3 Habits of a Great Agency Leader with Simon Severino

Running your agency doesn't have to be complicated. Yeah, I think we like to make things complicated to keep ourselves busy or even stuck in our comfort zone. Now what I like about this week's podcast and my guest Simon Severino is that he really simplifies things. So in this week's episode we're talking about what it takes to be the CEO of your agency and the three habits that every successful CEO needs to develop, as well as some habits that you need to let go of. We're going to be talking about the different stages of your agency's growth and what your focus needs to be at each stage. Now Simon Severino is the CEO of consulting firm Strategy Sprints and the author of the book by the same name. And in this podcast he talks about the concept of a strategy sprint and why 90 day sprints are the ideal time to plan, focus and deliver. So a really action packed episode where I learn a lot.

So.

So I know that you're going to leave with some tangible ideas and actions that you can begin implementing in your agency immediately. So let's get going. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice and as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. So welcome to the show Simon. Now your messaging really resonated with me because it's so similar to mine, which I really love. All about freeing up the agency owners time to focus on what matters to them, which is steering their ship forwards. Yet of course so many business owners do the opposite and they get stuck on that client service hamster wheel of doom as I call it. Now you talk about helping your clients double their revenue in 90 days, which sounds fantastic and I want to dig into that, but let's start by sort of breaking that down. So first of all, can you take us on the typical journey that a founding business owner will go on in the first few years of running their agency?

Yes. Hello Rob. Hello everybody. So founders that we code have a pattern. They are in love with something, they're passionate about something. Something might be marketing, might be website, might be design. And then they start something and they reach point. What they are doing is working this demarcation line. I have a line in the sand that's 35k per month. When you hit 35k per month as an agency. You have reached now phase two. Phase one was let's find out what people really need. Phase two is we found something, let's crush it. First phase is growth. Second phase is scaling. In the first phase, it's really important to focus on operations and sales only, not to waste time on marketing. In the second phase, it's really important to take marketing seriously and branding and start thinking like a community driven brand. Even if you, you might not think of yourself as being a community driven brand, but I can bring some examples because it's all about creating flywheels. You can call them referral engines. Flywheels, different systems that will make sure that your clients become your ambassadors. And so the prerequisite for that is branding and marketing. But many people do it in the wrong order. So when you build a house, you do first, you know, the foundations, then the walls, then the windows and then the roof. The foundations are operations and sales. Because if you don't have a good delivery of a good offer, nothing else will work. Marketing is amplifying that. But the core delivery, your operations and the core offer, your sales, this is what you need first in place. And I can give you an example. My big dream was to have a TED Talk, like probably many of us, right? Oh, when I have a TED Talk, then I've made it, right? And then I'm making millions. So comes the moment where I am on TED and so I deliver it. I think it was quite a good delivery, but there was nothing going on in my sales department. No chicken, nothing. Basically, as if nothing happened except having a ton of attention for a very brief moment with zero impact and zero economic impact. Why? Because marketing on something that is not a conversion machine is just waste of time and money. So first build a conversion machine and we can go there if you want and see how you build the conversion machines. And what are the obstacles and what are the. Step by step? Actually, yeah, that's.

That's such an interesting perspective. Tell me. Some, some people will get stuck in phase one. They won't, they'll struggle to get to that 35k a month. So what typical obstacles do you see there? And what advice would you give to someone who keeps hitting their head against a brick wall of growth? Maybe they've got to 20k and they just can't get over it because whatever they do, they take one step forward and one step backwards.

