Next, there's the weekly habit of getting your three numbers every seven days. The marketing number says numbers, ops numbers, and then there is the monthly habit, which is what we discussed. The equaliser: where are we winning? And how do we double down there?

 

Robert Craven  21:53

Love it. Love it. I really liked that. 

 

Simon Severino  22:10

These are the three strategies. So if you want to focus on growth, you focus on these three things and put the rest of the backlog on pause for now. You might love doing YouTube and Instagram, etc. But it's probably not your direct path to those three things.

 

Robert Craven  22:30

Okay, so we've got two ways of looking at costs. Got that nailed. And we've got these three ways of looking at looking, becoming more opportunistic, becoming more can be more effective in effect. Is that it? Is that is that? Is that your show? I mean, we've got loads of time. But is there anything else that you'd add to that mix?

 

Simon Severino  22:55

That's the core, I call it that's the operating system. So whatever people throw at you, you running a digital business 95% is not in your control, sales is not in your control, hiring is not in your control. Basically, the supply chain is not in your control, the markets are not in your control. 95% is not in your control. So what is really in your control, I always say the daily habit, weekly habits monthly habit, that's the only thing in your control. And so keep that really, it's the only thing you can control. So keep that tight, and be karate disciplined about what you do with your practice every day. And that is the daily habit. How are we allocating our time? Everybody do it and reflect on how I allocate my time today? What will I delegate, automate or systemize or cut tomorrow? Then the weekly habit, let's look at our marketing numbers, here's the operations number of this week, and they inform us about the three goals of our 90 days ahead. And that's it. There are no other milestones or anything else than a vision. Whenever you are unclear about your vision in three years, that's what you need. But then the next thing is three goals in 90 days, and you have enough to navigate.

 

Robert Craven  24:10

I love it. I really love it. I love the fact that so much of this stuff takes you months and months to understand.  I love the fact that you know, so many people promise the six steps to get to six figures in six weeks or your money back type type thing. And then when you get there, you realise it's just it's just kind of saying work harder. But what you're actually doing here is you're actually saying just just nail these few things. Really, really well stick to it. And yeah, just cut out the rest.

 

Simon Severino  24:54

Don't work harder. No, please don't work harder. It's usually not working better. It's just more stress. No, no, I want teams focused on a few things and having one very disciplined way, like a scientist would work a scientist, that's up for assumption. First, the scientist knows that they know nothing, and they explore everything. And when exploring, they find something, they call it an assumption, they say, maybe. And those may be tested in validation validation, you go for invalidation of your assumption. And if you cannot invalidate it multiple times, then you are onto something, now you have a theory, that's the scientific method. And so the same thing I wanted to have for running a business. So we have our assumptions, we have marketing assumptions, say assumptions, ops assumptions, I think, if we do this, we can close that. So you write it down, and you measure it every seven days. Now, if the assumption gets validated, you will see that because every week it will grow by 1%. point 2% point 7%, it will go gradually up. And whenever something changes, you have a signal, which is important. And that signal will tell you something is working. Point 9% up from last week. Okay, let's look at the four weeks moving average of last week. And then, Oh, yeah, it's, it's, it's a pattern. Okay, let's go deeper, let's take 60 minutes and find out what's going on? Is this a strength of a person of a process of a product of a pricing? What is it? And the same thing for the negative variation? This is how you explore your territory.

 

Robert Craven  26:40

So that's exactly what I was thinking. You took the words out of my mouth, is it and when and when something stops working? You know, like, we used to run events? There are no events or events that have stopped working. It's like, okay, is that a pattern? And it's like, yes, it is a pattern? And can we turn that pattern around? Is it just because there's more people doing events? Or is it because the way we do events is wrong, and that I just love the idea of that scientific approach. And I find, I find it alarming that, you know, a lot of agencies do a lot of work, but very often they don't, they don't debrief, they don't debrief, what worked, and they don't debrief what didn't work, and they kind of almost shrug off what the clients say, you know, that it's like, hang on, you know, even if one in 10 clients is saying, This is wrong, you know, you you can't ignore it, because maybe there's someone who is who's ahead of the curve, or who have a better understanding of what's going on. And I think that scientific method is, is, is really, really interesting. So what you're doing, so go on.

 

Simon Severino  27:54

We found it by chance, but then later on, it saved us a tonne of money and a tonne of in a tonne of situations. So the chance was, we had a YouTube channel, and we were measuring just some fancy KPIs because everybody was measuring watch time. So we were measuring watch time, it's something that tells you absolutely nothing. A vanity metric. So we had that thing, a big rookie mistake, and started week by week having that. And then at some point, something happened and we didn't even realise for two weeks that it was off. So the channel was taken off by YouTube, because of some keywords strategy and cash flow, and said, Oh, it's online because you know, we have to take this channel down. And for two weeks, I didn't even know that, that we are, we're down. And so I said, wait a moment. So either activity is irrelevant, then okay, we don't have to know that. And also, frankly, why should we do it in the first place? Or an activity is vital, then I want to know in 10 minutes that it's down. And so we started this conversation. Hey, what is really important? And how can we make that loop as small as possible? And what is not important? So automatically, you start getting into fewer metrics, and start eliminating the vanity metrics. I can tell you how many stupid metrics we had. And so now we have just a few and we always pick one for the next 90 days, we have three goals and we pick the three metrics that tell us the progress of those three goals. That's it.

 

Robert Craven  29:37

That for each month, did you say?

 

Simon Severino  29:41

For 90 days and so there is one marketing goal, one sales goal, one operations goal. And there is one number that tells us if you're moving at the right pace in the right direction. So it tells us velocity and it tells us learning. Now we have a tight system, but we started measuring the wrong things in the wrong cadence. Like most people.

