Ep.173-Mastering the Art of Sales and Living Fully with Simon Severino

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, winner and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. Today's gonna be another incredible show. And as always, if there's any value that you get from this, we ask that you please share this with people you think would benefit, as well as leaving us a positive review on iTunes specifically. And you can always reach out to me and our guests through the social media links that we'll share with you and the ones you know how to reach, reach out to connect with me. But today's guest is Simon Severino. He is the author of Strategy Sprints and CEO of the consulting firm of the same name. He has had a TEDx talk, been interviewed by Entrepreneurs on Fire, which is one of the most well-known podcasts in the game. He has helped create a growth framework and helping thousands of business owners improve their operations and their sales. And just super excited to be talking to— with him. So like always, all right, so as you already heard in the introduction, we get— we're hanging out here with Simon, and Simon's on the other side of the world. Simon, tell everybody where you are.

I'm in Vienna, Austria.

Yeah. Pretty cool. It's pretty cool. What's the weather like?

You know, it's raining, which is funny because, you know, usually it rains and everybody goes, oh, it rains. My boys, I have 3 kids. And so my boys and I, we have just discovered that when it rains, you can pick up some mountain bikes and then it's really fun. It's splash, splash, splash.

Yeah, I've been going down the rabbit hole the last 2-3 weeks of gravel bikes, right? It's the mountain bike tires, so to speak, or that type of setup on the road bike. So they're now making the forks and the frames for wider and thicker tires, which are more comfortability, but also the setup of a road bike. So you have the drop bars instead of the— so I've been doing tons of research for some reason. All-weather, all-terrain. Exactly. I don't know why I'm doing it. I live in Florida. Everything is flat. We don't have mountains and we don't have, you know, we don't have those crazy trails.

You want to jump over an alligator?

Exactly, which we do have those trails that have that down in Miami. There's a trail that does that. You're down and out. There's alligators.

Alligator Trail.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called that. It's called Alligator. Yeah, I think it's— yeah, those of you Miami people, you know what I'm talking about. I can't remember. I think it's Alligator Trail or somewhere down in South Miami. And the Everglades. But so I know you and I, you know, before we even get started, I know you have this amazing consulting business. You've written a book, you have all the awesome TED Talks that you've done. But I think that I want to start off the conversation with something that we started off talking before the show was, was outing you about a previous career. Yeah, you held that, you say, you know, people know.

Yeah, most people know me as the sales coach, Simon, the Sales Booster Guy. That's what people in Florida, in Los Angeles, in Europe call me, right? What most don't know is that it took me quite some decades to find my place in society and my contribution. And this might be something that many listeners are resonating with, right? Ah, what's my superpower? What, what can I contribute? What are my resources? And what is it that I am here to do? And so that's my unique purpose. I didn't know that in my 20s. So in my 20s, I was exploring, exploring, exploring. When I was asked, hey, what kind of discipline do you want to study in university? I had no clue. I had not the, the, the, an idea of, I couldn't pick a, a role, a job. Every job that I was seeing, like a doctor, lawyer, etc., looked so boring to me and so far away from who I am. I had no idea, uh, which, which way to go. And so I picked the one that gave me most time to think about it, and that was philosophy and psychology, so the humanities, if you want. And so after that, uh, I did fall in love with the writings of Sigmund Freud and some of his scholars, specifically Carl Gustav Jung. And so when I— and this is the city of Freud, so I was literally in his room. The museum is his room. I was reading his manuscripts every day, fascinating stories. And so I became a psychotherapist. But it was like the movies in the '70s where you have this investigative inspector sitting there staring at his phone, just waiting for somebody to call. My practice was half empty because I was like 22 years old. Who wants to go to a psychotherapist who is 22 years old? So it didn't make any sense. Yeah. So my second love was then when a colleague— finally this phone rings and it's a colleague. It says, Simon, I have this huge leadership training. It's in multiple countries, super difficult group. They are arguing all the time. Can you do this with me? I go there and say, but I have no idea of leadership. And she goes, well, you ask these tough questions and then you stay there until people answer. Well, that's a leadership training. I say, okay, well, then let's try. I go there, we do it, and I did fall in love. Big questions, tough questions, asking them and staying there until we have an answer. I said, I want to do this every day. And so fast forward 21 years later, I'm now the sales coach. I'm standing in the middle of the room asking tough questions until we solve them. Yeah, that's my, my story.

That's fascinating. It's, it's so interesting that when people go into like that, right, the helping profession, they don't realize how cross-influenced things are. Where, uh, right now there's a great Netflix show that just came out, uh, with Ramit Sethi's— I'll teach you— based on his book I'll Teach You How to Be Rich, um, which I've, funny enough, weirdly been following. I'm usually never ahead of the trends, but I actually read his stuff years ago and And I followed him on social media. Now he's got this Netflix show, and it's all about your relationship to money and creating your rich life. And, you know, he's sitting there and he's talking to couples and he's talking to individual people who are about to get married or whatever it may be. And you hear that there, everything is about a belief. And the beliefs are what keep us stuck from the action steps a lot of times. And I know a lot of what you're doing is creating action steps and creating processes and strategies and running, right, sprinting with it. But I'm, you know, coming from your background in the world of psychology, I guess the over-under would be how much percentage of where you see people getting stuck is really the manifestation of the stories and the beliefs that they've created in their head that won't even allow them to get to the action steps, even if the action steps are clear to them.

Sales is a mind game. Sales is 100% psychology. And the first psychology is the buyer psychology. Because let's be honest, everybody hates sales. I hate sales. I hate being sold something. And I hate selling something. So what I did is I turned it around, remembering the Sigi lessons, the Carl Gustav Jung lessons. Turn it around. People have already a mission. They are already looking for something or trying to avoid something or overcome something, just listen. Just listen and help them take their decisions on their path. So instead of selling, what I'm now teaching and what we do in our coaching is help them buy. Help them buy.

Yeah.

So we start by listening and then we help them take decisions that are on their path right now. And now it's full of obstacles, and all of those obstacles are mindset related. First one is understanding the buyer's journey. It's not about you. It's about them. And so understanding where they are in the buyer cycle. If you think of yourself and you were buying something that's more than $5,000, what's the process of getting there? What's the incubation process? Then being a tourist and looking around. Then testing stuff, then negotiating, and then actually buying. So those are the stages. And when I work with, when I work with solopreneurs, freelancers, small teams, bigger teams, we work first thing, we map the buyer's journey. What do they need in each stage? And so what's the most helpful thing to do in each stage? And if you have a plan of those 5 things, And by the way, that's all psychology, understanding where the other are and what their needs are, what the risk is. Sales is a risk for the buyer. Sure. The buyer is always in a risk situation. So if you take that seriously, it means how can I de-risk this decision right now, this step right now, this step right now for them? In each step, thinking about de-risking, thinking about what would be helpful if you were in that situation right now and delivering that. This is helping to buy.

I see it as the ultimate relationship, right? That every single thing that we've ever done from the second we were born is a sale, right? We needed attention, so we cried. That's a sale, right? That's a tactic.

I think everybody who has a life is in sales. Yeah. If you, so I have 3 kids and they're different age, right? So if I want, let's say on Saturday, I want to do a hiking with them. So I have to win them over.

Sure.

That's a sales challenge. You have to sell it. Otherwise, on Saturday, one will say, I want to go tennis, the other one wants to go online skating, and the third one wants to go mountain biking. Yeah. So if I want to hike on Saturday, on Monday I start marketing. Like, so I will tell stories about that mountain and why and the history of that mountain. What's on that mountain. On Tuesday, I start asking, hey guys, what do you want to do this weekend? And influencing towards hiking. And then on Thursday, on Friday, I have to sell it.

Yeah.

And so at dinner, hey guys, what are we doing this weekend? And now it's time to sell. If I don't do that until Thursday or Friday, Saturday I'm toast and everybody's doing something different and the plan didn't work.

That doesn't always happen. Yeah, it's the momentum. I think, right, when you're talking about this, I— the way I reframe this with my, with my clients, especially when I'm working with like other therapists to help them with their figuring out their practice, is what is it that you are uniquely positioned through your own experiences and wisdom to help other people with versus like, oh, I like working with this niche, right? It's the same thing in any business. Like, we're gonna sell I don't know, pizza to, you know, like, okay, well, who, who, who, and why, why are you the best person to be doing that? Well, we make a great pizza. No, no, no, no, right? That's great. Anybody can go for a great pizza anywhere. But the reverse engineer is like, why, why are you uniquely positioned? What's the pain point, right? What's all those things? What's the problem that you're really looking to solve? And can you help them identify that they may say, well, I'm coming in for communication issues with my partner. But everybody has communication issues with their partner. I don't know one person that doesn't. Doesn't mean they have a bad relationship with their partner. But everybody has bad communication issues with somebody. So that's not why you're coming in to see me. That's not the issue you're really looking for me to solve. And that, like, when people like— but we're taught that, right? In every industry, if you give a good pizza, if you make a better sneaker, if you make a good tech platform or a good app or whatever it is, like, okay, but why? Like, forget the Simon Sinek why. I think like, why is it that you— what's the problem that you're particularly and specifically solving? And I don't think a lot of people are taught that from the get-go versus like they're trying to cast too wide of a net.