Yeah, the people that we see, we have two main bottlenecks. One is the founder or the founders, their ego and I can say that because I am one of those. And I have fired myself from operations. So that's why I have the permission to tell the truth, because I went through the process. And then the second part is your sales approach. Farming versus hunting. These are the two main things I think, to explore. You start with the ego. You started it. You're a passionate logo designer. People love your logos. Now you do 12 logos a week. You are the bottleneck now because you. Number 13 is just not possible. And you have to say, yeah, I'm sorry, no, in August I'm booked out. And so that will go to the next. And so what's the. How do you get out of that? Think of Stefan Sachmeister, like the designer, Austrian designer, who is now in New York. He started because he is Stefan. He's cool, right? And he's creative and people love that. And I want that kind of art. So please do my website. Sure, I'm going to do your website. At some point he became the bottleneck. And so he had to express the soul of his company without being the bottleneck of the company. So what do you do? You start a mood board. You start branding, you start creating a corporate identity. Well, what is it? Is it really? It's how we speak, how we look like. I have a blue T shirt on right now and it says printer here. The book says strategy sprints. The colors are thoughtful, intentional colors. I'm not wearing a suit and tie, I'm wearing a shirt. That's all intentional. That's all who I am and who we are as a brand. And so he did that. He started carving out who they are and then he started building a studio. So now, of course, he sells the project, he brings in the client and then he supervises the delivery. But he has now 15 people doing the delivery. And that's stage two, right? And stage three. You can have multiple cities and franchises. So how do we get from. You are Stefan Zagmeister and you are getting this big project. Your ideal client comes in and says, let's say it's Google. And Google says, oh, can you do that? And you go, no, I'm booked out. So that's the moment when you need a strategy sprint. This is literally go buy the book strategy sprints. Because that's the checklist. What you have to do right now to scale and the first step is to acknowledge that it's not about you. People don't come because of you. Even if you are Picasso, they don't come because of you. They Come for the impact for something that they need to solve. And your process or your work helps them solve that. So you see, it's the process that they are here for. And very practically, I told my wife I fired myself from operation. I cannot, I will not coach anymore after 12 years of being the coach. And she says, but they come for you. How will they react? And I say, I don't know. I will find out on Monday. Monday comes. Welcome, marketing agency. Welcome to the sprint. So we're going to Double your revenue, 90 days. Cool. This is your space, this is the process. This is your coach. And your sprint starts on Tuesday. And they go, cool, nothing happened, no drama. Go back to my wife and say, they don't even miss me. She goes, oh, that was easy. Yeah, it's easier than you think. Because if you codify the process, like you write it down, you teach it, then you can outsource it. And you know, there's a studio metaphor, or in my case, it was directly a studio and franchise. Because in a studio you pay people to work for you. In a franchise, they pay you to work for you. And I went, what if I go directly? Franchise. That's the strategies, right? The strategist goes the direct path and the highest level. If it fails, you can still do studio. So I went directly and I had them pay to be on my team. Now, you are a certified strategy sprints coach. You come every Monday to the Monday meeting. You get supervision by the founder, Simon. Simon is the head coach. And so that was for me, the way from phase one to phase two. And it was pretty easy. And I describe it in the book, it wasn't that hard.

I think you sort of hit the nail on the head that for every amazing skill that the entrepreneur has to start their agency in the first place, they can quickly become the roadblock to it growing unless they find a way of getting out of the way. And that involves two things. First of all, it involves being willing to let go of control and delegation. But it also involves their mindset changing. Like if, if that's the ego piece, if I think I'm indispensable and everyone wants me, then I'm never going to be able to let go. So I think that is really, really good advice. Tell us about the scale scaling phase. So actually, I want to ask you one question really quickly about phase one. You talked about not doing any marketing in phase one. So what? Can you give us some example of the types of sales strategies that people should focus on in phase one?

Talk to people the whole sales strategy in three words and close them, right? Five. Five words. Talk to people, Close them. What does it mean? The first 10 clients might be just pro bono work. I did a lot of free work in the first years. It a good thing to do. It's better than posting something that maybe somebody's going to read. Hey, pick somebody and solve real problems that they have right now for free. At least you will have a testimonial. And so when you have 10 testimonials, then you can be fancy and charge you a lot of money. So it's a good way to start. I started that way and then. Yes.

So sorry, I was just going to say I didn't want to interrupt you, but it just goes to show that the basic things never change. Despite all these new fancy channels, technologies that come and go, the basics never really change, do they?

