3 Levers to Double Revenue with Simon Severino: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down the three levers to double revenue. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought Simon Severino into EO Fire Studios. Simon helps business owners and SaaS services run their company more effectively, which results in sales that soar. He created the strategy sprints method that doubles revenue in 90 days. And today, we'll talk about how less is more. Don't do everything at once.

0:37And whatever you think right now, even if it's hard, just keep rolling and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Simon and our sponsors. Fire Nation, this is your year to get unstuck and to grow a successful business. Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Simon, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:18Hey, Fire Nation. Hey, brother. It's so cool to be here again. One thing that I believe and most people disagree is I think when you pick your to-do list, you have to cut it in half and then you have to cut it in half again because less is more. Less is more. Fire Nation, you're actually going to see this is kind of a theme throughout our entire episode today as we're talking about not one, not two, but three levers to double your revenue. Now, let's be honest with ourselves, Simon, and also with Fire Nation, our listeners, of course. We all have bottlenecks in our lives. I have bottlenecks. You have bottlenecks.

1:58However, you have a great system for number one, how we can identify our bottlenecks in just eight minutes and then potentially start breaking down those bottlenecks. So what's that system? I'm happy to unpack the system. And I will also give you the tools at the end of this episode. And I have to tell you something, John. Last time I was here, I shared one tool and then somebody called me, a listener of yours, called me and said, Simon, let's do this. Let's sprint. They are in North Carolina. And they said, I want to double. And I said, I'm not sure if we can double because you are building houses.

2:36And so if you sell double the houses, how are you going to deliver double the houses? And they went, well, let's find out. So we did sprint 90 days and they quadrupled their sales just with that one tool that you shared. So and that started really with the bottleneck. The bottleneck is don't do everything at once. don't have projects that improve marketing, that improve sales, that improve operations all at once. And maybe you are also hiring. Identify the one thing that you need to solve right now, because if you solve that part, the overall throughput, the overall outcome for your business will be higher.

3:24And that's the bottleneck in the theory of constraints. Now, manufacturing knows this well. And most of us, we need a little help or some tools to identify the bottleneck. But it's easier than most of us think. And the way we start in identifying, well, first of all, people can go onto our website, strategysprints.com, and they will find an eight-minute bottleneck analysis that they can do on their own. But let me tell you how we do it. So if you start working with us, we will help you go strategy first before we go into any tactic. Because we have 274 templates and tactics, but a fool with a tool is still a fool.

4:12We need to find right now the three strategies that will move the needle forward and then we will really deselect all activities and projects that do not contribute to these three things. So first we go over your business, we simplify it and then we check the three strategies. The first one, how can we improve by 25 % the frequency of your sales, meaning shorter sales cycle and more systemized upsells, also better retainment? Second strategy, how can we increase the conversion rate by 25 %? That is sales technique. How do you close during the close conversation? And that's technique. And we get the recording from our clients and we give them feedback.

5:01And that improves by 25%. And the third piece, the third strategy, how can we increase your price by 25 %? Mostly, we find that by doing eight positioning things, and then you are more niched down and you are better positioned, then you can increase the price by up to 25%. And if you do these three things, 25 % more conversions, 25 % higher frequency, 25 % higher price, now you have doubled your revenue because it accumulates to 99%. Fire Nation, this is incredible how these things build off of one another. 25, 25, 25. Now they're building off each other. Now you've just doubled your revenue. And I love that phrase.

5:46And I know you picked up on it, Fire Nation. A fool with a tool is still a fool. You need to think about that and realize that because the truth is just screaming out of that sentence. So number one, better retainment. Number two, better closing techniques. And better three, how can you increase price? Now, one thing that I love about you, Simon, is your habits are spectacular. And they're huge for sustained success for really everybody that wants to achieve success in their life. You have really identified three CEO habits that we all need in our lives. Break these down for us. So especially in this kind of times that we're living right now, where everything is changing so fast and we have so many moving parts, what is really in control?

6:32If we are honest, 95 % is not in our control. Our sales is not in our control. The markets are not in our control. Not even my stocks and my bonds are in my control anymore. Nothing is in control if we are really honest. So what are the 5 % that we can really control? and this is the process, the only process that I can always rely on. Whatever happens outside with the markets, I can rely on these three things. If the market is bearish, if the market is bullish, these three things I can always rely upon. Daily habit, weekly habit, monthly habit. And this is exactly what I do and this is exactly what we implement with our clients.

7:14Daily habit. How do you allocate your time? Write it down. and in the evening before you ride the flow of the next day, you ask yourself two questions. Which of the tasks that I did today will tomorrow somebody else do better than me? The delegation question. This is how you identify what to systemize delegate next. The second question, if I would live more freely and more intentionally, what would I do tomorrow? this is how you remind yourself to think bigger not just solving the next incremental problem which you are doing anyways but hey i wanted to write a book oh let me start this project and this is by the way exactly how i started writing my book and at the end i will tell you about my book which is coming out right now on amazon it's called strategy sprints and it describes exactly the three habits and the three strategies how to really implement them nitty-gritty And so you ask yourself what to delegate next and you remind yourself of the bigger things that you wanted to achieve.