That's the strategy question. What is the right thing to do? And so when I started my own company, I called it strategy sprints. So what's the right thing to do and how do we do it in the best way. And today, even many, many approach me and say, hey, Simon, how can I use AI in sales? And so the same question is, why do you want to use AI in the first place? So because you can scale stupidity with AI or you can scale impact. So the first question is, okay, if AI is the answer, what is the question behind it, right? Yeah, yeah. And the question behind this is, makes sense if you want to say, okay, how can I have the research part just managed much more efficiently? Because basically, we all now have on our phone, we have 5 researchers all the time. I literally speak to them. And I say, hey, find out this, rank a list of that. How would you build that? Can you give me feedback on this? Can you create 10 more times this? Can you put, can you take this article and make it more interesting? So we have, we are just 10x in research and 10x in thinking. Now, thinking is not understanding. Uh, that's, that's the difference, right? And it's not— and knowledge is not wisdom. So the human part is still our job, but we can amplify the technical part. Thinking is technical anyways. Thinking isn't— is not really human. Understanding is human, but thinking, um, it's just a process, a technical process, and that got accelerated. We are 10x in researching right now, which is great because it was boring anyways to do it as a human.

Exactly.

And now we are amplified.

Yeah. Last night I was sitting prepping for this and some other things for today and doing some paperwork and I went on ChatGPT because I'm in a business accountability group and the module that we're working on is KPIs and You know, there, we talk about KPIs and then we've talked about metrics and they're like, and people a lot, a lot of times will confuse the two. Um, cause there are metrics within KPIs and I didn't know that until a few days ago, but I found one or two really awesome YouTube videos on explaining the difference between KPIs and metrics and goal setting and how that all works together. And I'm like, all right, this is 27 minutes. I'm not going to do that. So I found, I hit the transcript link, copy to paste it. Put it into ChatGPT and said, give me the top 10 bullet points and action steps from this video. And 30 seconds later I had— and I said, now take that and, and pretend that you're helping me as a therapist who sees this many clients, right? I have this many hours a week, this is the time frame that I work, this is how, right, this is what I charge per session. Um, and it gave me literally the verbal KPIs in that languaging 10 seconds later of, okay, how many, how many sessions available do you have versus how many on average are booked a week? How many client cancellations do you have a week? I mean, it literally changed the whole— and that happened within the span of 40 seconds combined.

Isn't it beautiful?

Beautiful. Here's where I think what you're— what I want to share with people based on what you just said is, now what the hell do I do with that? Because that's where I think people are getting stuck. And I think, right, because That's great for, for people who are very logical and tangible and right and very ordered and structured. My brain doesn't work that way. I love the research. I love the data. I love the knowledge part. Right. And I think a lot of people get stuck in now, how do I use this? And I think that's one of the beautiful things that you bring to the table where you have this facilitated process. It's step 1, step 2, step whatever the steps are, right? Where I agree with you, like we have all this knowledge and we can download all this knowledge, but I think putting into practical play is a whole other level. And, you know, if it's— someone said, right, if it's measurable, it's scalable.

And I run a group coaching session every Monday and we don't even have metrics or KPI. It's all about scaling businesses.

Yeah.

So founders come together and we talk about scaling businesses. So improving sales, by, by a factor or two or three. And we don't even talk metrics or KPIs. So we come together, it's Monday, and I say— and I remember what the purpose of the session is— I say, it's the Monday session, we are here to bring each other in a state where sales success is inevitable. Then we go to focus. What's 5 minutes each individually, everybody goes to their next 90 days. What are the most important activities right now in business and in life? Everybody writes down max 10 activities. So now everybody's focused. Then we share it in Slack so all the others see it, and that keeps each other accountable. And you can help because you see, oh, you are working on that, I, I've solved that, here is my template, and vice versa. So we can accelerate each other's progress. And then the next part is wins of the week. And then you hear, boom, that guy closed $10K. Boom, that guy closed $200K. Boom. How did you do it? And it raises the energy. And so that's the first part of being in a state where success is inevitable, because when you hear, chigging, chigging, congrats, you who, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That raises your frequency. Yeah, you know, right, right.

