Advisory Services and Client-Centric Solutions for More Profit

The Modern CPA Success Show: Episode 130

Tom and Simon Severino, Founder and CEO of Strategy Sprints, delve into the evolving landscape of accounting services, focusing on the shift from traditional tax-based practices to advisory services. Simon shares his expertise in sales and marketing strategies for accounting firms. He emphasizes the importance of decoupling time from value, understanding client needs, and effectively packaging services. He also discusses the concept of Strategy Sprints, a structured approach to business growth, and highlights the necessity of a strong marketing presence.

Intro 00:00:00 Welcome to the modern CPA Success Show, the podcast dedicated to helping accounting firms stay ahead of the curve. Our mission is to provide you with the latest and greatest insights on cutting edge tools, innovative marketing strategies, virtual CFO services, and alternative billing methods. Join us as we change the way people think about accounting.

Tom 00:00:22 Everyone. We are going international today for our guest. Our guest, Simon Severino is from Vienna, Austria. He'll be joining us. He is a consultant. He works in sales. But the thing that I think people are going to like the most is, as we consult with accounting firms, one of the biggest challenges that people run into is defining the services they have, marketing those services and then growing sort of a new part of their business. Many firms we work with at CFO and Advisory Services. We're going to touch on that. But if that's kind of speaking to you, please listen, because I think he is going to really hit some really key points in there. So, I will stop talking now and we are going to jump into the show everyone.

Tom 00:01:00 This episode of the modern CPA Success show. I'm excited. Simon Severino is here with us. One thing that I talk about when I consult with other CPAs a lot is on the selling process. And how do I sell? How do I close things like that? And that's one of the things I think that you'll get out of today's session. So, Simon Severino, founder and CEO of Strategy Sprints, has helped clients create an additional $2 billion in sales over the last 21 years. So, Simon, welcome to the show today.

Simon 00:01:29 Hey everyone. Thanks for having me.

Tom 00:01:31 And I would love to hear a little bit more background. So, what got you to the point of what you're doing today? And then I want to dive into some of the things that you teach people.

Simon 00:01:41 My way has been a non-linear way. I majored in philosophy and then I was broke because what do you do with it? With a philosophy degree?

Tom 00:01:52 Yes.

Simon 00:01:53 Even a light bulb with that thing. So, I had to find another way.

Simon 00:01:58 And this was the time when the big strategy advisories were looking for people independently of what their major was. They just wanted you to have the best grades and be very hungry. And so that was my chance. And I entered the world of big strategy advisories. And in there I did immediately fall in love with the topics of go to the market. How do you enter a market? Crush it in the market, stay defendable in the market, increase market shares? Because that was such a compelling mix for me of psychology, you have to understand what the market needs. But also, numbers, market share compound annual growth, profitability. And so, I loved it because it was psychology. It was it was numbers and those two things together. I'm a spreadsheet guy and I love Solving big problems with people. And so, if I can solve big problems with people and in that way build some pretty cool spreadsheets, this is where I'm happy.

Tom 00:03:08 I love.

Tom 00:03:09 It. Well, the spreadsheets and the data part.

Tom 00:03:11 You're probably speaking to this audience, but the part I would love to help you help us think through analyzing. So, we were accounting firms or professional service firms, right? I think the owners sometimes have trouble selling, but there's a lot of a shift with our listeners who are moving from very tax based kind of practices and saying, I want to move into other things. I want to move into advisory practices and doing things like bookkeeping, forecasting, advising for clients. So this idea that they have to go through and say, okay, there's a strategic change. And I think all the things of like a go to market, enter the market strategy or increase your share, all things people should be thinking of. Yes. So I'd love some thoughts around what do people get wrong? What should they be thinking of? If you're saying, hey, I want my practice to be in a different direction a couple of years from what it is today.

Simon 00:04:02 Most of the accounting practices that talk to me, they say, Simon, I need something that's more profitable.

Simon 00:04:09 So, can I add strategic services? I basically like what you do. Can you teach me what you do? Right. You do strategy stuff. That means you just paid for talking right. Can I get paid for talking on top of it. Because it has a 95% profit margin. Yeah. And I say yes you can, yes you can, and I can teach you so and it's not just talking, it's talking in some spreadsheet skills. Right. But yeah, mainly it's talking.