8:22That's the daily habit, how you allocate your time and doing it better. The weekly habit, get your three numbers right. Get every seven days your marketing numbers, sales numbers and operations numbers. Marketing numbers are things like how many people were on our website, how many people want to talk to us, how many people jumped on our call. Sales numbers are how many closed deals, how many follow-ups, how many upsells. Operational numbers are what's the NPS of this week, how many customer complaints did we catch in less than eight hours. These are really important numbers. Pick the few numbers, but get them every seven days.

9:09We get three numbers every seven days. And now we have a simple real-time dashboard. And this is super important because you want to have the weak signals. If something is working 2 % less, you want to know it right now and not in three months. Because imagine you are playing Angry Birds and you shoot the bird and it says 500 points. And then you shoot it again. It says 600 points. And then you shoot it again. And it says, I will send you a report in three months. Nobody wants that. That's not how you create flow in a team. That's not how you manage performance. That's not how your team stays on task and motivated.

9:49And so why are your reporting systems that way? That HubSpot gives you this information after one month or even three months. You want it right now. That's the weekly habit. Get these three numbers every seven days. And then there is the monthly habit. Once a month, you check strategy. Are we swimming in the right direction at the right pace? Short competitive analysis. What are our three competitors doing? Do we need to change something? Where do we stand out? How do we budget our uniqueness? Cutting where we are losing against our competitors, 20%, 25 % of the costs, and reinvesting them where we are winning.

10:29That's what we call sprint budgeting. And that's the monthly habit. These three things, time allocation, the right numbers, and strategic budgeting, these are the only three things that are really in our control. And if we do them right, we are set up for success because we can quickly react to stuff coming up and stuff will come up. Now, Fire Nation, people are always asking me what books I'm reading. And I can tell you, Strategy Sprints is going to be a book that I am reading as soon as this comes out, because you can just hear how Simon breaks things down verbally. Picture what he's being able to do on a whole book when he has the opportunity to sit down and write everything out in detail with examples, with specific strategies, et cetera.

11:16So make sure this is on your to-do list. And we have a lot to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, this is your year to get unstuck and to grow a successful business. Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee.

11:48Yes, it's month to month and costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.

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13:02Once you sign up, you'll get everything from formation paperwork to custom domains and trademark registration all in one easy to use account, ready to form your business backed by real business experts with decades of experience. Don't wait, protect your privacy, build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash fire and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash fire. Simon, our businesses can either be agile or rigid. Talk to us about the differences between these two and which one do we want to be and how do we become that type of company?

13:45An agile team, an agile company can react quickly to changes. A rigid one cannot because their planning system are bulky and you need more time for replanning than you can really do into executing. So rigid teams have meetings and reporting system and planning system that take too much time to change. And they cannot take decisions quickly because they don't get, as we discussed, these few numbers in real time. So some of it we did already install with the weekly habit, because if you have the weekly habit, you get these things reported in real time. basically latest every seven days, you have this simple dashboard and you know what's going on.

14:29Then you're agile. And rigid means it takes you too long to first realize that something is changing and then to act upon it. For example, today I was buying Bitcoin again. For people listening to this later, Bitcoin was at 61 ,000. And this is something that's changing every couple hours. Now, I need an investment system and a decision-making system that helps me scan that number, know that number, know when it is low, know when to buy the dip, know when not to buy, and quickly informs me without me spending hours per day, right? And the same thing we need in our business. I need to know when sales is going down, and I want to know this really quickly.

15:15That's an agile company, because now we can directly go to our masterminds, go to our clients, go to our colleagues, and say, hey, what's going on? Let's have a look. Let's investigate. I'm here exactly for this. I do not expect things to go always up. We are here for when things are hard. So just tell me what's not working and let's fix it. So Fire Nation, when you're hearing Simon break down the differences between an agile company, a rigid company, which one you actually want to be and how you become that, believe me, this is from Time Tested Principles. He's worked with so many people, so many companies that he really understands how to implement and insert these type of strategies to go forward to make this happen.

16:03And then this kind of leads into speed versus velocity. I mean, in a lot of ways, those words are pretty similar, but there's obviously some differences here. So talk to us about your thoughts on speed versus velocity. When you talk to a friend, speed and velocity are used similarly. And speed has a positive connotation, right? But imagine you are running a marathon and you are running fast, but you are running in the wrong direction. How cool is that? Not so much. And so velocity is speed plus direction. And that ties back to what we talked at the beginning. If I had one tip, it's cut in half the amount of projects, of activities, of to do's that you have, because you need to identify the right ones.

16:54And and even if I run a company called Strategy Sprints and I have created this method called Strategy Sprints, a sprint is really not running all the time. That would be a marathon. A sprint is really be intentional with the training plan. We be intentional with how you carry yourself, be intentional with short bursts of high intensity activities. And then again, low intensity. So when you go all in, you go all in. It's like water. Water finds a rock. It right now it moves around the rock. It doesn't stop and think and plan and have a meeting. It goes all in around the rock. And then there is no rock.

