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

Discover the secrets to thriving in the complex dance of sales and life as we sit down with Simon Severino, CEO of Strategy Sprints, who brings the vibrancy of his diverse experiences to our latest conversation. From his passion of mountain biking to the challenges of parenting in unpredictable weather, Simon's journey from philosophy and psychology to sales coaching embodies the art of embracing life's twists and turns. His tales are a testament to the power of persistence and the beauty of finding one's true calling through relentless inquiry and curiosity.

In a world where sales is an integral part of our daily interactions, we delve into the psychological core of effective selling with Simon. It's not about pushing products but about championing the buyer's journey, understanding their needs, and guiding them to clarity and confidence in their decisions. We navigate the terrain where artificial intelligence meets sales strategy, underscoring the importance of leveraging technology to amplify impact rather than compound inefficiencies.

But this episode isn't just about sales; it encompasses the transformative potential of coaching, the strength found in collaboration, and the undervalued yet crucial practice of self-care. We explore how "me time" can paradoxically improve our service to others and ponder the concept of subtracting distractions to add meaning to our lives. Through witty anecdotes and profound insights, we connect the dots between personal growth and professional success. Join us as we pull back the curtain on the strategic and emotional layers that define our pursuits and passions, all shared generously by the insightful Simon Severino.

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Jason Wasser Therapist/Coach
Online Tele-Therapy & Coaching 🖥
The Family Room Wellness Associates
Certified Neuro Emotional Technique Practitioner 
🎧Host:You Winning Life Podcast
🎤Available for speaking engagements

Transcript

Podcast Annoucer: 0:00

This is the you Winning Life podcast your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode will 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 and certified entrepreneur coach, jason Wasser.

Jason Wasser: 0:37

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 out to connect with me. But today's guest is Simon Severino. He's 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 with him. So, like always, all right. So, as you already heard in the introduction, we're hanging out here with Simon and Simon's on the other side of the world. Simon, tell everybody where you are.

Simon Severino: 1:50

I'm in Vienna, Austria.

Jason Wasser: 1:52

Yeah, pretty cool, it's pretty cool. What's the weather like?

Simon Severino: 1:58

And it's raining, which is funny, because usually it rains and everybody goes oh, it rains. My boys, I have three 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.

Jason Wasser: 2:19

Yeah, I've been going down the rabbit hole the last time, the last two, three weeks of gravel bikes. 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 comfortable, but also the setup of a road bike. So you don't have. You have the drop bars instead of the. So I've been doing tons of research for some.

Simon Severino: 2:47

All weather, all terrain, All weather all terrain exactly.

Jason Wasser: 2:50

I don't know why I'm doing. 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.

Simon Severino: 2:57

That's the case. You wanna jump over an alligator?

Jason Wasser: 2:59

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.

Podcast Annoucer: 3:06

There's alligators.

Jason Wasser: 3:07

The alligator trail yeah yeah, yeah, it's called that. It's called the 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 in 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 awesome TED talk that you've done. But I think that I wanna start off the conversation with something that we started off talking before the show was outing you about a previous career.

Podcast Annoucer: 3:39

Yeah, that you held.

Jason Wasser: 3:41

That you say you don't talk about.

Simon Severino: 3:43

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 what's my superpower, 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 twenties. So in my twenties I was exploring, exploring, exploring.

Simon Severino: 4:31

When I was asked, hey, what kind of discipline do you wanna study in university, I had no clue, I had not the an idea of. I couldn't pick a role, a job. Every job that I was seeing, like a doctor, lawyer, et cetera looked so boring to me and so far away from who I am. I had no idea 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, I did fall in love with the writings of Sigmund Freud and some of his scholars, specifically Cargos de Fiong, 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. And but it was like you know the movies in the seventies where you have this in in investigative inspectors 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.

Simon Severino: 6:09

Yeah, so my second, my second love was then when a colleague, finally this phone rings and it's a colleague, as a Simon, I have this huge leadership training. It's in multiple countries, super difficult group 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. And 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 story.

Jason Wasser: 7:16

That's fascinating. 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, right now, there's a great Netflix show that just came out with Ramit Sethi's I'll teach you, based on his book I'll teach you how to be rich, 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 I followed on social media. Now he's got this Netflix show and it's all about your relationship to money and creating your rich life.

Jason Wasser: 7:47

And you know he's sitting there and he's talking to couples and he's talking into the right people are about to get married or whatever, maybe, 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 and 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.

Simon Severino: 8:32

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 Seagate lessons, the Cargust of Young 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 coachings is help them by, help them by yeah. So we start by listening and then we help them take decisions that are on their path right now and now.

Simon Severino: 9:32

It's full of obstacles and all of those obstacles are mindset related. The 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's 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.

Simon Severino: 10:05

And then, when you look at the stages and 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 five 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. 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.

Jason Wasser: 11:00

We 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.

Simon Severino: 11:09

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, if you. So I have three kids and they're different age, right, if I want, let's say, on Saturday, I want to do a hiking with them, so I have to win them over. 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 on-line skating and the third one wants to go mountain biking. So if I want to hike on Saturday, on Monday I start marketing, I will tell stories about that mountain and the history of that mountain and 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. 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.

Jason Wasser: 12:48

Yeah, it's the momentum. I think when you're talking about this, the way I reframe this with my clients, especially when I'm working with 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. It's the same thing in any business. We're going to sell pizza to you know, like, okay, well, who and why? Why are you the best person to be doing that? Well, we'll make a great pizza. No, no, no, no, no. Right, that's great, anybody can go for a great pizza anywhere.

Jason Wasser: 13:22

So 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?

Jason Wasser: 13:33

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 don't 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? I forget the Simon Sinek why I think like, why is it that you, what's the problem that you are particularly in 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.

Simon Severino: 14:24

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 the same question is why do you want to use AI in the first place? Because you can scale stupidity with AI or you can scale impact. So the first question is if AI is the answer, what is the question behind it? Yeah, the question behind this makes sense.

Simon Severino: 15:11

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 five 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? Can you take this article and make it more interesting? So we are just ten X in research and ten X in thinking. Now, thinking is not understanding. That's the difference, 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 is not really human. Understanding is human, but thinking is just a technical process and that got accelerated. We are ten X in researching right now, which is great, because it was boring anyways to do it as a human, exactly, and now we are amplified.

Jason Wasser: 16:33

Yeah, last night I was sitting prepping for this and some other things for today and doing some paperwork. I went on chat EPT because I'm in a business accountability group and the module that we are working on is KPIs and we talk about KPIs and then we talk about metrics and people a lot of times will confuse the two because there are metrics within KPIs. 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 this is 27 minutes. I'm not going to do that. So I hit the transcript link, copied and pasted it, put it into chat EPT and said give me the top 10 bullet points and action steps from this video.

Jason Wasser: 17:20

And 30 seconds later I had and I said now take that 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 timeframe that I work, this is how right, this is what I charge per session. And it gave me literally the verbal KPIs in that languaging 10 seconds later of OK, how many? How many sessions available do you have versus how many on average or booked a week? How many client cancellations do you have a week? I mean, I literally changed the whole and that happened within the span of 40 seconds combined.

Simon Severino: 17:58

Isn't it?

Jason Wasser: 17:58

beautiful, beautiful. Here's where I think 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 people who are very logical and tangible 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 one, step two, 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 it into practical play is the whole other level. And if it's someone said right, if it's measurable, it's scalable.

Simon Severino: 18:51

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 a factor or two or three, and we don't even talk metrics or KPIs. So we come together, it's Monday NSA, 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 five minutes each individually.

Simon Severino: 19:35

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 say oh, you are working on that, 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, congrats you who boom boom, that raises your frequency.

Jason Wasser: 20:34

Yeah, you know it's literally Right and it's so funny because it's like that's 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 of 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. We can't go at it alone.

Jason Wasser: 21:07

My field, as you know from what you're, originally started off right If you're sitting in office. Now I'm home, close my office to the being in 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?

Simon Severino: 21:40

Totally, and you know, I 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 and I would coach them while I was running. So that pandemic was the best. I was in nature all the time using WhatsApp and zoom. All the time. I wasn't my mountain bag, 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, that frequency. It's removing, removing obstacles that are usually self-imposed mindset obstacles, because actually there are no limits. There are no limits in limits, in possibility. Right now we are infinite possibility right now, right here.

Jason Wasser: 22:48

Correct.

Simon Severino: 22:50

In in any moment.

Jason Wasser: 22:52

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, cause 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 from that is that people don't realize that the answer is sometimes right in front of them.

Jason Wasser: 23:22

It's just that one little step and you have to let go of like what that can be. So you know 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? 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 and 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.

Simon Severino: 24:06

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? 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?

Jason Wasser: 25:18

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, 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 have been adding with my clients how can we make this therapeutic process fun? So that's not what you expect. Going into a therapist, that is going to 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?

Simon Severino: 26:00

Well, can I share with you. Do you know Otto Kernberg? I guess you call him One of the OGs in the psychoanalysis field. So Cornell University, mentor of all the big psychoanalysts in New York and of many those that are still depressed themselves.

Simon Severino: 26:23

Rob, I don't know, but one of the OGs. So we flew him into Vienna and say, hey, please supervise us. And so he comes in. He was already like 80 years old and he says, all right, everyone 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, they 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, it was making, we were laughing all the time and everybody was looking at us and giving feedback.

Simon Severino: 27:15

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, where we all excited and we were wearing a suit and tie, and it was. He was playing role plays, yeah. 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 will solve them life. 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 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.

Jason Wasser: 28:27

So, when we're applying all of this to personal life, right, let's, let's step away for, for the last little bit of of applying this and taking this other aspects of our life, whether it's our relationships, our health, spirituality, parenting, friends, financials, whatever, where?

Jason Wasser: 28:45

where do you find that people are getting caught up the most and where would you maybe say like hey, if you lean into this a little bit more, this can open up for you and that regards, this, could be a little bit more of a positive experience. This could be if you just nuanced this a little bit more. How would you take the strategy sprints from that perspective and apply it into a personal application?

Simon Severino: 29:07

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 then 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 three, so I am, I am feeling with all parents listening right now and when, and so sometimes we think like we are the victim of our kids, right? Oh, my God, I'm so tired because I have three kids. If you hear yourself doing that, let me give you a couple, couple ideas what you can do. Well, first, your children are not responsible for how you feel.

Jason Wasser: 30:07

You are they weren't even responsible for being born. Yeah, you made that choice.

Simon Severino: 30:13

Exactly so you are. So if you want to be happy, just 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 two hours of me time, two hours every day, and I run operations in 14 countries and I have three kids, but every day I have two 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.

Simon Severino: 30:54

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 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 tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. The next one starts singing and three seconds later we are a Brazilian band Life at the Hollywood Bowl. It took three seconds from zero to Hollywood Bowl, so this is how fun it is to have children actually, and if you're there 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, five people, you can explore the world every day.

Simon Severino: 32:12

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 a plane first and then we fly, and then on some days, we want to learn something about their language or their culture.

Simon Severino: 32:48

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 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 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. It's a great day to have a great day, if you want a great day.

Jason Wasser: 33:40

I love it. The experiential is so simple. I love that curriculum and I just talked about that with a client that I'm seeing that 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 three years to create a curriculum like so you can basically have a bachelor's degree in relationships in three years, within the next three years before you guys move in together, versus, oh my God, it's going to be three years. How are we going to make it through? Is our relationship going to make it? None of our verse, 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 three years and made it an experience.

Jason Wasser: 34:55

I love that, right it's. It's an I can imagine, like people don't say that we're too short set, we're too short sighted, we're too. 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.

Simon Severino: 35:33

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, with the current responsibilities, the current tasks again? How can we fall in love with our colleagues, with our employees, with our, with our colleagues, with our vendors, with our suppliers, with our clients, with our patients again? So so that we are curious and we can suspend judgment for a second and have true, true, deep experiences?

Jason Wasser: 36:16

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.

Jason Wasser: 36:37

I mean, I've had someone who was talking about psychedelic plant medicine and healing, and I'm writing you, my entrepreneurs like you in the business world and and people in the psychology world and integrative and alternative medicine world.

Jason Wasser: 36:47

So it's, I mean, 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 can do stupid stuff with it. You can do. You can do stuff that will waste your time and not get you to the goal, but you'll be. You'll look busy, you'll be. You'll be busy with all the AI stuff You'll, but I mean, I 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? Because there are a way that you would phrase something like that when you're working with someone.

Simon Severino: 37:38

Yes, we have many questions and many mini processes that we do every Monday, and one of them is what are the, 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? Simple questions, and if you sit with them and you clarify that, now your position is clear, what you, 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, you know, the warrior in the Bhagavad Gita and it's on. It's on Now. You have 16 arms and eight legs because you're on fire. You are unfolding all your infinite possibilities right now. And then it's about protecting, inoculating from 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 mission here. This is your work, your deep work. That's eternal and the temporary is the media, and how they are trying to scare you. The news and how they are 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 beautiful, but they are actually not serving you. So, for example, it's now 15 years.

Simon Severino: 40:10

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 hanging there and it's now telling us what we should watch 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 when you do that, you have now so much more time per day. In that time you can learn languages, you can go mountain bike, you can learn new musical instruments.

Jason Wasser: 41:09

It's a 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 it. Probably have a thousand books here easily in my permit, easily above in my closet boxes of books, and 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 have I actually gone through right, and I realized that when I switched over to the Kindle, I'm like I don't know if I'm really going to get into that.

Jason Wasser: 41:41

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's 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 with 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 five minutes, there's a five minute Ted Talk. There's amazing.

Simon Severino: 42:14

If you have seven minutes.

Jason Wasser: 42:15

Then there's your Ted Talk. Right, but it's a little bit over seven minutes, right, seven to eight minutes. So, 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 three different options. Pick one of those. And you're right.

Jason Wasser: 42:31

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 handle 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. No, it's similar, similarly aligned, right, that's a space. It's a different space than the rest of the rest of the house.

Jason Wasser: 43:06

So I think we can all find ways and maybe you know, maybe we'll we'll wrap up with challenging everybody who's listening to find one thing in their life that they buy. You know it's. It's addition by subtraction. What's one thing in your life that you can remove that's been a distraction to getting you for where you want to go, and what's the thing you really been wanting to add or need to add or will be most meaningful to add?

Jason Wasser: 43:31

But also asking yourself what's getting anything in the way of getting you there and is that need to be subtracted to get you to that goal? So it's a reflexive question in that regards. So so, before we wrap up, tell us a little bit about just the book. Who would really benefit from that? Who would be the most ideal and beneficial people to reach out to you and your team as far as collaborating and working? Obviously, there's tons of new to videos and 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?

Simon Severino: 44:08

Yeah, the book strategies Prince 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 on boarding, how do you hire higher 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 in my own entrepreneurial journey, and I have this group, which is the, 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 our open source. People can download them at strategies prince dot com.

Jason Wasser: 45:05

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 to reach out. There's a lot of cool stuff going on with 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.

Simon Severino: 45:53

Thank you, jason, thanks everybody, keep rolling.