Tom 00:04:38 If I can interrupt for a minute. Do you ever hear that. Like what you do doesn't look that hard. Can I just do what you do? That seems like that could hurt my feelings if they say that.

Simon 00:04:47 No, I take it, I own it. It's fine. I always said it myself. Consultants are like bankers who don't. Who don't own math right?

Tom 00:04:56 Okay.

Simon 00:04:57 So, it's okay. It's okay. Because and this will be the shift probably in this episode for the listeners, because so far you have equated creating value with putting in time.

Simon 00:05:14 So I do an hour of bookkeeping. I will build you an hour. That will be the first thing to decouple because all, all, all our tools at strategy sprints, for example, the blue one here, the strategic value, they really help you understand from the buyer side what does the buyer really buy when they buy. And it's different from what you think. It's different from what you offer. And it's usually not tied to time. The client doesn't care how much time you put in as long as they get what they need. So let me give you an example. I have an accounting firm that I have outsourced. from the beginning, from the first year when I went into my own practice. I said, okay, I'm going to delegate bookkeeping immediately. Outsourced. And I said, and you guys do also the invoicing. And although we don't do invoicing and I said, could you do it for me? I said, well, okay. So, they started having an additional service.

Simon 00:06:15 and then I said, okay, now that you do the invoicing, can you do also the cash flow reports? And the way we usually don't do that. They started doing it. And so now they, they are having very high profits and a very loyal customer since a decade because they helped me not just do the initial bookkeeping, but also, hey, what else do you need help with? And when you are in the spreadsheets of somebody you know what they need. Right. And so initially they did it manually. Then they talked to me and said, Simon, but this is not profitable because we're spending so many hours. And I say, guys, automate it. Yeah, they did automate it. Now I get my cash flow report in an automated fashion. It's still solving the same problem. They are still charging a high amount. And I am happy because it solves my problem. What is the problem of an entrepreneur? It is time to get admin stuff off my plate.

Simon 00:07:18 And the second is decision making. Give me the food for my decisions. So, I need to know the cost of my work, the cost of acquiring work. I need to know the cash flows, what's coming in, what's going out. I need to know which services are more profitable than other services. So, if you are already in their spreadsheets, add a tab that is a cash flow report, and if you can make that efficient on your side, they will be happy to pay a premium. And that I don't care how many hours you put in there. So this is one example of additional high margin services that you can package and offer for some clients, where you have a low cost of acquisition because they are already clients, you can just add services and you do it manually for the first 1 or 2 clients that you offer this, but then you put it on standard, you automate it, and it becomes an additional package for all future clients.

Tom 00:08:23 Yeah, that's a great example. And I was going to ask, and it sounds like they are.

Tom 00:08:26 This firm is now offering what they started with you to other clients. Yes. I would assume you probably know this from working with accounting firms. The idea of more time turns into more revenue because everything has been time built for so long. That is probably a really big barrier when you've worked with accountants to get that to their mind. Am I right? You've talked about decoupling that that is probably a pretty hard conversation to get people to get through?

Simon 00:08:54 Yes.

Tom 00:08:55 What examples have you given or what's your approach? I'm happy to tell you how we do it, where we have tried to do a couple of that. But I'm curious how you've tried to convince some people who were have a hard time with that.

Simon 00:09:06 I my way of persuading them to try it is I show them that there are much higher margins if they tried this way, because one of the problems is margins. Right. Your own cash flows. Yeah. And if you look at margins of advisory services. We are in the 90% net margins.

Simon 00:09:31 versus done for your services. So, which, which needs so much actual labor and effort. So, and then we have a second thing that's coming, which is I mean, so how much of it will be price pressure? I think the price pressure will be enormous on everything. That's a financial service. Let's, let's call it a financial service broadly. Yeah. Right. And everything that can be done by I will be done by an I. So, it will be very cheap to source in and things will be done in countries that you have never seen. But it kind of works and it's very cheap. And many parts of our services will move there. So, which are the services that will not be under price pressure? And those are the, the sparring like being there and helping. For example, it's not that easy to say, okay, I'm going to do also your cash flow report because you can do it the standard way for the tax office. Okay. There is the income statement and the cash flow report.

Simon 00:10:51 But what an entrepreneur needs is actually something different. They need the profits first. Then they need it in a way that fits their decisions that they have to make. They have to think, should I hire or not? Which role should I hire? How much more can I spend in software licenses? And so, they have to see. The first thing that they need to see is what's the profit. Then they need to see the revenues. Then they need to see the cost of work, cost of delivering the work, cost of acquiring new work, cost of innovation. Because sometimes you spend something, it's not R&D, but it's you spend it without having a direct ROI. So everything that is upskilling people, for example, that that must be cost of innovation because it's not directly contributing to the business yet. So. And then down there, accounts receivables and cash flow. Yeah. So this is what an entrepreneur needs. Now if you think you can just do it, just offer it to an entrepreneur.

Simon 00:12:03 Well first you have to build it. And then also they have to learn how to interpret it. So, there will be a ton of discussion. Hey, this thing, does it belong there or they're hard or you calculate the cost of delivering the work. So that's alone two months of setting it up. And that is if you want already an additional service. So don't underestimate that. You have to take them by hand. And they will want some parts customized. So, there is already even in the transition to that service there is already a consulting project if you want in the making sure.

Tom 00:12:40 And if I can add to that because is we're talking about like could you just automate that entire thing. The advisory part there is really important. And I have a client, for example, that I've worked with for about six years. At the beginning he had just separated from his partner, and so a big part of their cash flow is can I afford the debt payments? Then he went through a tough time in the focus of the cash flow was on runway.

Tom 00:13:03 How long until you're going to run out of cash at the current rate? And he was really worried about that, and we made changes. His business is doing great now. And so, the cash flow now is how much money can you take out of the business and continue letting it grow and thrive into your point? That's where I think you can set it up. You can have the report, but does the entrepreneur understand that? And that's where people could say, hey, the service I can offer you is this advice. You get the report every week but let me tell you what you should be thinking of in the report. Maybe doesn't always tell you that at least the interpretation of hey, here's where you are and what I understand about your business. So, I like that example.

Simon 00:13:37 Is the strategic value. Yes. So, we have the exercise. What do they actually buy when they buy. So, I buy a sparring partner you know a second pair of eyes that looks at this and shows me the things that I should be looking at, but I'm not looking at or helps me change things that need changed.

Tom 00:13:59 Yeah, yeah, I agree with you that one of the things that we do with our clients is we charge them on a subscription basis. So, you have bought our CFO package. It includes these different things. And this is your charge per week. You have unlimited access to us, but it comes with these promised meetings and things like that. So that does start to disconnect the time that we never get the question from our clients, how much time did you spend on this? But they are, in that case, paying a lot for the advice that, you know, I've got my 30 years worth of experience. Sometimes their questions are very simple for me to answer, and it would be disappointing to say, you know, I only spent ten minutes answering your question. Or you could answer it more like the doctor. Like, no, it took me 20 years to learn this answer. That took me ten minutes to make sure I'm right for that. And that's what they get to that value.

Simon 00:14:45 Which is true. and so, I sometimes I think of. Oh, wait a moment, what if what is my hourly rate here? It's outrageous. But then on the other side, how much value did we either, save in cost savings just with that ten minutes on the other side, and that can be multi-millions? Or what kind of deals did we enable them to do? One of my clients recently, financial institution, they close the deal with my help of 270 million, US dollars, one pension fund investing into their into their asset, services. Right. And so that's one deal. So, as I say, it's coach. You can help with two sessions of an hour, you can help somebody, move the deal, forward. And so, this is the uncoupling of time. Of course. It took me 22 years to find out what to say in those ten minutes. Sure. And so that's why you we have to uncouple in professional services. The time from the billing, its value gets built, not time gets built.

Simon 00:15:58 And the second thing is, now, with the advent of AI and everybody who gets fired can open up a practice. Yep. and says I'm great, and I can do CFO services because they were a middle manager doing finance in, in, in, in a telecom. And now they say I can do CFO services, which is not true. But how do you know as a buyer who's legit and who's not. So, we're getting flooded with competition. and, and with AI which creates price pressure but also more volume. There will be so many offers. Hey, I can solve your finance problems. They will get 20 of those on LinkedIn. So, the next piece that I am working on with my clients is how do we stand out specifically on LinkedIn? Because professional services need to be on LinkedIn. This is where your people buy. Yep. I love x, I love YouTube, but the money maker for professional services is still LinkedIn. So, we help them really optimize LinkedIn. We want them to have 30,000 followers there to be the person that you think about when you think about money decisions.

Simon 00:17:16 So, what would they do. Let me check let me go to the blog. Let me see you on LinkedIn. What they posted. What do they think about this? Would they do it? Would they find a better way? Let me check. So, this is what I call mindshare being top of mind. Both. If they have a question, how would they do it? Let me check. But also, in terms of referrals. Hey, go to them. Can I make you an intro? I know really good people. Can I make you an intro? but for both cases, you need to. You need mindshare. You need to occupy a space in their mind and their attention. Right. And this is now a marketing game. And since I understood that one, I'm. I became so passionate about marketing, and I'm continuously studying the best marketers. I'm studying the Ogilvy and the best, copywriters from the 70s and the 60s. Okay. Because I can extract wisdom from all of those.

Simon 00:18:21 Those are evergreen, insights that they have because people didn't change their needs. Didn't change. technology has changed, but the basic needs, that's what you are talking to when you're talking marketing. And so I'm studying them all and now helping my clients apply it to today's LinkedIn world. How do you post messaging positioning, the visuals? How do you visualize? I call it work in public. How can you show what you do? case studies, testimonials. But also, I said this, my client said this, then I said this, that my client said this. Those are posts that people want to read. And so, we help them get more engagement on each post, like 20, 30 comments on a post and posting more frequently. Some of them struggle with it. Then we put them together with 70 other clients in in a in a. We call it an expansion team, a team. They will support each other. Hey, you didn't post in three days, come on, post something and just comment on each other.

Simon 00:19:25 So, marketing is more and more important because if we have mindshare, then a professional service with AI will win. but they have to think about you, so you have to either catch their attention on LinkedIn or they think about you during the week. Because you did some good email series, you created some good content or online events. There are many ways to get that mindshare, but we have to go for mindshare.

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Tom 00:20:42 What do you think most when you work with accounting professionals? What do you think most of them are getting wrong when you first start working with them around this idea? Okay, we're going to start marketing.

Tom 00:20:51 We're going to LinkedIn, things like that. What kind of usual area where you're like, okay, I can see we've got a lot of work to do here.

Simon 00:20:59 Well, the first problem is that they don't take it seriously. There is nobody doing this full time. It's yeah, Laura is doing that. Hey, Laura, what are you doing? Oh, this week nothing, man. The next week I'm going to post something. Yeah. So, it's kind of a part time hobby instead of being a really important task. So, I want one person to be responsible and to do this full-time. And that person reports every Friday about what happened in marketing this week, okay. Because we want them to have a Friday meeting, a Monday meeting where we discuss what is the focus area, the most important things to do and the Friday meeting. In our method, there is always the Friday meeting where we look at the most important metrics of that week. And so, we look at the marketing metrics.

Simon 00:21:46 We will look at the sales metrics and the operations metrics. So how happy are our clients? Because happy clients you can ask for referrals. And so that's that's then again a flywheel that brings more clients okay. So when you say look.

Tom 00:22:02 I'm sorry to interrupt you when you say full time, do you mean full time role that because then you tend to talk about larger firms. If someone's in a, you know, I'm a managing partner, but I've got seven people in my firm, I probably don't have a full-time marketer.

Simon 00:22:17 even if you are just three people, I think one of you should do distribution all the time. So, if we are three and we are doing, you know, financial services, right, we will have a problem if we if all the three are doing client work all the time, then we are toast. Sure. Okay. It can't. It can't work. And I'm not even talking about growing. I'm talking about staying in the game. Yeah. Just keeping the pricing power and the market share.