17:35It goes just all in. That's what water does. And this is how we want our teams to be. So velocity is really speed and direction. And that's why we want the weekly habit of getting the numbers. This is where we get velocity. So how many discovery calls are we getting per day? Two, three, four, five? Are they going up? How much? What's the average of the last four weeks? of the sorry of the what's the running average of the current four weeks what's the running average of the previous four weeks this is what you want to know to know speed but then you also want to know velocity are we selling to the right people at the right place at the right price and are we solving the right problem these are velocity questions in teams and teams do not talk enough about that because naturally you look at the current numbers and improve discovery calls from two per day to three per day.

18:35But from time to time, you have also to check velocity. Are we talking to the right people about the right pain points at the right pricing point? Because if you don't do that, then you just have more sales calls with the wrong people about the wrong solutions. There's a lot that I really want you to be taking away, Fire Nation. Number one, is your finger on the pulse? Like, is your finger actually on the pulse of your business? Meaning that you are understanding the right metrics, the correct metrics. I mean, you could be measuring a million metrics in your business, but if all of them are the wrong metrics, you're going to be like that person running a marathon in the wrong direction.

19:13I mean, that's not the kind of person you want to be. Are you asking the right questions? Because if you're not, you won't get the right answers. And that's why Simon is just somebody who is breaking down the right questions and then showing you the systems to implement to make your business rock and roll. Now, there's always, Simon, a next. How do we know what to fix next? So when we run a business, it's full of moving parts, right? And so and they keep moving and they keep moving. And then there is this opportunity and that opportunity. and we could go on Clubhouse and we could do webinars, but we could do also PPC or maybe SEO.

19:54What is the one thing that we really should do right now? This is an important question and I would really like to help people find out what's the one thing that we should solve next and we call it the bottleneck. And that's why we have created an eight minutes bottleneck analysis. So if people listening right now wanna check their bottleneck on their own, go to strategiesprints.com, click on the eight minutes bottleneck analysis, and you can identify right now in eight minutes what to fix next. And then just fix that thing for one week. If you need more, do a second week on that. And after you have solved that, you move to the next bottleneck.

20:37Don't run 10 projects at once. Solve one thing in your value chain and then move to the next. What I really like about this process, Fire Nation, is it's one step at a time. It's not this overwhelming, oh my God, like I'm so freaking out because there's 15 leaks in my business. I need to plug them all at once. No, you only have one ability to tackle one problem, one at a time. Start with the most pressing one, the most important one, and then move down the list. Now, Simon, you have a book coming out. I want to talk a little bit about that, share some details, some dates, et cetera. And then also really the key takeaway, you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today, that major call to action you have for us.

21:21And then we'll say goodbye. The book is right now on Amazon, freshly printed, and it's called Strategy Sprints, 12 Ways to Accelerate Growth for an Agile Business. And it's exactly about these things, but I go really nitty gritty. It's 60 ,000 words. I shared all my checklists from lead gen checklist, sales call checklist, sales script. How do we do sales workflows? And even my hiring templates and my hiring checklists. So this is really a ton of bang for your buck. And I wish I had this book 20 years ago when I started. And because I didn't have it, I wrote it now. so that's the book and also because i love fire nation and i told you this has given me so much inspiration and every time i'm here i can help so many people in the last time these people quadrupled so i want to do this again i will give again the first 15 people who go to strategist prince.com slash fire and book a time with me they will have a one hour free coaching so we do the bottleneck analysis together.

22:32I create a game plan for you together. You go and implement it and rock the next 90 days. Fire Nation, if you didn't just hit the pause button and head over to strategysprints.com slash fire to hopefully, hopefully be one of those first 15, what are you doing? I mean, an hour one-on-one with Simon's brain on your business? Priceless. I mean, I I literally can't stress that enough. And I'm really disappointed that he can't do more of these. I mean, it's already unbelievably generous of his time. I mean, 15-hour calls and consultations. Be one of those people, Fire Nation. Press pause, strategiesprints.com slash fire.

23:15Any other final call to action, Simon, before we say goodbye? Whatever you think right now, even if it's hard, just keep rolling. Just keep rolling. It's not about winning the game all the time. It's about staying in the game, learning, and keep rolling. So thank you, Fire Nation. Thank you, JLD. Keep rolling, Fire Nation. You can't win if you're not in the game. And you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with SS and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire.com. Type Simon in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop up for this episode with everything we talked about, plus past episodes with Simon.

23:54And listen, everyone has been a gold mine. So check them out, listen to them. And again, strategysprints.com slash fire for all that awesome opportunity that we talked about. His book, Strategy Sprints, is available on Amazon to pre-order or depending on when you're listening to this, it's ready to order. And Simon, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Simon and Fire Nation. Successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals.

24:32That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Fire Nation, this is your year to get unstuck and to grow a successful business. Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire.