A Conversation with Simon Severino of Strategy Sprints

Email is just part of the toolset for digital work; author and entrepreneur Simon Severino Zoomed in from Vienna, Austria to talk about work itself, in depth.

Simon helps people and companies work better. His company, Strategy Sprints, has coached thousands of leaders and entrepreneurs; his book, also called Strategy Sprints, puts the key methods for that in book form.

Simon is an insightful and passionate student of his own field; he turned the lens on himself to step away from day-to-day operations at his company and tackle the business of writing a book. While most of this conversation is about people and how they get things done — and the term "email" doesn't come up that much — it's actually an in-depth conversation about the context in which email operates.

We're all the CEO of our day — check out this invaluable CEO advice from Simon Severino.

TRANSCRIPT

A Conversation With Simon Severino of StrategySprints

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[00:00:00]

Matthew Dunn: Cool. Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn! Good evening for my guest Simon Severino of Strategy Sprints, talking to me from Austria.

Simon Severino: Yes. Hello, Matthew. Hello everybody.

Matthew Dunn: Welcome! And nice to, nice to finally connect with you. Especially from such a beautiful city. Always useful as the top line, tell people a bit about strategy, sprints and yourself.

You've got quite an interesting background.

Simon Severino: Yes. Strategy sprints. We are a team that does only one thing. Teams with go to markets with everything around sales and marketing. Okay. And we're doing this since 21 years from the big brands to the, so entrepreneurs, we have one to one coaching for everybody in mm-hmm in many time [00:01:00] zones.

Meanwhile, I started this myself as being somebody who loves helping people with stuff that really matters. Mm-hmm . That was what really mattered for them. The vital topics were cash and time. and, and tho those are go to market topics. So I focused on that every day. I showed up to be present for these topics, for, to hold that space and to move stuff forward.

And I've learned a ton. I've saved those things. They became, you know, the tools, the templates for the next clients. Yeah. And now fast forward, 21 years later, we have a sprint university with 274 of. Tools. Wow. So our clients get some, you know, some, some quick, some quick plug and play helpful tools already.

Yeah. You don't have to reinvent the IU radar cuisine. It would take you 5,000 years. Right? You, you just get the blueprint. These are the five principles. That's what you do half an hour later. Yeah. You have a dish. Have a that's the principle [00:02:00] so

Matthew Dunn: good metaphor. I, I I've meant to say in your intro, cuz I noted that noted this and I wanted to talk to you about it.

You're you're also an, an author strategy. Sprints is also a book title now, right?

Simon Severino: Yeah. So in, in the last five years I fired myself from operations. So I couldn't coach everybody anymore in old time zone. Yeah. So I fired myself from operations. Now I only run the company, which is just, you know, curating the company, onboarding people, et cetera.

And now everybody said, now summer, you have so much time now. What do you do with all this time? Yeah. Go out there. Write a book about this. Yeah. Give it to the people. Cause not everybody can afford a one-to-one coaching. Sure. But a book everybody can afford. The world needs it right now. Yeah. And I went, you are right.

I hate writing books, but let's do it. Let's team up. I have something to say and I have something to share. Yeah. Just bring me people who can actually write a book and, and create a great book. So I need a [00:03:00] team. Yeah. I need an illustrator. I need somebody who you knows P checks and the makes it a readable thing.

Mm-hmm so, but yes, if we find a team, let's do it. Let's share it with the world. Two years later, here's the book two

Matthew Dunn: years later. Here's the book. When did the

Simon Severino: book come out? It came out in February. Okay. Of these years in, in most countries. Okay.

Matthew Dunn: Okay. Wow. And you said team, so a book, the book, the, the book was you, you did it the way you recommend companies do things like you formed the right team to make the book.

Simon Severino: I think we have to be honest. What is our superpower? Yeah. And everything else we have to source right. To team up. Yeah. So my superpower is only one thing. I'm a practitioner 21 years of doing stuff, solving sales problems, solving marketing problems with teams in, in a room with a flip chart, you know, mm-hmm , that's, that's my, my thing.

Mm-hmm , that's what I did 21 years. [00:04:00] so my always strength into a book is I have something to say. I have something to share my blueprints, my checklists, my, the stories of our clients. Mm-hmm . So the clients and I, we were bringing the content. Also clients wrote the forward and, and case studies in between that was very collaborative.

And then of course, I teamed up with a graphic designer to make it something that is nice to look. With a copywriter that really helped a ton. She said Simon, every chapter needs to end like a Netflix episode where you are hooked and you want to move to the next. And I said, oh my God, how do I do? I don't know how to do that.

Right, right. That will be my support Simon. So I refine each beginning and each end. And say, oh, wow. Yeah, that sounds professional. And then I had a, a publisher co page in London who knows how to do books and how to do title and how to do the cover. [00:05:00] Mm-hmm these are all details that really matter mm-hmm and, and they have, of course they have also the.

The distribution channels, you know, from Barnes and Nobles to Amazon, et cetera. Yeah. And the airports and all those details that also matter. And so they did that part. That's why it was a team effort.

Matthew Dunn: Wow. And, and a team effort for what amounts to. you know, new business coming out of the old business. If I'm, I'm hearing it correctly, the, you know, learning experience the, the toolkit, if you will, you built over 21 years, but the idea of en encapsulating it between two covers was a new

Simon Severino: effort.