Simon 00:22:49 Okay. Will be. In that case.

Tom 00:22:50 It's probably not one-person full time, but that is a big part of their job is making sure that we've got an external presence. And yes, we are one.

Simon 00:22:59 People. I would say, okay, to make the client happy, one brings new clients in. That's the job description. Even if we are two people, I would say one makes the client happy. One brings the next client in. Okay.

Tom 00:23:14 Yeah I like this. So, let's switch up as we talk strategy sprints. Are you okay. Talking a little bit about what a strategy sprint is. And then you also talk about four agile businesses. And maybe there's a definition around there what you would call an agile business.

Simon 00:23:28 Yes. So, a strategy sprint is 90 days of doing what we what we were just doing. So. Yep. strategy. Right. Finding the key core activities that are important. So what are the main distribution activities? What is the main client? client, satisfaction, activities.

Simon 00:23:52 And from there, how can we create flywheel. So, from, from delivering good work for the clients. The first flywheel is use those moments when they are enthusiastic. It's not all the time, but you will have 1 or 2 moments per year where they are enthusiastic about something. Wow. Thank you. You help me solve that thing, right? Yeah. And now you can ask. Oh, wow. Yes. Laura, thank you for saying that. Do you know, to people who need this, can you make an introduction? So that's from the operations, how you can create one flywheel that that's an important flywheel for professional services to generate more work from your current clients and then the second thing is, those distribution flywheel. So, starting new conversations on LinkedIn, creating content that is so compelling that it pulls in more ideal clients, more conversations, and that person who is then responsible for distribution, their goal is to have a pipeline so full that it's like a waiting list. It's slightly more than you can deliver because you want to pick and choose your clients.

Simon 00:25:06 Sometimes professional services think they have to take on every client. Right. And I had recently a conversation with somebody and she said, they're very famous. I will not say their name, but she says, my husband died because we didn't. We took on too many clients. Oh, and that brought so much toxicity and stress into his life. And he's resilient and robust. But in the end, it killed him. Literally. So, what I will do differently now is we will define the ideal client and we will stick to it. We will pick clients that are easier and more enjoyable to work with. And that might for a couple of months create less revenue. But in the end it will bring more ease and more profitability long term. And so that's one exercise that I do. What makes the ideal client. Sure. And we define it five levels deep okay.

Tom 00:26:08 And so as you talk these sprints I love this idea. What comes to mind is the iOS methodology with the book traction that talks about also the 90 days where they have rocks.

Tom 00:26:19 It sounds similar that in this 90 days I've got a defined thing. And you talked about at the beginning, maybe someone wants to get into it. Strategic advisory. Yeah. So, in 90 days, what are you going to do? Maybe there's something in there like I'm going to define what that looks like and what the buyer really wants. once, and that will be very clear at the end of 90 days. And then you pick another 90 dance and then what's next? And what do I focus on?

Simon 00:26:39 Yes. And iOS is a very similar concept. It's more for manufacturing and brick and mortar companies, and it's less around growth for agencies and for professional services. So, we are more for professional services where it's not so much about who is doing what. And the org chart, it's pretty obvious, what the professional services do, making clients happy and bringing new clients in. There are only two tasks in a professional service, but what needs to be measured every seven days is what's working better.

Simon 00:27:17 So, we did 17 activities. Which one are working better. So, we will do more of that and which one is actually not working better. Let's cut that. For example, some teams think that it's very important to run Ads. And then as soon as they start a sprint and they start measuring every seven days because they usually get monthly reports. And so, everything in, a strategy sprint, everything is measured in seven days. And then they realize, oh, those ads are not actually not bringing the right people in the right moment in they're actually a waste of money. And there is this other activity, like having referrals, like doing one webinar per month that's more of an executive briefing, small intimate workshop kind of webinar is actually bringing the higher quality people. And so, you see these things when you start measuring every Friday.

Tom 00:28:17 Okay. So, this probably also relates to as you talk about reclaim and what you have is reclaim 14 hours per week using this method. I assume this relates directly to I'm identifying the things that don't work and stop doing those things.

Tom 00:28:30 Is that the main thing you're talking about? Okay. So, measurement is obviously a really big part of setting this up that I'm measuring the results that I get from the activities you're doing.

Simon 00:28:40 So, the orange thing behind me, that's called the focus card. The focus card has, three year vision, the one year activities and the 90 days activities. The 90 days activities get three metrics, one ops metric. How happy are we? Are we making our clients this week? One sales metric that's dollars closed and the and a marketing metric that can be the number of subscribers number of webinar registrants of that week added can be different things in marketing, but those three metrics will now be measured every seven days. By doing that, we will have now 12 measurement points in three months. These are the risks. The project, because you want to have low risk and high exploration. In in in in in any in any campaign that you do in any activity. So, by doing that you are exploring a ton of ground like this week you are testing, posting on LinkedIn, a client testimonial, versus testing a conversation with a client.

Simon 00:29:55 And so that's an AB test. And on Friday we will know which one worked better. So, we make the tasks very small so that we can frequently invalidate our assumptions. If we cannot invalidate them, then we have validated them. Now we are on to something. Einstein says this is how you find the theory. You go for invalidation if you can't invalidate it many times now, it's valid. And if it's valid, the next step is it's a theory. So, this is the scientific exploration method. And that's what we do in sprint. We do Business growth as if it was a scientific project. We do stuff, we measure if it works, if it works, we do more of that.

Tom 00:30:38 I like that approach. If you're familiar with Adam Grant, who is a podcaster and a professor at Wharton, likes to approach problems as if you're a researcher. Yes, this sounds like a very similar thing. What would the data be? What's my hypothesis? Am I proving it exactly true or wrong, and that it seems like a great approach, including for business problems? Exactly.

Tom 00:30:57 I'm curious if you would want to share a story about a client who's kind of walked through this and what kind of progress they made, and maybe someone can visualize what it would look like to work with you and kind of go through and do this.

Simon 00:31:07 Sure. So, typically professional service in the onboarding we find the constraint. What's the constraint. So, we start from attention. People are seeing you for the first time to interest engagement. Ready to work closed the deal delivery upselling cross-selling referral. Those are the whole value chain of a professional service. And so, we go through with them takes half an hour. Where is the constraint. Which part is the limiting part. If we solve that by 20% the overall throughput will be higher. So, first part takes half an hour identifying the constraint. And then that constraint will be the focus of week one. We have 12 weeks week one. Now we tackle that. It might be a positioning thing. So, we have to go to LinkedIn banner LinkedIn messaging LinkedIn content.

Simon 00:32:04 When we've solved that we move to the next okay they click and now they register for the webinar. But 60 people registered. Only ten showed up. So now the next constraint is improving the conversion from number of registrants to number of participants of the webinar. Now we have increased the conversion rate from 10% to 50% of webinar attendance. Now. Okay. How many people did we close in that webinar? Oh two okay. Can we increase that to four? Will be the next week. So, each week solves the next bottleneck. And there is always a bottleneck. Specifically in sales you can always improve a conversion rates. Or one of those conversions rate will always be the lowest in the value chain. That is the focus of that given week.

Tom 00:32:54 Okay this sounds excellent. And for many people this is probably a very different way to be running their business. But I would argue if you think you're going to switch into a new type of a service, and most companies adding a service is really hard, where maybe starting a new company, everything is new, but you are just those constraints are really strong.

Tom 00:33:13 When I've done something the same way for a really long time. that can be really difficult to do. Yeah.

Simon 00:33:19 And that's why I want one person to be really full time thinking about the business of the business, and not just the client work because that's my partner to improve each part of the value creation that they do. If they're all doing client work. With whom I discussing these things? Right. Nobody has time to do this.

Tom 00:33:41 Sure.

Tom 00:33:42 I wonder if you find also early on in in ours and I probably exaggerating what happened. But we offered a lot of service offerings and essentially would say, we will charge you for a lot of the transactional kinds of activities that we do, but we're smart people, and you kind of get the advisory service for free. Feel free to ask me any question. And we had a client reach out and say, I'm willing to pay you a lot more for those advisory, strategic things that you're not charging me for. Why is it that not your service, and maybe the transaction piece is something that you're willing to do? I guess my question is, do you think you find that in professional services, that part of this is convincing them that they have something to offer that someone has and that they'll pay for it as you try to disconnect time from revenue.

Tom 00:34:24 Is that convincing someone of like, you probably know a lot more than you think and can package something, or do you not really find that to happen?

Simon 00:34:32 Yes, yes, this is a very important part. So, in usually in week three, week four, we tackle the offer and the pricing. One thing that we find is they can actually charge much more for what they do for the current, just for the current delivery. They can charge more without losing clients so that's the first focus of that week. And then when we found the max price without deteriorating, then we go to okay packaging. Now we will think about additional packages. So, for example, you're using a software and you're you've done something for 50 times and now it says you've reached your limit but you can buy ten more. Yes. ten more. I can remember how they call it. But hey, you can have now ten more of this city are using it. And so, and since I'm using it is the risk I know it's good because I'm using it.

Simon 00:35:31 So, yeah give me ten more credits. And so, I click it and I buy ten more credits. This is something that we can learn from the software world as a professional service. And this is where I get my inspiration from. So, I'm learning a ton from the software world, and I'm learning a ton from the world of franchise. For example, the model for my business is McDonald's. This is not something where you usually, when if you run a professional service, you don't think of yourself as being McDonald's.

Tom 00:36:04 I'm still looking for the connection. So, help.

Tom 00:36:07 Me. Where is the connection? Yes.

Simon 00:36:08 And so when I was doing my own, delivery work in my consultancy, I became the bottleneck. It was 300,000 per year, and I was at the bottleneck. I couldn't deliver 400,000 of services. because it was me delivering. So, I had reached a limit. And I remember I'm working here in my city in Vienna. I'm working around trying to solve this question. How can I stop being the bottleneck of my own growth? Right, I didn't know, I didn't know.

Simon 00:36:40 You don't learn that in professional services, circles. So, I stop in front of a McDonald's and I go, wait a moment. This person here, what is they? What are they paying for? Brand and processes. So, this yellow M that's what they are paying for. For the right to use that yellow M right. Plus a handbook which says how much lettuce should be in a Big Mac on 200 pages. So, they're paying for brand and processes. It struck me immediately. I said, okay, that's what I need to do. If I can extrapolate the brand and professionalize the brand so that it's recognizable, it's iconic, it's a thing in itself. And if I can write down the processes, what do I do in week zero, week one, week two, week three. When I deliver the work and I will write it down. Now it's a handbook. Now I can start training others. So, I trained five others until the playbook was really good and the brand was professional enough that they were proud of it and they were putting it on their LinkedIn.

Simon 00:38:00 And I said, okay, now I have brand and I have processes. And then it became a certification. Now they are paying to use the brand and to use the processes. So I have basically employees that are paying to be an employee. That's what a franchise is or a certification. And, and that became my way of removing myself from being the bottleneck, because now the delivery is not dependent on me anymore. I can have certified strategy sprints, coaches in all time zones, wherever the clients are. I need a sprint coach in that time zone.

Tom 00:38:38 You're speaking very much to the same kind of things that we talk about, and I'm sure you're not surprised you even see this in many accounting firms. It's great, but I can't have other people do this. And we actually teach a playbook course. But a lot of it is what are the service packages that you offer? And unless you have that consistency, how do you teach someone else to do it? Because you don't want to sell something and then have me deliver it very differently and have that prospect come back to you and say, wait a minute, you told me this would happen, but Tom picks it up and does it totally differently.

Tom 00:39:07 So, being able to say, here's the packages that we have, and they go from transactional up to controller up to CFO. They get more expensive, but we offer more all that is defined that makes it easier to say, here's who we want. We can describe who best fits each of those packages, which then helps you go and say, I can go to market and explain what I do and say. These are the people that should be coming to get us. So I like the way you're describing that. I didn't make the connection by to McDonald's. But yes, in America many people would say, like when you see a McDonald's, if you're on the highway, it's not great food, but you know exactly what you're going to get.

Simon 00:39:41 You know what you get.

Tom 00:39:42 Most people trust that versus pulling over and say, you know, this little place, it doesn't look nice, might be fantastic food, but it could be terrible and most people would rely on I know what I'm going to get.

Tom 00:39:51 And so I'll just have that. And that's what you're saying.

Tom 00:39:54 I should probably change my example to.

Simon 00:39:57 Hyatt or Hilton etc., who are also going that route.

Tom 00:40:00 McDonald's certainly works if people know what they're going to get, which you can say you just yours is not mediocre, yours is a great service that you're offering. That's great.

Tom 00:40:10 You'll find your best.

Simon 00:40:11 Ideas in completely different industries.

Tom 00:40:16 Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, so if people want to learn more about you, learn more about your processes, engage you, things like that, what would you tell them is the best way, aside from listening to you today for where should people go to learn more and say, yep, this is what I think I need to do.

Simon 00:40:32 Many of the tools and practices that we have mentioned, they are for free open source on our website so people can download them on Strategy sprints.com and use them and enjoy them and improve some of their processes if they want to go a little bit deeper.

Simon 00:40:47 There is a book on Amazon called Strategy Sprints by Simon Severino. This is where they find literally a handbook on how to run a professional services firm. In the digital age, I wrote down all my own checklists and things that saved my life every week. And then there are also some clients that report how they are using the tools and how they solve the pricing problem, the hiring problem, etc. and if they want to talk to us, strategy sprints. Dot com. Hit that button. Schedule a time with us and we're happy to talk.

Tom 00:41:24 That sounds great. I hope people will take advantage of those things. And I think what many would find in similar to what they do with our services, you can read about it. And then having someone there who has seen the different things and can hold you accountable through the process can probably help people really accelerate their growth. But some people probably can read the book and just do it on their own. I just know for many they read and say, that's nice, and they look back a year later and say, oh, I didn't actually do any of the things that I said, we're going to be good ideas.

Simon 00:41:50 Yes, I'm the same. That's why I have it on my on my desk and I go back to it myself. Oh, marketing is not working. Let me go to chapter two. Which one did I skipped this time and which step did I skip? Which corner did I cut? And then I do my own process again.

Tom 00:42:05 Yeah.

Tom 00:42:06 Well, Simon, you've given us a lot of things. If there was one main takeaway that when you want someone walking away from listening to this to be thinking of what's the one thing that you, you think they would have in their mind. And I'll share the one that I think I heard.

Simon 00:42:20 Cut your activities in half. So, if you're only working in the business, you're doing it wrong. You have to free up time to think about the business, to work on the business. How do you do that? By cutting your current activities in half. But Simon, which half? I use the focus card tool so you can go to strategies for income, download the focus card, put in 20 minutes and you probably can identify the half that you can cut.

Tom 00:42:49 Okay, good.

Tom 00:42:50 It's very dramatic to write. If someone's busy, I'm sure. I hope if people take it they're like, oh, there is no way. But you probably have busier.

Simon 00:42:57 My yoga teacher says, Simon. The busier you are, the more you should do yoga.

Tom 00:43:01 Yes, I totally agree.

Tom 00:43:03 Yeah, there's a meditation comment, the same thing. You should meditate for ten minutes and if you can't, don't have ten. You should probably meditate for an hour. Exactly the same kind of thing. I think for me, the big one that I want people, if they haven't really thought about is how do I uncouple? The idea of revenue has to be more time put in because for people who are busy and want to do something new, that can feel like a barrier, that you're saying, if I'm already working 50 hours a week and I don't want to work more than adding a service, feels like I can't do it. And I think if I can think more and more about can I uncouple that work, maybe it doesn't have to mean more time.

Tom 00:43:39 I think it's a great way for people just to think about what it would be, and maybe they have their McDonald's moment also, that they're looking at something and saying, oh, there's a place where time is not connected. And to me that's a really big concept for people to have. Yes. Yeah. Well, Simon, thank you very much. This was really enjoyable and I learned a lot during today's meeting and I hope that other people did as well.

Simon 00:43:59 Thank you for showing up with consistency for your community and delivering value.

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