Basics go back to basics. I'm a huge simplifier, I think, in marketing. Sales and operations. Marketing, hello. Let's become friends. Sales, let's become business partners. Let's take some risk together and be successful together. Operations, wow. We did all of this. What else can we do? That's. That's my three parts of every business. And then you need some management of the three parts. That's a business. As I describing in the book. That's a business. You have four parts. Marketing, sales, operations and managing. Of those three, that's it. Now, if we keep it that simple, let's think of marketing as the beginning of a conversation. Like, I have small kids. They go out there and say, do you want to be my friend? No. Okay, next. Do you want to be a friend? Yeah. Okay. And they play for two hours. That's to me, that's marketing. Starting a conversation with strangers for fun, for the sake of enjoying it, being playful. And some of those will intensify. Papa, I have a new friend. Oh, cool. What's her name? Clara.

Cool.

When are you meeting her again? Oh, on Tuesday. So some of those intensify. If they intensify, then let's go. All right. Are we serious now? And if we get serious that sales, the word closing is actually really misleading because it's the start of a serious work together. It's a start of sharing risk, of sharing responsibility, of taking ownership. And I want you to be successful and you want me to be successful. If we are a marketing agency, I would never charge per time, per days, per hours. At the end of the month, I would only charge up front for the next 90 days, 60 days, 30 days for results. I am making you the, the, the owner of this small boutique. The owner of this flower business. I don't even know the name. When you sell flowers, right? Flowers, A florist. I am, I'm making you the florist. Successful. It takes me three months. It costs $80,000. You will make 160,000 in flowers. That's what I would like to have as a sales conversation.

Yeah, totally. And I couldn't agree with you more. It drives me crazy when people are still selling time or they are selling kind of time based project fees rather than focusing on the outcome that the client is looking for. And you know I always say to people like if you were a web developer and you said this project's going to cost you £10,000 because it's going to take us 22 days at X per day. And then there's another web developer who comes along, says this is going to cost you £50,000 but it's going to help your business generate £200,000 worth of revenue because you will have a better presence, you will have better functionality and so on. Then the 50,000 becomes a no brainer. Whereas the 10,000 someone might be arguing about a day rate.

Yes. So stop charging for time, charge for value and stop charging later on, charge upfront. Before we start looking at your website, you send us in those thousand dollars and how can we de risk it? Because now it's a risk for them. So de risking. There are very specific steps in the book, eight steps of de risking for a client. The ultimate is a guarantee. But you can start with very small. You can start with client testimonials in a very specific way. For example, since we are on camera, I can show you that if you think about working with us, or maybe I just tell you because some will listen, I can click a button and then you see one person, the start of their 90 day strategy sprint. What was the problem the 90th day? How did their sales look like in their words with their role, specific role. So you see the industry, the role, the person. You can go of course on LinkedIn and ask them hey is this true? And, and that's what, what we have. And on Our website strategy sprints.com There are 160 of those in, in a picture with text, but also with a video where they tell about it. So this is how you can de risk. Now I can say you pay upfront and they go but Simon, how do I know that this works? I say oh here's a link, click here. It worked. 160 times 34 of them are exactly in your industry, so 7 exactly in your niche. And you can ask them on LinkedIn anytime. But here's the video. They did it so that they don't get called all the time. So you can watch the video directly.

Yeah. So tell me, why 90 days? Why does that 90 day sprint seem the right length of time to achieve doubling revenue?

Multiple reasons. One is how long does it take to install a new behavior until it sits? That's around 72 to 85 days on average. Because before you have to break the old behavior and that takes around 21 to 27 days. So there is a behavioral psychology behind it. And I was inspired very much by my own triathlon trainer who is a sports coach. And when they do my training, it's 90 days. There is a training plan and there is a regular check in. And then they call me out on stuff that I'm doing where I'm not leaving the training plan but I'm doing whatever I want. And then. And that's a beautiful 90 days process. The second thing is that according to the strategy sprints method, the best way to have goals is to keep it very simple. You have one vision for the next three years and you have three goals for the next 90 days. Three goals, like let's say double revenue, have more, have 25% more client referrals and have a client satisfaction rate of above NPS 65, for example. And if those three, you, you, you pick three goals. And now weekly you measure against your process, your progress towards it and you learn from it. Are we moving there or not? So that's the strategies, prints method. And the reason is three months, three goals. That's something that you can remember. If I ask you your three goals, you can tell me those. If I ask you the opposite. So if it's not a sprint project management, then it's traditional project management. And whoever you ask in the world of traditional project management, what are your goals? They all. Give me a second, I have to check. If you have to check, you don't have them present right now in your body. How can you execute on them if you don't have them right now in your body? So you need to embody them and to embody them. 90 days, three goals, pretty easy. And every seven days checking.

And let me ask you perhaps an unfair question. I don't know what success rate do you have with clients that you take on? Because that's quite a big promise to double the revenue in 90 days?

So yes, so of 160 sprints, there was one who didn't reach his goal. He's an Australian. He gave us a bad Google review. You can, you can read it up. It's on Google. And he was so pissed. And he was, ah, I didn't reach my goals. Here is three stars. And I think it's fair. I think it's fair enough. So 160 to 1.

No, it's very good.

Is the current ratio what would be.

Again, I don't know if this is a fair question, but what would be the things that would stop someone achieving that goal? Because obviously the only way it's going to work for you guys is if there's a real partnership relationship. Because they obviously have a whole bunch of things that they have to do. You can't do it for them. So what are the things that might get in the way?

What are the main risks? Risk number one, client doesn't execute. Risk number two, wrong goals. Unachievable goal setting. Risk number three, wrong activities related to the right goals. These are, I think, the main three things that can go wrong. Now, how did we build the process to make it a hundred percent unlikely that this can happen? The it's 12 weeks. Every week has a real time dashboard and a project management space that they have on their phone. So it's like Spider man and his friend, right? The guy in the chair. So Spider man is in action, but 24 7, he goes on your phone tagging his friend, hey, should I kick the left door or the right door? And he says, give me a minute. Oh, I just checked. You have to kick the left door because behind the right door there is a cactus. So that's the relationship that you have to your coach. It's real time. You quickly tag them. Hey, I send out this email, but it's 1% open rate. Is that high or low? Should I improve my subject line or the call to action? This is something that they do on the fly on their phone whenever they need it. So that's one loop, which I learned from triathlon coaching. That's one loop that makes sure execution momentum is high. And this is why there is no dropout in execution momentum. Because we are on it. It's real time. We're on it wherever they are, even if it's a weekend, they tag the coach. Boom, they get an answer. The second thing is you need to make it easy for them to execute. So I have personally built 274 blueprints. So when I say create your email sequence, they have Eight. They have swipe copies ready, they have blueprints ready. They have this, my exact checklists and videos where I explain and I show, and I show the percentages, etc. So that's the second part. And the third part is the weekly review. So there is this weekly dashboard, the three goals, current and target. So you have two lines, a blue line and a red line, and you always see them. So it can be that we have picked three unattainable goals at the beginning, but we will see it 12 times. So we have 12 times the chance to course correct. If the course is wrong, if the course is right and the activities don't lead to it, then we change the activities. So that's the process, if you want, of scientific exploration of an unknown territory applied to the business world.

Yeah, that's great. I think one of the things that I see time and time again, the reasons why plans, whether they be three months or three years, fail, is because people cast them in stone and then they beat people up when they don't hit those targets, and then they fail to hit the targets. And that demotivates everybody. So we have to be nimble and be willing to say, what do we know today that we didn't know yesterday? And change, you know, change plans accordingly.

Totally. I. I know nothing. I'm exploring all the time. I know nothing. I get, I get knowledge from the dashboards. So this. Today it's. It's Wednesday. I know nothing. On Friday, I will know because Thursday we have the analytics team. They show me all the numbers, what's working, what's not. Friday we go through the Sprint dashboard to our own, and then I will know what's working. Simon, we sold four community places and seven Sprints and zero courses. Then I know what's working before Friday, I know nothing. I'm exploring, I'm giving my best. I'm listening. I'm here, I'm present, and I am in service. Friday, I will know something.