Yes, absolutely. First, first time that I did it, hopefully also the last time. Cause it was two really hard work. Would you do it again? Never. I am asked to do a new one cause it went well and we had fun and we are helping so many people and say, Hey, let's do a second. I yeah, maybe next year, [00:06:00]

Matthew Dunn: maybe next year.

Huh? Yeah. Well, and, and from what you said about your superpower, I, I could see. Congrats for doing it, but I, I I'm guessing it took a real discipline to slow through the process.

Simon Severino: yeah. Yes. Initially that was the hard part. But after a couple weeks, when you get into that routine. Yeah. So I had a simple, simple tactics that we might share because it's also part of how you run a business, how you structure your day.

So when there is something which is really hard, but it's important. Yeah. What you can do is just start in the middle. I have a post-it, which is on my door. It's still on there. It's it's just a, post-it start in the middle. So don't think about, you know, the, the whole chapter or the great case or the great sentence.

Just start in the middle. So I did put in the calendar every Monday morning, I had four hours of uninterrupted. [00:07:00] For six months. That was the writing period. Mm-hmm phase one. And, and that was sacred. It was in my calendar. Nobody could book it. Mm-hmm and so I would listen to some nice music, sit down and start writing.

That's it. So it, and after those four hours, whatever was there was there and then I would start editing. So don't edit why you create yeah. That's that's the, post-it just start in the middle. Don't think in editing mode, think just in, you know, free association mode. Just, just get it out.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Just get it out.

Go. Were you, was this keyboard out loud pencil. What's

Simon Severino: the actual physical process? Yeah, I was typing in a Google doc typing on my MacBook in a Google doc in Google doc. And just get it out, get it out, get it out. Get. After those six months, then we started editing mm-hmm with the editor and that was stage two editing mm-hmm

And [00:08:00] then, then of course you need multiple writing and rewriting. So the editing stage is really the, the, the bulk of the work. Yeah. So just get it out. That's the first stage don't criticize yourself. Just get it out.

Matthew Dunn: I. I am. I've got a, I, I do some guest blog posting in the email space and agreed to do a post for a friend and, and colleague.

I was like, oh crap, I gotta do this. And sure enough, kind of to your point. What I thought I started to write the post about wait, right. Turn. No, it went somewhere completely different by the, by the time I was somewhere near the target word count line. Oh, I guess that's what I was gonna write about after all.

right.

Simon Severino: Yeah. Yeah. And also I reused everything. Of course. Yeah. So those four hours. AF after that I could pick apart and make it the weekly YouTube video. Yeah. Yeah. That weekly YouTube video, my team transcribed, it became also the weekly [00:09:00] blog post mm-hmm every month, the best blog post would become also a LinkedIn newsletter, etcetera.

So of course you can reuse that content multiple times. So that, you know, it's, it's, it's an efficient use of, of your four

Matthew Dunn: hours. Yeah. I'm, I'm in, I'm intrigued by the process side of it on a number of levels, but the fact that you. Blocked the time in the calendar, four hours is quite a chunk of time in, in, in this fractured, you know, interrupt, driven workspace that we tend to live in.

Was that, was that the first time that you'd had that much dedicated, blocked off time or had you done that for other projects or, or needs in the.

Simon Severino: No, it's funny. We have, we have three habits in the strategy. Sprint matter, the daily habit, weekly habit and monthly habit. And the daily habit is write down how you spend your time.

And then in the evening review and learn how you will spend it more wisely [00:10:00] tomorrow. And then you write the flow of the day. So for 21 years, I've all every day been writing down. How I structure my day and slightly learn something about myself yeah. To improve the next day. Yeah. What I have learned in those 21 years is my own energy curve, if you want.

Yeah. And I think this is important for everybody find your energy curve. Mm-hmm . Mine is very clear now that I am 42 in the morning I am an introvert. I just sit down heads down. Nobody called me. Nobody talked to me. Mm-hmm in the afternoon, people can book meetings with me, my colleagues you know, legal contracts, interviews, whatever these outside world stuff are.

Meetings, heads up work. That's for me the second part of the day. And with this simple trilogy, actually, cause [00:11:00] before, before the me, the, before the, the deep work in the morning, I have knee time, two and a half hours of time just for me. I do whatever I want. Before my kids wake up, I have three kids. So before they wake up, it's me time, then I serve them.

Then it's deep work and then it's heads up at meetings. That's a good flow for me. Mm-hmm so it's important that you find your flow, but just, you know, writing it down and reviewing every day, five minutes. Mm-hmm just, what was good about that? What will you delegate next? And just by doing. Daily habit.

And we have templates for that, by the way, that help you with some structure and people can download them for free at strategies, sprints.com, just by doing that every day, you uncover your own rhythm. What's good for you. Yeah. That's quite important.

Matthew Dunn: And, and, and, and adjusting that tweaking that sharpening [00:12:00] that saw if you will helps over time.

Sounds.

Simon Severino: Totally gotcha. Right. Because many people go, am I an introvert? Am I an extrovert? I did find out I'm both in the morning. I'm an introvert. Yeah. In the afternoon, I'm an extrovert.

Matthew Dunn: Not, not dissimilar. And I tend to have mornings quite blocked off for the same reason. It's like, now get a ton. I know I will get a ton of really hard concentration.

Accomplished. And it's better to just block it and, and pretend that, you know, pretend to the world that I'm busy since. Electronic scheduling is quite invasive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I do wanna, I do wanna talk about email a little bit. nominally, that's the topic, but you know, it's a lens onto business as a whole email can really screw with your concentration.

Right. Do you read email during. Blocked off, blocked off focus time in your morning. [00:13:00]

Simon Severino: 12 to 1230. I read emails 16 to 1630. I read emails. Okay. And I just, I don't just read them. I read them and I, you know, I complete the action whenever the action is it's either I respond and delete re respond and archive, or it becomes a task.

Then I move it to my task folder. Mm-hmm and it becomes a.

Matthew Dunn: Okay. Okay. So nice. That's that's, that's very disciplined of you as opposed to the constant being stop. Go look at that. And then half an hour

Simon Severino: later, if you do that. Yeah. If you let the world do that. Yeah. You lose all your freedom and I'm a freedom guy.

So I only care about two things. And this is, and this is freedom. And love. These are the two things that I care about. Mm-hmm and if you let [00:14:00] other people set your priorities, you are lost. You are a slave of the world and the world has very easy access to you. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to. Really install a flow that is good for you.

And you have to inoculate against those distractions. One chapter in the book is called traction versus distraction. Nice. And, and it, it shares two things that I do. It's the ideal week, how you draft your ideal week so that you continuously move towards that. And then one year later, two years later, you actually live your dream life.

Mm-hmm . You have an idea of what it is and gradually you move towards that. Mm-hmm so that's the ideal week tool in the book and the concept which I learned from near AR is you don't know what this traction is before you have defined traction for you. What is traction for you? So for example, my [00:15:00] goal was.

To fire myself from operations. So to move from being the business operator, to being just the business owner who enjoys the business, not grows the business anymore. And I enjoy watching it grow mm-hmm . And so it took me of course, three years. Yeah. From the moment I decided it to the final step mm-hmm and in those three years I had an extra Google calendar.

It was called the ideal. and I had my ideal week mapped out in the morning. I write a book mm-hmm and I run for two hours in nature in the afternoon. I drink tea, play with my kids and have some meetings around hiring mm-hmm in the evening I cook Italian. I cook Indian food. That was my ideal week mm-hmm and I was far away from that.

But gradually week by week, I moved forward towards. And so that's how you can accomplish something that you really dream of. Mm-hmm in a long term timeframe. That was three [00:16:00] years mm-hmm . If it's a long term and if it's a very clear and every day you move slightly 0.1% towards it. Right. That's the way to achieve.

Nice,

Matthew Dunn: nice. Had, has it been a struggle at all to not get sucked back?

Simon Severino: Of course every day, every moment yeah. Yeah. Right now I am tempted to check to check my stocks prices and my Bitcoin prices. Yeah, yeah. Right now, right now. So in every moment there are temptations. Yeah. Like my kids come in and say, bababa bye.

Yeah. I wanna play dinosaur with you. And I go, yeah, I wanna to, but I have a meeting. Yeah. So there are temptations in every moment. and it, you know, it's, that's part of the freedom. Yeah. I decide in every moment how to cope with that. Yeah. Since my values are freedom and love, mm-hmm part of love is caring.

Mm-hmm when I am in a conversation with somebody that's a sacred space, I care about that. Nothing else [00:17:00] happens in that there will be nothing coming in.

Matthew Dunn: Right. Interesting. Interesting. This is, this is a bit lateral, but it's spring off is something that, something that you just described. it's struck me that one of the changes we might see out of the pandemic period that we're, you know, emerging from right now.

And I had a, I had a chance and I think you had a chance to, to do some of this early on. My kids saw me working. for a lot of years of their life because the home home office and, and running, you know, running businesses from the space that they were part of was, was part of their growing up experience.

And I was delighted to have them interrupt me, but they also knew there were times. not to, you know, that, you know, dad's in a meeting or he is on a call or, you know, he is got the big red light on that says I'm right in the middle of something. I'll talk to you at three or something [00:18:00] like that. And I think that was, that was probably good modeling for them.

I don't know. We'll find out, but I think it might have been. What do you think?

Simon Severino: I I'm so curious what we will think in 10 years. Yeah. About this. Yeah. Cause my wife and I were talking about it. I think the amount of time that I have spent with my kids during the pandemic years yeah. Is I think more hours than I have spent as a kid with my parents.

Yeah. Combined the first 20 years, I think. Interesting.

Matthew Dunn: Interesting. Yeah.

Simon Severino: Yeah. Because we were always here. I had lunch with them at dinner with them. Yeah. Yeah. I brought them to school. So, and, and if you think in generations, that's such a shift. Yeah. That's a big. So I'm curious how we will remind in 10 years, and we will talk about this and the psychologist will tell us what it did for [00:19:00] our kids.

but I I've actually enjoyed it a lot.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah. Yes. What, what what age brackets for your, your kids?

Simon Severino: Six, four and zero . So I had the full, the full, yeah. Yeah. Spectrum.

Matthew Dunn: I that's that's awesome. In terms, just in terms of when the pandemic happened and the ages, you just mentioned that you know, that at that age, they don't know from work and schedule, they just know dad's here or dad's not.

Dad got to be here. Exactly. Hold on. Sorry about the lighting. I've got the, I've got the sunrise. I'm waiting on new blinds and it's just killing our lighting here. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. And it sounds like your calendar. What you already said it, your calendar recognizes how important that time.

totally.

Simon Severino: Yeah. And the calendar is probably the most important tool for me. Interesting. The, the calendar and, and spreadsheets. So these are the two things they couldn't live without. Yeah. [00:20:00] And the calendar is important because what's in the calendar is sacred. Mm-hmm . Yeah. And, and you know, one of my teachers is, is David Ellen, who said there is a hard landscape, that's your calendar.

And then there is your freedom in between. And you have next actions and hopefully you have a good system of. Finding them when you need them, but actually you move in the space between your hard landscape. So try to have some wiggle room in there. Mm-hmm so you can move freely if you're a freedom person.

Mm-hmm and I am a freedom person, so I wanna move freely, but some things they literally have a time, like an interview on a podcast. Yeah. It has a time it's on the calendar. and so, and I have to tell my team, those are as loud. It's the afternoon from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM. That's when I'm available for right.

Podcast interviews for pro for interviews. And so, and that's the work of finding out your energy curve and then communicating it to your team, to whoever is access to your calendar and saying, this is the time that I do [00:21:00] this. And to be very clear, Because if you are clear, now they can manage it accordingly.

And, and now you will have a, a day that is conducive to what you want to create. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: That, that, that opens up an interesting discussion in terms of leading and managing, because let's see if I can, let's see if I can encapsulate this well, and for us to discuss it. As companies and organizations are, are starting to restructure work post pandemic.

Okay. Where, you know, is he or she at home or in the office? Are they gonna encounter other people or not? Like we've, we've really changed. The we've really changed the mechanisms by which we get to bump up against each other. We'll have to be more deliberate as leaders and manager. About trying to make that as effective as possible.

And when you've got a team, when you've got, you know, 8, 10, 12 [00:22:00] people, and each of them has their own energy curve and their own habits and rhythms, what makes them effective. And you're trying to figure out how to mix them as best you can maximizing their individual output, but also maximizing their, their group output for whatever the purpose of the business is.

That's a very complicated.

People

Simon Severino: started to talk about quiet, quitting mm-hmm . And now all the major media outlets are talking about quiet, quitting people. Never, never will come back. it's not something new. People have always. Tolerated too much work that sucks. And now it's over. They don't have the patience anymore. Now they say, all right, it's time for me to not do work.

That sucks. And now what we do, [00:23:00] what do we mean by that? What do people need from, from a, a team from their work? They need autonomy, mastery and belonging. These are the three fundamental needs that we all have when we decide to join a team and work together. Autonomy means that. At least some control about how I spent my life's energy.

Mm-hmm . And so if you completely tell me what to do you take away that control? Yes. So it's not wise to tell people where to work, stop doing that. It's their thing. mastery mastery. If you know creative teams, they wanna have a sense of concrete progress that they're creating something that people are seeing it.

And if you give creative people, an admin [00:24:00] task, they burnout, but if GA you give them a big creative task, you see them flying, right. And then belonging, belonging is a sense of real connection. And. now how many of those tech corporations that we know or insert your favorite organization in here? How many of those are a place of belonging?

True belonging. Yeah. Like where you meet people, soul to soul, heart to heart, you know, their dreams. Yeah. You want to see them thrive? You're curious about them. You ask, Hey, how are your kids doing? Yeah. Now those places, people will not leave those places, but people are starting living more and more. Yeah.

The places where there is no belonging, no mastery and no autonomy. And I welcome that. It's better for the world.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah, it's good. Hmm. Huh? I like that [00:25:00] formulation a lot. What, what do you say to companies about how to tackle. The parts of their business that that are, you know, that are gritty, that are hard, that it seems like no one would want to do.

We can

Simon Severino: go. We can circle back to the three habits cause that's exactly why they are so important daily habit, weekly habit, monthly habit. So if right now, Twitter, apple, et cetera. We had an event today with, with, with those companies and they were discussing what can we do to have people back in the office?

And I said, it's pretty simple. And I, we, we talked about these three things and, and one point was those habits. So the daily habit is every. Writes down how they spend their time and decides how they will spend it tomorrow. And part of that is where it's conducive to do that task. Mm-hmm might be [00:26:00] in a coffee house, might be at home, might be at the beach, might be in the office, let them pick it.

Everybody is a leader. Everybody knows best were for which kind of task the best place will be on that. For example in the morning, for me, it's great to work in a place where it's, it's kind of a cave. It's isolated. Yeah. But in the afternoon I could work from a coffee house. Yeah. I could work from the beach.

I could work from an office mm-hmm cause it's extrovert work. Mm-hmm but in the morning I need something very isolated. Yeah. And calm. So let people decide based on the task that they're gonna do and let them pick their tasks when they do what kind of work. That's the , that's the first part and it's the daily habit.

They write down, they allocate time, according to their best judgment. Yep. And the [00:27:00] next day they delegate more. They automate more, they outsource more. Yep. This is how you scale companies. And if you are Twitter, Google, et cetera, you need scaling. So you better have people. Who optimize their daily flow because they will delegate more.

They, they, they can now hire, if you don't have that, you have a bunch of puppets and you cannot scale. You need a team of leaders where everybody's a leader and everybody. Creates something, writes it down, hands it over. Hires, delegates moves on to the next higher task. This is how you scale a business independently.

If you are a five people yeah. Marketing agency. Yeah. Or you are a 70,000 people tech company. It's the same structure. Everybody's a leader. Everybody creates something, solves problems, writes it down, hands it over. Hires moves on to the next bigger task to solve. Hmm. That

Matthew Dunn: I Drucker's Peter Drucker Austrian as well.

Yes. From

Simon Severino: Vienna,

Matthew Dunn: from Vienna as [00:28:00] well. Okay. it's like, you're, you're, you're intersecting with some of the things that I've read of, of Druckers over the years and his observation that did a, we hit a point where the boss doesn't know what the worker doesn't know, the, the job as well as the worker does.

And the, you know, the, the, the. the notion that I'm supposed to understand his or her function and specialization better than they do. Just got it, got blown up, right. Just got completely blown up. So you are saying that for the, for the, whatever the specialty is taking, taking self management and ownership of not only the job, but how you're gonna do the job best is on you.

And that's how that's how a larger organization's actually gonna function.

Simon Severino: Yes, everybody from your assistant to the CEO, mm-hmm think of Ellen Musk has the same, the same problems to solve that my, my marketing assistant has to solve. Yeah. It's the same thing. Yeah. [00:29:00] Yeah. They need to immerse themselves into one big problem.

Mm-hmm so, and then when they have solved it. So for example, when El Musk went for the first time into building cars, he had no idea. Yeah, no idea. Yeah. The real car builders were some. Yeah. And he said, yeah, I'm gonna immerse myself in this six months. I do 24 7, just this, I will learn it. And so he immersed himself into that.

He actually learned it. Then he, he wrote it down, he handed it over and now he has a production team. He did the same thing with artificial intelligence. Now he has an AI team. Yeah. That AI team is totally autonomous. He didn't buy Twitter, but he, if he was to buy Twitter, he would just. Parachute his AI team into that and say, solve this scam problem.

It takes them three weeks. They come back. Yeah. Twitter, Twitter, problem solved. They have to solve the same thing now for SpaceX. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's how you operate. And the same thing in my [00:30:00] team of eight people, everybody else does, we tackle a big problem. We immerse in it when we have solve it, we write it down.

We hand it over. Yeah. The next person manages that. Yeah. We move on to the next big problem. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: I I had that's the daily edge. I had to laugh when you mentioned Twitter, because Twitter from, from my take Twitter is out at, at the extreme edge of, would you stop interrupting me? Like I just cannot spend time at all on Twitter because it's just this nonstop bla, and there's no such thing as getting it done and you'll never get Twitter done.

Right. Cause the whole planet's going here.

Simon Severino: never, yeah. Just put it off. How does

Matthew Dunn: that, and then go ahead. Sorry, go ahead.

Simon Severino: so I, I never spent one second on Twitter. I wrote what I write on Monday will get published by systems on Twitter, but I never read anything. Yeah, good for you. And then there is the weekly habit now.

So the [00:31:00] first part of how you get teams to not quit mm-hmm and people to actually come to your office, the first part is this autonomy part. Mm-hmm let them create the flow. You let let them be leaders of their. then the second part, which habit they need quick and, and, and frequent feedback loops to what they do.

So, for example, somebody's doing your, the CRM for you and they put in 20 hours at it. They don't know on Friday, if it had some effect or not, they will quit, but. Every Friday, you have a sprint dashboard meeting, which has the one marketing number, the one sales number and the one ops number. And the whole team comes together, looks at those three numbers and everybody is excited to see the numbers going up slightly or not going up slightly going up slightly.

Yeah. And then now you have a feedback loop and whatever they [00:32:00] do, they know that it's meaningful, that it's contributing to something and that it's actually working or not working. , this is such an important feedback loop and 99% of the people working right now, don't have that loop. If you missed that loop.

Yeah. This would be like, you play angry birds. You shoot the bird and instead of 500 points. Yeah. It tells you, oh, you will hear in your report, which is May 27th. You will hear the 42 KPIs indicating your progress. .

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's very different. Yeah. It's very different. And what, one of the bits of wisdom in what you just said is, is simplifying it down to, to one, this one, this one, this either you get no feedback or you get so much that nothing's meaningful and that amounts to the same thing, right?

It's like if I can't understand the cotton pick dashboard and I don't know whether or not things are better or worse, [00:33:00] then I'm there. There's no, there's no input to my motivation at all.

Simon Severino: Exactly. And you need that motivation to stay up the intrinsic motivation of your people and they will only have it.

If they see stuff happen is to see their own impact, their contribution. Yeah. And then the last thing the monthly habit is to check, are we moving in the right direction at the right pace, strategic analysis options? What else can we do some brainstorm and then deciding the next angle of attack for the next month?

Yeah. Yeah. Now you have a quest and if you. if you watch people, sometimes they are very lethargic during the day in the office, they're like and then in the evening they go home and they're excited. Oh, now I can play world of Warcraft. And then they drink red bulls to stay awake. That's how excited they are.

Mm-hmm and they communicate in real time. They're super fast. They're the captain of their team. and you go, why [00:34:00] is there such an energy difference from in the morning? Yeah. To, to now it's quite late and they have so much energy that's because they have immediate feedback loops, real time communication, and they have one clear quest.

We will save that city from the robot or whatever. There is a one clear quest and everybody's contributing to that again, the weekly. and they monthly have it and how they, they sound so simple, but there is a ton of behavioral psychology behind it. Yeah. That, that answers the question. What do teams need to be in a state of flow?