 

Robert Craven  30:11

So we're gonna have to have you back from masterclass, I can see because this is I've kind of feel like we're just scratching at the top of the contest. And I kind of feel like I want to grab a bottle of wine and spend the whole whole evening talking with you. But before we do, don't run out of time, there's a couple of things which we always, always ask, I'm always interested in. And the first one is, you know, what's, what's next for you? What, what, what plans have you got, whether they be personal or business? And the other thing we always ask people is, you know, what are the things that you hear yourself saying to people all the time? What are the golden kind of golden nuggets in a way or the or the or the, or the methodologies that you wish you could get people to understand? So to start off with, what's, what's next, what's coming up for you.

 

Simon Severino  31:02

So, this is interesting, because over 21 years of running businesses, I've changed the way I see goals and goal setting. So I have a vision. So it's a five pages document where the strategist prints as a theme in three years. So there is the 20-25 document that I just updated today because I really use it like a meditation, I look at it, I visualise it, I feel it, it gives me, you know, goosebumps. It says 1 billion people lit up their eyes. how do they read, they are, you know, full of liveliness and of curiosity. And when they get back home in the evening to their dearest ones, it's fun to be around them. And they emanate from the heart, a call and a fulfilment and the joy. And that's 1 billion people. So that's the vision. Now, the next thing that I look at are the next 90 days. And so we have three goals, there is a sales goal. And guess what, it's doubled from here, there is a marketing goal. And that is even more playful, even more fun to interact with us. The experiences are even deeper and more interesting. When people have experiences with us. And then, and it's measured by number of subscribers per week, very simple. And then there is an operations number, which means it's the number of client referrals per week. So how many clients told other people, Oh, my God, you have to sprint. Per week, they made an introduction. So very simple. I don't have milestones, etc. And of course, yes, every week, I will onboard more coaches. So we grow on the operational side. But I'm not very numbers fixed. I'm fixed about picking the right people and adding multiple time zones, because the more time zones we can have the nearer and the better we can serve the entrepreneurs. That's it.

 

Robert Craven  33:26

Love it. Absolutely love it. I think it's refreshingly simple. And I love the fact that you don't have to get out a spreadsheet to explain it to me. You don't need a 25 slide deck to explain it to me, there it is. 

 

Simon Severino  33:41

This is actually important, what you're just saying. I think in the book, there is a chapter about that where I call it, you have to embody the vision and embodied vision. And some readers asked me What do you mean body and vision? As a yes. So if somebody asks you, what are your values, what's your vision, what's your goals, and you have to look it up. You don't have it right here right now. It's probably like navy seals, you wake them up at 3 a.m.. And whatever you want to know, they will tell you, right? This is what we're here to do. They will tell you 3am In, in some language in some country, they will tell you because it's simple. And they embody it, they live it. So make it simple. If you think of your values or your vision or your goals, and you have to think about it, then you probably have too many goals. And they are too cognitive. They are too much in your head. As an agency. Come on. It's about experience. You have different levels of value creation, you have the product, but then you have the experience. And the experience is so important because that's what you remember. If I work with you as an agency for three months, and then one year later, somebody asks me how is it to work with And what do I really remember? It's one or two key experiences. And that's what I will tell them.

 

Robert Craven  35:10

I think that everyone's so busy working in the business doing the thing that they think people are buying and missing out on that. I think you're absolutely 100% on the money. They're brilliant. And your final question for today, because we must meet up again. What are the things that you find yourself saying again? And again, what are the kind of golden nuggets? What are the kind of the one liners that you think it's so important that you, you find yourself saying and again and again to people,

 

Simon Severino  35:43

I love the way you ask this because literally over the years and decades, there is one thing that I have said 10 times a day over the last 10 years, and it's always my last sentence. I will 100% Say it also when we go apart, I will say keep rolling. That's what I always say, intuitively. But there is a deeper, deeper message in there and the deeper truth and wisdom in that. It's like the example before, it's not about maximising this month's revenue or even the annual revenue. It's really about how many rounds around the Monopoly board can you do? It's about staying in the game. Capitalism is not about maximising profits, it is about staying in the game longer than your competitor. That's the game of capitalism. And that's the game you're playing, if you like it or not. And so in this game, it's about staying in the game. And on the personal side, it means keep rolling. So that's why three habits, right? Because when you have the habit of running everyday, it's easier to run when it rains than to not to run. A friend of mine has COVID and he was running today. What are you doing? And he says, well, it's easier for me, somebody is therapeutic, it's easier for me to run the North Run and I say 100%, I feel you, I feel you 100% If you have a mild COVID And you are a runner, okay? It's not a recommendation to anybody. And I'm not a medical expert, but I will if you have a daily habit, then it's easier for you to keep doing it to keep the momentum up than to stop the momentum, you need more energy to stop you than to just continue doing it. And I think this is important if you want philosophy or principle, when you run a marketing agency, just stay in the game every month, you will learn every month you will go deeper, create more value, have more knowledge, but just keep rolling. So pick something that you can be that you can be enthusiastic about enough that you do it for long enough that you get really, really good.

 

Robert Craven  38:10

Perfect, what a perfect place to end. Simon, thank you so much for being a really great guest, thank you so much for sharing, giving us some real insight and some real wisdom in a very short period of time, which is great. And we look forward to welcoming you back again. So just leave me to say thank you very much and have a great evening. Thank you.

 

Simon Severino  38:30

Next time I bring any Italian wine and we continue the conversation. Meanwhile, people go to Amazon, pick up Strategies and leave an Amazon review. Amazon loves it.

 

Robert Craven  38:42

Brilliant, lovely. Thanks a lot and they run with it. Keep rolling everybody