And it's so funny because it's like, that's the, the world that we— and I wasn't even raised in that world of KPIs and metrics and all that stuff, and I'm right learning it now over the last couple years, but I'm just using it for this module to just use it as a lens. But I don't think it's the only lens. I don't think that's the way to do it. And I love that you're saying that, like, and I want people to hear this, that there are maybe simpler and maybe even more fun and collaborative ways to do this. And it sounds like you're really— we can't go up, we can't go at it alone. My field, as you know from what you originally started off, right? If you're sitting in office— now I'm home, close my office at the beginning of the pandemic. I'm 94% telehealth. I have a few people that meet me outside by my condo a week. So it's a very isolating experience, even though I'm with people all day and I'm going very deep with people all day. But there's very few people in this world who don't see every other practice as a competition to them versus how can we take our best practices to raise up the whole community as a whole.

Totally. And, you know, I, in, in the pandemic, I've, I've coached while I was running. So I had, if I was coaching somebody who is in California, I would run my, my early morning and they, they would have their evening, uh, and I would coach them while I was running. So the pandemic was the best. I was in nature all the time using WhatsApp and Zoom all the time. I was on my mountain bike, I was running, and if they are in Vienna, we would run together and we would hike together, and that would be the coaching session.

Good for you.

I think it's all about energy, and this is probably what I learned in my first career as a psychotherapist. It's all about using the energy that's right now, right here. And raising that frequency. It's removing obstacles that are usually self-imposed mindset obstacles, because actually there are no limits. There are no limits in possibility right now. We are infinite possibility right now, right here. Correct. In any moment.

And the technology helps that, right? We— if I didn't have a podcast, you and I would never talk. I would never have the audacity to even reach out to you if I've read your book and be like, all right, that's cool. Because how many books have we read before we had these social media platforms to even think to have the audacity to reach out to an author of a book we loved, right? And I think all of that has changed, that everybody is so much more accessible and the resources are so I guess one of the takeaways from that is that people don't realize that the answer is sometimes right in front of them. It's just that one little step and you have to let go of what that can be. So me to have this podcast now and have people reaching out to me, to have someone like you and other people on my podcast was something that I had to do to wish that I would— that, you know, why would I ever be in front of them? What do I bring to the table? And it becomes a— one of my favorite quotes is that rising tide raises all ships, that it's mutually beneficial to everybody there. And I think that even people who are further along still get massive benefit out of mentorship and coaching and guiding and leadership, like you said, you know, formally and informally. And those are all the developmental stages of this experience.

Absolutely. Today, one of my coaches who is on my team— so I do now certify Strategy Sprints coaches who do the coaching. And one of those coaches, Glenn, was laughing at me. He says, Simon, you say you have a sales coach. Come on, you are our sales coach. Why do you need a sales coach? You don't need a sales coach. Why do you have a sales coach? And I go, look, it's not about needing. I'm not learning anything new in that sales coaching. But I am happy to pay for that coaching because it's a different perspective. I want to be challenged from the outside because we all fall back into our default perspective. And so I'm happy to pay for somebody to tell me, hey, from the outside, this is what I see. And maybe you are here in your pattern and you are not seeing the left side and the right side. And I say, oh, tell me about the left side and the right side. That's the value of having a coach. And so I always have a coach every year.

Well, what makes you different? I think that's the separation between people who are becoming more successful and people who are stuck. It's that willingness to be vulnerable, right? It's the willingness to take relative influence. It's the willingness to drop the assumption that I have it all figured out, and there may be a more efficient and strategic way of getting there, an easier way of getting there. Or I even, um, I even been adding with my clients, how, how can we make this therapeutic process fun? So that's not what you expect going into a therapist, that it's gonna be a fun process. I'm like, I'm committed to— I know we're talking about serious issues, I know we're talking about sometimes very lifelong traumas and stuff like that. How can we make this fun?

Oh, can I share with you— do you know Otto Kernberg? Kernberg, I guess you call him. One of the OGs in the psychoanalysis field.

Okay.

Cornell University mentor of all the big psychoanalysts in New York and of many—

those that are still depressed themselves.

Probably, I don't know, but one of the OGs. So we flew him into Vienna and said, hey, please supervise us. And so he comes in, he was already like 80 years old and he says, all right, supervision begins. Who wants to present which client? And I go, yeah, sure, sure, me. And he goes, okay, Simon, I play your client, you play you. I say, play? What do you mean play? A role play. And then he switched it and we changed roles. And so he was playing my client, he was playing me. And of course, he was mocking us. He was making— we were laughing all the time and everybody was looking at us and giving feedback. It was the most funny thing ever. It was like improv theater, right? No script and just playing. It was the most funny thing ever. This OG from New York flies in and, oh my God, is this expensive? Oh my God, were we all excited? And we were wearing a suit and tie and it was, he was playing role plays. So that changed everything for me. I was a very serious suit and tie kind of guy, smoking the pipe and all this kind of super serious thing 20 years ago. It changed. It changed totally. And even today, next week Monday, I have a public sales role play. Hey people, bring your sales problem. We'll solve them live.

Amazing.

I don't know which topics they will bring. I don't know who's coming, and I'm curious, and I will listen, and we will do sales role plays. I will play their clients. I will play them. It's about playfulness, and it's about staying curious, exploring, learning more, understanding more. That's the game in any field. Yeah.

So when we're applying all of this to personal life, right, let's step away for the last little bit of of applying this and taking this to other aspects of our life, whether it's our relationships, our health, spirituality, parenting, friends, financials, whatever. Where, where do you find that people are getting caught up the most? And where would you maybe say like, hey, you know what, if you lean into this a little bit more, this can open up for you in that regards, this can be a little bit more of a positive experience. This could be if you just nuance this a little bit more, how would you take the strategy sprints from that perspective and apply it into a personal application?

On a personal level, many, many can probably dare a little bit more to trust their intuition. So if you feel that there is something inside of you that wants to sing and dance and be built and live, Go with it.

Go with it.

There will never be the right moment. Just go with it. And right now, I'm a father of 3, so I am feeling with all parents listening right now. And so sometimes we think like we are the victim of our kids, right? Oh my God, I'm so tired because I have 3 kids. If you hear yourself doing that, Let me give you a couple, couple ideas what you can do. Well, first, your, your children are not responsible for how you feel. You are.

They weren't even responsible for being born.

Yeah.

You made that choice.

Exactly. So you are. So if you want to be happy, just go, go back being happy. How can you do that? Insert me time as the first thing of the day. And if you don't have time, well, do it before, before they wake up. I have 2 hours of me time, 2 hours every day. And, you know, I, I run operations in 14 countries and I have 3 kids, but every day I have 2 hours me time and I start today with me time. That's yoga and running, or yoga and some other workout in nature because that's good for me. If reading is something that's good for you, or, you know, listening to a podcast while you go mountain biking, whatever it is, do it. Swimming, whatever it is, uh, me time first, then you serve the world when your batteries are full. The next thing is You can enjoy children so much. They are, you know, they don't need any drink and they can party immediately. Immediately. Like, we are brushing our teeth and one of us starts doing something, ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka. The next one starts singing and 3 seconds later we are a Brazilian band live at the Hollywood Bowl. It took 3 seconds from zero to Hollywood Bowl. So this is how fun it is to have children, actually. And if you dare to be their friend, not just their parent, but their friend in the first place. And the next thing is you can explore the world even if you have just 10 square feet. Together, 5 people. You can explore the world every day. So we have a calendar and we say, okay, each month gets a country, pick a country. So right now May is India, and then they picked June, they picked China, and July is Japan. So in that month, we fly every evening, we fly to India. We click something on YouTube and we are there, right? On the iPad. And so we fly there, but we build the plane first and then we fly. And then on some days we want to learn something about their language or their culture. Oh, look, they eat with their hands and they sit on the floor. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, and the cows are standing in the middle of the street. What is this? And then we cook Indian. We try to learn some words. That month is so interesting, and you don't need to fly, you know, you can fly with one click. And so we are exploring the world, and we, we are in this together, and we stay curious. And I am learning from them, like, what they see and what they ask. So you can, you can make every moment so much fun, even in the most quote unquote stressful of all situations. We all feel victims and tired and whatever. Come on, it's a party. If it's a great day to have a great day, if you want a great day.