Matthew Dunn: Right, right. And. And that doesn't have to be live. Maybe we're wired for that to be live with our tribe at some point far in the past, but now we're sort of, we're getting better and we're okay with [00:35:00] those those connection points. Those feedback loops being digital.

Simon Severino: I think it's about connection.

Yeah. Yes. You have this Mel element, which is missing. That's that's really missing. You cannot. Yeah. You do not have the perfume of the other person. Yeah. But, but everything else is actually there. Yeah. And I think connection is even more important than than being in a room together in a physical room.

Yeah. Because you can be connected. Like we are connected right now. And somebody right now is in Japan. Yeah. And is in, I don't know, is, is commuting. And we are connected right now, soul to soul, heart, to heart without being in one physical room and we don't even know it. And that, you know, for me in one day I can connect to hundreds of people in 12 cities.

I love that. If you ask me to go back to the times where I'm just one [00:36:00] day, one keynote in Paris. Yeah. I would say that's boring. Why I would like to be an hour in Paris and hour in Singapore in an hour in Los Angeles. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's much more fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I, I totally get it. And, and the complete waste of time that was business travel

Simon Severino: total waste of time.

I, I don't. Ugh. Ugh. . Yeah, you can read some Kindle stuff, but actually I was never very productive in

Matthew Dunn: no, no, God, this is, this is decades ago, but I remember one, one week, decades ago where I went from Seattle to Washington DC twice in the same week. And I'm think. That was, that was dumb. That was just mostly a waste of, of transporting, transporting my body across the country twice.

Blah . Yes. And this Y, how is I, I'm trying to figure out how to hook this in the conversation that we're getting to have now. And the fact that I can see your face is, [00:37:00] is, is very important. So if someone's listening to it, go watch the video, you'll get even more out of it. I was chatting with someone about how we're reinventing work and we talked about video conferencing and I said, you know, the unstructured conversations that I get to have for this podcast.

Are are much more effective than the sort of agenda driven, scheduled conversations where Fred and I are supposed to talk about the latest KPMs for the CR. Like those are a Bo because we're, we think we're supposed to get through these things. And these these encounter conversations in the podcast are almost always just.

They make my day, because I have no idea where it's gonna go or, or how I'm gonna get to know somebody. And I said, if you're trying to get a lot of stuff done, make room for unstructured encounter on video conferencing, and you'll be surprised at how good it is.

Simon Severino: Yes. Yeah. The freedom part again, the freedom, the freedom part at the moment.

Yeah. Love it. [00:38:00] Absolutely. Sometimes my wife and I, we say now we go out and then the kids go, where do you go? And we go, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know where you're going. Yeah, we don't know. We just enjoy, yeah. Going out for a walk and see what happens. And if the weather is this way, we will land more in that part of the city.

If the weather is that way, if we hear a concert, we might just stay there. Yeah. So sometimes we purposefully have. A a space for experience without defining it. And then we said, we're gonna walk and see what happens. Well, you, you are cheating. Those are the best evenings.

Matthew Dunn: You are cheating a little bit because from what I've read, Vienna is possibly one of the greatest walking cities in the world.

And it's

Simon Severino: a good place to walk. Yeah. It's first place. That's why we live here. Yes. Yeah. There you go. It's a great mix of nature and culture. Yeah. But also you could be booked every evening. I could hear Mozart. I could see [00:39:00] some ballet, you know, there's a ton of, yeah. Possibilities here. Yeah, you can have live jazz music and you can be booked out.

Yeah. Completely booked out and say, oh, it's Friday evening. It's jazz music. Or you just walk out and see, well, maybe it's Mo maybe it's jazz. Maybe it's punk rock. We don't know. Let's see what happens. Hmm.

Matthew Dunn: Are, are live events, making a roar and comeback.

Simon Severino: Yes. Vienna is the city of music and of dancing. Yes, it is.

And a, yes, it is. Nothing will stop us. Yeah, we back.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. How, how, how hard was it for the people in those disciplines, the artists in those disciplines during the height of the lockdown period, the pandemic period,

Simon Severino: many of those struggled to stay in the game. and we had some very important conversations as a society in terms of [00:40:00] what do we actually find important?

What do we value? Yeah. What do we actually value? Cause yeah, we bail out the banks. Yeah. We bail out a ton of yeah. Industries that do not really contribute to vital. Mm. Things for life. Yeah. And then there are some other parts, like for example, musicians, performers. Yes. Writers. Yes. Violinists. Yes. Opera singers.

Yes. And kindergarten teachers. Yes. Nurses. So that was a very important, tough conversation. Where society got to discuss something that was time to discuss. Hmm. And we are still in the midst of the conversation. Cause obviously we are. Valuing by economic terms. Yeah. The wrong things. Very high and [00:41:00] the very important things.

Very low. Yes. And, and that was part of the triggering of the conversations that hundreds, hundreds of musicians in Vienna were out of work and nobody was actually thinking about them. They were thinking about industries that really have a much lower contribution to life quality. Yeah. Yeah. If.

Matthew Dunn: If any, yeah, if any and you're, , you're much better at that than we, you, you.

Austria we America, in this case where state support for the arts is so close to nonexistent, that it just makes me wanna scream. And that, that fundamental what's important. What do we value question? Really got thrown in, in, in, up on the screen and we didn't do that well at it in the last couple of years.