Yeah, very true. So let me just ask you the question that I was going to ask at the beginning, and you may have already answered this, but one of the things you talk about is the three habits that a successful CEO needs. So tell us about what those three habits are.

This is really the core of what I found out working in the last 21 years outside, actually, nothing is in our control. So if we run an agency, personnel is not in our control, sales is not in our control, supply chain is not in our control. You know, if we get basic materials or not is not in Our control if the client's website is down or not, is not in our control. So 95% is not in our control. Forget that. So what are the 5% that actually are in our control? And to me it's the daily habit. Weekly habit Monthly habit. That's the operating system in the strategy sprints method. If you have that in your business, you are, you can navigate all waters. Daily habit. How did we allocate our time today? What will we delegate? Automate tomorrow? Weekly habit. The three numbers. The three numbers that show us if we are moving towards our three goals of these 90 days in the right pace, in the right direction. Monthly habit. Quick strategic analysis. What else can our client do if not take our offer? Who are the and what can they do without booking anybody? What can they do on their own? Maybe having Mike the intern do it, maybe doing nothing, maybe hiring somebody full time to do it. And then top three competitors who are currently our top three competitors who are grabbing most of their of our clients, of our prospects. And what are the 10 features that we are currently investing in this month? Where are we winning? Where are we losing? And the ones where we're losing, we cut 20% budget from the next month. The one where we are winning, we reinvest those 20% budget tension and money into those exact features. That's the monthly habit. It's this sprint budgeting if you want because every month you are improving your strategic positioning against your competitors. So you're, you are doing strategic advantage work every month. And with our tools it takes half an hour without takes probably longer. But basically these are the three habits. Daily habit Time allocation Weekly habit Numbers Monthly habit Strategic re budgeting.

I like how simple you make this and interesting. I think a lot of people struggle even with that first habit of, of focusing on the right things and letting go and delegating and automating and you know, stopping doing things that don't actually move the needle for their business. Really, really interesting. Obviously we're going to share the link to the book, but I'll ask you this question in a moment. But let me ask you the question I ask everybody, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of business advice, what would it be?

My younger one, I would never listen to any advice. I'm thinking, how do I say it to him so that he listens? I wouldn't listen to anybody. I would say you have much more time than you think. We underestimate what we can build long term and we overestimate what we can do in a day, in a week. But we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. So if I'm talking to a 20 year old, I go, when you are 30, you can build an empire if you just pick one thing to build and one target group to serve. And if you do this every day from now on, you just have to create one fan per day. In 10 years you have an empire.

Yeah, very true, very good. And don't think anybody's ever said that one before. So that's great. It's really interesting because often I say to people, do you think your younger self would listen? And lots of people say no. So I'm totally with you. We think we own the world, don't we, when we're that age. And we think we're invincible, which is great because we're fearless, but it also stops us listening to people. So as I said, I'm going to share a link to the book. But if people want to contact you, Simon, how else would they reach out to you?

So strategiesprints.com is where you can download these tools. They're open source, you can download many of them implement on their own. Then on Amazon, it's Strategy Sprints. The book full of blueprints and clients telling the forward is written by a client. In the chapters, there are cases told by clients how they, how they live through those. And many of those are agencies and, and the, and I'm also on YouTube. I share my journey, what I'm what, what I am doing wrong and what I'm doing right every week. And I have two YouTube channels. One is called Simon Severino, one is called Strategy Sprints.

Okay. We'll put links to both of those and it's really refreshing to talk to someone who's gonna share, share the things that they did wrong. Because too often people present this unreachable kind of Persona of how great they are in business and you can be great too. But I find it so much more empathetic when people share everything that they did wrong. Well, I ran my agency for 11 years before setting up and I often share many, many, many things I did wrong, even though I did many things right as well. Because, you know, people want to be able to empathize with you. So I appreciate that. I'm going to put all of those links in today's show notes and so people can find you and follow you on YouTube or grab the book and so on. And just a really big thank you for joining me today and sharing really fascinating insights into this idea of 90 day sprints and what people need to do and what they need to stop doing. So thanks again for joining us today.

Thank you for holding this space and keep rolling. Sam.