I love it. The experiential is so simple. It's, it's, I love that curriculum. And I just talked about that with a, with a, with a client that I'm seeing that they're, they're not able to be living together yet because of children from their previous. So they're waiting., to be able to live in the same location until after that. And I'm like, wait, so you're telling me we have 3 years to create a curriculum? Like, so you can basically have a bachelor's degree in relationships in 3 years, within the next 3 years before you guys move in together, versus, oh my God, it's going to be 3 years, how are we going to make it through, is our relationship going to make it? No, no, no, reverse engineering it to the finish line. And we're going to come up with every— I'm going to help you guys create a full-on— every month, like you said, we're going to pick a topic. We're going to find podcasts and YouTube videos and books and a whole curriculum. But every month, that's, you know, 36, 36 different possible, if not more, themes. And it just completely transformed their perspective of being distant from each other and having to commute to see each other. For 3 years and made it an experience. I love that, right? It's, it's an— I can imagine like people don't say that we're too short-sighted, we're too, uh, you know, what's that Willy Wonka, the Wonka, right? The 'I want the world and I want the world now,' Veruca Salt. We don't see the, we don't see the end. We don't, we don't, we don't, we're not patient enough in this process. And I really love seeing and hearing all the different things that you are doing and facilitating for people to be methodical, be rhythmic, be creative, be fun.

Yeah. And so now when I coach business topics and sales, I still go back to things that I learned in kindergarten, being curious, making friends, Cooperating. And when I run my community, it's still about that, about being curious. How can we fall in love with the current responsibilities, the current tasks again? How can we fall in love with our colleagues, with our employees, with our colleagues, with our vendors, with our suppliers, with our clients, with our patients again? So that we are curious and we can suspend judgment for a second. And have true, true deep experiences.

And we need that right now. I mean, I think that's a massive anecdote for what's going on in the world, is we have— we're no longer, like you said, curious. We're no longer— it's us versus them, good versus evil, everything is catastrophic. These, these are the anecdotes. These are the anecdotes. And this is why I do love this platform of being able to bring in a cross-stream of people from all different backgrounds. I mean, I've I had someone who was talking about psychedelic plant medicine and healing, and I'm right, you have my entrepreneurs like you in the business world and people in the psychology world and integrative and alternative medicine world. So it's— those are all platforms to get to reaching your mission and your purpose. But one needs to be clear on what that is. Like you said, I can help you, right? You could do stupid stuff with it, right? You could do stuff that'll waste your time and not get you to the goal, but you'll look busy. You'll be, you'll be busy with all the AI stuff, you'll, but it, but it may not get you where you really need to go. Is there a question that you would ask as part of unfolding that process of like helping people figure that out? And it doesn't have to be the first question and it doesn't have to be the last question, but is there a question in that process you might ask them to help them figure out like, one, what they're wasting time on, what they should be more focused on, and really like what are they doing that for in the first place? Like what's their Is there a way that you would phrase something like that when you're working with someone?

Yes, we have many questions and many mini processes that we do every Monday. And one of them is, what are the frustrations, the concerns, and the worries of the people you are here to serve? And another one is, Where are they wasting time or money? They don't even know it, but you can help. So those are simple questions, but if you clarify them— another one is, what's— what trends are coming that will change their world, and how can you help them be ready for that? So simple questions. And if you sit with them and you clarify that, now your position is clear, who you are here to serve and how you can help. As soon as that is clear, now you are on a mission. Now you are the warrior in the Bhagavad Gita, and it's on. It's on. Now you have 16 arms and 8 legs because you're on fire. You are unfolding all your infinite possibilities right now. And then it's about protecting, inoculating from what can stop you from the outside and from the inside. So from the outside, limit the inputs that derail you, that distract you. So what is eternal and what is temporary? And protect the eternal. This is the eternal. This is your purpose. This is your, your mission here. This is your work, your deep work. That's eternal. And the, the temporary is the media and how they are trying to scare you the, the news and how they're trying to upset you, the political stuff and how that's trying to divide you, Netflix and how that's trying to distract you. So some things are, are beautiful, but they are actually not serving you. So for example, it's now 15 years we don't have a TV. My children don't even know what a TV is. We have some iPads, and so sometimes we can go YouTube or something that we pick intentionally. We want to fly to India, then we go there, but it's intentionally, right? It's not, it's hanging there and it's now telling us what we should watch. So, and we inoculate against that. We don't have a radio. We read books and we even host book clubs. To discuss books with others, and we love that. And we go to libraries and have a library card, and we enjoy that totally. But we don't have a TV. And, you know, and when you do that, you have now so much more time per day.