And I, and I I've got a dog in this fight, my my older son's a musician for a living. So. What that's like, [00:42:00] you know, not, not, not easy and it and it should be better. I'm, I'm delighted to hear what you're saying about the, about the, the comeback and about live events, having a thing there there's certainly a hunger here in the states for, for getting back to those high quality, freedom centric, live encounters for.

Concert the nightclub, the, the jazz scene, the even, even the classical music scene. It, you

Simon Severino: know, what's funny. Yeah. On the other side, I have found out that I have never liked kissing people and I have never liked shaking hands and I didn't even know . Yeah. I didn't even know cuz you know, here, when, in, in Europe when you meet somebody that you know yeah.

It's kiss, kiss, handshake. Yeah. You always have some form of body contact. Yes. And you have dozens, hundreds of those in a day. Yep. and from, I was [00:43:00] deprived of that. And after a month I was like, that's actually pretty cool. I, I have less, you know, I have less like this normal little viruses and, and stuff that you take in from other people, energy of them that you take into yourself.

There are cultures like the Asian culture where you don't shake hands? Yes. Because you don't want to take all the karma, all the life, energy, all of their bags into your world. So you just politely from the far say, I greet you. I greet you. And the divine being that you are, but stay there. I,

Matthew Dunn: I've built a bunch of.

Friendships and relationships during the pandemic in, in this industry that I'm working in right now, email space, which I like a lot and had the opportunity to go to a conference in June where I had this surreal meeting people that I knew know well [00:44:00] for the first time, like Jenna, so great to see we'd never met live before, and there was this funny moment.

of wait a minute. Like I consider as friends, am I gonna give her a hug or not? Oh, go then. Yeah, it was, and I waited for her cause one like, okay, we'll see what she does. Like I like, and you know, huge hug from both of us, which was great. But it was very strange. And I had multiple of those, like people I know, well that I'd never physically been in the same space with it was exactly.

Yeah. It was a, it was

Simon Severino: a, and then you realize that are much taller or much smaller than

Matthew Dunn: you felt. Yeah. They're all MES. They're all really short. That's what I think

they're like, holy crap. You're tall. I'm like, yeah, whatever. . But the, that, that cultural difference you pointed out like cultures in a lot of cultures in Asia where that distance and, and masks were no big deal. Right. They'd been doing that. Yeah. Before COVID showed [00:45:00] up on the scenes or like what, what took you guys so long?

Yeah. It, it's interesting. And, and we're, we're at the very beginning of figuring out. What means we need to sub in now that we're doing more of this through screens and, and less of this live,

Simon Severino: you know, what's funny. I, I, I felt so lonely during the pandemic cause I wasn't flying. So from one day of the other, we had half a million dollar from the books canceled because it was all events driven, like the strategy retreat of that company, et.

So gone, gone. And then, and then I was like, Hmm, where do I meet people now? Yeah. Cause in the afternoon I'm a people-centric person, I'm an extrovert. And I was missing that. So I did more of my own podcast in the hope that somebody would listen to it on the other side, in the hope that there is somebody cuz you [00:46:00] just see your camera in the moment.

Right? Yeah. And so that was not super fulfill. Yeah. Cause you have to wait until the comments come from the other side until you feel that there is anybody. Yeah. So that wasn't the. I started a mastermind. I told my 10 favorite clients, Hey, do you wanna hang out after the sprint? Cause the sprint when we coach is 90 days with w revenue, so that's a very intense thing, but then it's over.

And then, and I said, My favorite 10. Hey, do you wanna hang out? And we discuss case work projects, pipeline that you have and deals you wanna close everything that you have on your heart. I'm actually curious, and I would love to hang out. What about we do a mastermind 24 7 select group. Every 14 days. We do case work together.

Whatever is on our hearts. We give each other feedback, landing pages. Emails, whatever you are writing, I will give you work. Critique. Let's do this for [00:47:00] each other. I called it a mastermind. I called it the joint venture club. I had 10 people. It was the best thing ever. The best thing, because it's on my phone, it's a slack group.

So I create a landing page. I tag them, Hey Tom, you are great at copywriting. Can you give me feedback, Greg? You understand this industry so well, it's a VC thing. You are venture capitalist. Can you, can, can you give me work critique from their perspective? Mm-hmm Lisa, you are a designer. Can you tell me if the buttons are right?

Mm-hmm do I have enough? Are, are the colors irritating or are they fine? All these things were so easily possible. And that created a real community. Now we are 47 and wow. And it's a real thing. Now it's a real community. It's the best community that I have. It's one of the best parts of my day. Nice, nice.

And that won't be possible. Cause some of them are in Los Angeles. Some are in London, some are in Liban. Some are [00:48:00] in Singapore.

Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Huh, and it's grown organically. It sounds

Simon Severino: like organically just from the real longing for connection and real, real camaraderie of being on this journey of being an entrepreneur.

Yeah. And not wanting to do this alone, cause it's much more fun together.

Matthew Dunn: I'm I'm actually really delighted to hear that because candidly, as. in the last decade or so as entrepreneur has become kind of a thing, I call it the, you know, it's like when, when I was a teenager, people wanted to be a rockstar and teenagers today think they wanna be an entrepreneur and they don't, they don't realize how much work it is.

Just like, you didn't realize how hard it was to become a rockstar back in the day. But the, the hypey side of it, the let's crush this and everyone's, everyone's gonna everyone's gonna be an overnight gazillion. I just [00:49:00] find an unappetizing pain in the ass. But that impulse to help, like, you know, Lisa, the designer saying, you know what, that'd be a little better if you bump the contrast, like we do have that impulse and that generosity, I think, to, to.

Help each other. We love to see the other guy succeed and I buy that as a basis for comradery a lot. I'm not surprised that a hundred percent,

Simon Severino: yeah. A hundred percent. And I am so big, you know, most of my clients. When they come, I have to, I have to hook them off from advertisements. They pay for ads and there are multiple reasons.

One of them is it's not reliable. It's not yours. Yeah. They can change it anytime. Yeah. And it's just, it's a ton of costs. Yeah. So over the sprint month one, I help them reduce those costs. And I want them to get, to have zero marketing costs as soon as possible. By creating organic [00:50:00] growth engines, like the referral engine, the joint venture engine, affiliate partnerships, embedded offers all very organic stuff.

Yeah. That very natural, very human, like, Hey Matthew, I like what you are doing. My thing is a ENT, but it's. For the same people. Mm-hmm what about we offer it together? Mm-hmm these kind of things. Mm-hmm that are all around trust and, and really caring. Nice. And so I always want them to start joint ventures and sometimes they don't know what it is.

So I have the templates for that. Your gen, your joint venture, one pager. How you set it up, how you do the first month, how you scale it. And and, and now I have a mastermind of 47 big hitters trail blazers in the B2B space from Los Angeles to Singapore. So now I can say to my current clients, I can say, Hey, tap into my network.

Use my 47 affiliate partners. Yeah, come in. Yeah, you don't have to reinvent the wheel if they. I would say, okay, [00:51:00] if you are in the B2B space and if you are offering something, which is complimentary to what they're offering, jump in. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Nice, nice. And everyone wins out of that.

Simon Severino: Yes. It's a win, win, win. And, and, and this is something that probably people listening can think about if you, if it let's, if you have 20 clients Hmm.

Over the last 20 years that you like, and they are in the same space. Why not connecting them to each other. because if they're in the same industry or same role, or they have the same problem, they might benefit from the view of their peers. Right. Again, something that the Asian culture understood very early Buddha said there are the three.

Refuges. He says Buddha Darma sang Buddha Dharma sang is Buddha is the scholar the student that has ever [00:52:00] has all the knowledge, but has Buddha nature. So he has everything that he needs, but he doesn't know. He forgot. He thinks he has to learn something. He thinks there is something missing.

That's the student. Okay. That's why they're. So there is Budda Dharma and the student alone cannot move forward, needs Dharma. That's the teaching the tool, the vehicle, the knowledge, the book, whatever it is that the student needs right now, the teacher, maybe. Yeah. And then. And then there is da Sanga, which is the community of peers.

If you have these three things together, the most important is Buddha, but if you have those three things together, student, teacher, community, that's a great triangle that holds the space for growth in every stage in, you know, when you, when you're low energy and low confidence, that will give you. When you are overshooting it they will give you work critique and say, ah, this landing page sucks.

I don't [00:53:00] even know what you are selling me. and you need it and you need it. Yes. Who is this for what it's for? Yeah. And then you have to go and do your homework. Yeah. And this is exactly what you need when you are building stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Dunn: Nice, nice. Interesting it. And what you're describing is much more.

Mutual give and take and not just someone selling a secret formula.

Simon Severino: Yeah. I don't believe in secret formulas, even, even if there are secret formulas, the probability that it's working for you right now, where you are right now is so low. That yeah. Is so low. Yeah. I believe in the exploration and I believe in processes, proven processes like Aveda is a proven process.

How you can cook stuff that it's actually good for you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. , it's a proven process. Five things, everything that you cook has something sweet, something sour, something bitter, et cetera. You do that you have a better [00:54:00] mean. So let's a proven process and those process. Are there, we know it for emails, for LinkedIn, for saints, for marketing, for operations, for hiring, for firing, for all of this, there are some people that are doing this in hundreds of years.

You said Peter DKA. Yeah. And the, we stand on the shoulders of those people. Yeah. And we are their scholars and scholars of their scholars and we still have the knowledge. So if we come together, everybody has some different knowledge and they remember different parts of, of the wisdom tradit. Management, but also life and relationship traditions.

If we come together and share that that's magic happening right there.

Matthew Dunn: Magic indeed. Well, Simon, I suspect we could go on for hours, but I suspect your energy probably needs to go to your other parts of your life. Since I, since I've tied you up for almost an hour here, but what a delightful convers.

Simon Severino: Yes, [00:55:00] absolutely. Thank you for holding this space and making this possible. And if people have more questions, they can, they can dig deeper. There is the book strategy sprints, where they can go deeper into those things. There are. Yep. Actual open source tools that I share on SP sprints.com. Yep. And I have a YouTube channel where I share every week, my mistakes of that week and my learnings of that week.

Yeah. Including that I am now a beginner investor. So I'm learning life in public. How to invest. Yeah. Wow. it's on YouTube. And the channel is called Simon Severino,

Matthew Dunn: Simon Severino and strategy. sprints.com is the site for the company. Yeah, terrific. Well, Simon I'm gonna hit and on the record, but thank you so much for, for connecting and conversing with me.

Simon Severino: Thank you, Matthew. Keep rolling everybody.

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