Yeah.

In that time, you can learn languages, you can go mountain bike, you can, you can learn new music, musical instruments.

It's the simplicity of it. And what I grabbed that people can't see if you're listening to the audio, I just grabbed my Kindle. And about a year and a half ago, I treated myself to one. And I have— I got— I probably have 1,000 books here easily in my apartment, easily. I have in my closet boxes of books. And yeah, it's just, right, there's a one point where you're using it as decoration, but there's also a point where like, how many of them have I actually read? How many of them I actually gone through, right? And I realized that when I switched over Kindle. I'm like, I don't know if I'm really going to get into that. Like, I feel like I've read more books on this simple, easy, in-my-hand platform. Anywhere I go, waiting for a doctor appointment, it fits in, it fits in my pocket. It's like, you know, a little bit bigger than a wallet and an iPhone. But we don't think about the simplicity of where we can get that into our head versus like watching a TikTok video. Are you watching? Can you find— I love like the TED Talks app. I don't know if they still have it, but I remember originally it was on the app where you can pick a topic and a timeframe. So if you have 5 minutes, there's a 5-minute TED Talk.

There's— amazing.

If you have 7 minutes, then there's your TED Talk, right? Right. So it's a little bit over 7 minutes, right? 7 to 8 minutes. So, right, you get— so that, like, people don't realize, like, we have, like, that TED answer, that answer, right? Like, okay, well, we want you to get knowledge. What's your— how much time do you have? And what's the topic you want to learn about? Great, we're going to give you 3 different options, pick one of those. And you're right, I, I think what you're describing is the, the anecdote the anecdote to that. And we're right, our job is to make it easier for our people in front of us that we want to serve to have those options really just handled them in a way. So the option of not having a TV, I have a belief, I don't have it. I don't, I refuse to have a TV in my bedroom. That's always, that's been a long time, over 20-something years that I will not have and will not be in a relationship with someone who wants a TV in their bedroom. It's just, that's right. There's no similarly aligned, right? That's a space. It's a different space than the rest of the house. So I think we can all find ways, and maybe we'll wrap up with challenging everybody who's listening to find one thing in their life that they— it's addition by subtraction. What's one thing in your life that you can remove that's been a distraction to getting you to where you want to go? And what's the thing you've really been wanting to add or need to add or will be most meaningful to add, but also asking yourself what's getting in the way of getting you there, and does that need to be subtracted to get you to that goal? So it's a reflexive question in that regard. So, um, so before we, we wrap up, tell us a little bit about just the book, um, who, who would really benefit from that, who would be the most ideal and beneficial people to reach out to you and your team, um, as far as collaborating and working. And obviously there's tons of YouTube videos and, uh, other, other wonderful free stuff that you offer, but who would be the most benefit, benefiting from, from connecting with one, the book, and two, with, with partnering with your team?

Yeah, the book Strategy Sprints is for everybody who runs a digital business or plans to run a digital business. It's a cookbook— how you do sales, how you do marketing, how you do client onboarding, how do you hire, hire in an efficient and effective way. I have a YouTube channel called Simon Severino where I share every week what I am, what my mistakes and my learnings in my own entrepreneurial journey. And I have this group which is the JVC, the Joint Venture Club, where every Monday we bring each other in a state where sales success is inevitable. And then the rest of the week we collaborate, we have a book club, we discuss topics. And inspire each other, challenge each other. And many of the tools that I use are open source. People can download them at strategiesprints.com.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So for everybody out there, this is, you know, as always, if there's something beneficial for, for you or someone you know that might even be like— the whole, the whole magic of this is I didn't even know that this exists, and I might know someone who this might be beneficial to— share the episode with them. Share Simon's resources with them. And as always, if there's something that Simon can do with his team, or if I can do with our team, please don't hesitate to reach out. There's a lot of cool stuff going on with the practice. I have a few handful slots available over the next few months as we move into the middle of the year, so please reach out to me. I'm also hoping to do some other cool stuff, so if you want to hear more about that, reach out. And as always, Simon, thank you. For your, for your time and your wisdom and your passion.

Thank you, Jason. Thanks, everybody. Keep rolling.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.