Agile Beyond the Enterprise: Coaching the Businesses Next Door
Most Agile coaches build their careers inside large organizations — but what happens when a new opportunity calls from an unexpected direction? Scrum.org CEO, Dave West, sits down with Marina Alex, an AI & modern management expert and Founder of The SWAY Academy, who answered that call. After the enterprise market shifted in 2022, Marina pivoted her practice toward small and medium-sized businesses in Knoxville, Tennessee — and discovered what she describes as a blue ocean: many companies that have never heard of a Sprint, but are ready for one.
Along the way, Marina found that AI has become a natural entry point into these conversations. With most small businesses neither tech-heavy nor equipped with an IT department, the excitement and anxiety around AI opens the door to deeper work around team culture, structure, and customer focus. Rather than leading with frameworks, she leads with outcomes — helping business owners understand that strong teams and clear processes are what make any new technology actually stick.
Marina walks Dave through the mindset shifts, networking strategies, and practical adaptations — from one-week Sprints to sticky-note Retrospectives — that have allowed her to build a thriving practice doing work she loves, serving the local business communities that need her most.
Free Guide from Sway Systems with tips to find new clients
Transcript
moderator: 0:00
Welcome to the scrum.org community Podcast, the podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast, agile experts, including professional scrum trainers and other industry thought leaders, share their stories and experiences. We also explore hot topics in our space with thought provoking, challenging, energetic discussions. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Dave West: 0:26
Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. I'm your host. Dave West CEO, here@scrum.org in today's podcast, we're talking to Marina. Alex, I recently got connected with Marina on LinkedIn. We had a very interesting discussion of how Scrum Masters, agile coaches, can pivot from working with large enterprises to helping smaller organizations become more effective. This is a very relevant topic, as I'm sure many of you realize, as many SCRUM masters have been laid off from large enterprises that are shrinking their workforce in response to AI and unfortunately, the economic reality of today. What Marina shared with me was an interesting story of how she's working with a very different client list. Welcome to the podcast, Marina.
Marina Alex: 1:17
Hey Dave, hey everybody. I'm so happy to be here, and I love this topic very much. I hope this podcast will help many Scrum Masters agile coaches to open a new world.
Dave West: 1:30
Yeah, yeah. Well, yes, it certainly opened a new world to me, or certainly frame a different frame, which is ultimately what we're, what we what we try to achieve. On on, on these discussions. So, all right, so Marina, you started your career selling insurance in Moscow, and today you're working lots of small companies, helping them deliver more value from your place, from your base, I guess in Knoxville, Tennessee, that's quite both a physical journey and, you know, a sort of spiritual journey, almost, where does your story really begin? Our listeners would love to hear my
Marina Alex: 2:10
actually agile story began from ScrumOrg about 14 years ago in Moscow. I was an executive in sales in a huge bank, and I was invited in a scrum org, Scrum workshop, today's workshop for Scrum Masters. And I came, and it was organized by ScrumOrg, and I fell in love with Scrum dramatically, deeply, right? And like, Hey, this is something that we need to bring to sales, right? And everybody like no Marina, no. It's just for it. And after that, I created my mission to bring scrum to sales around the world, and this is what I have been doing last 14 years as an Agile coach. And I worked with many companies around the world, with 20 companies countries and about 35 completely different industries. That's why this is my journey. But in 2022 everything changed. But we will, I will tell about this change later.
Dave West: 3:09
Okay, yeah, so, so you, you literally got the scrum bug, which sounds awful when you're in Moscow. We're fortunate, you know, we were sort of worldwide organization, so we spread our virus everywhere, and then you got into it, and then initially you were using it in in sales, right?
Marina Alex: 3:31
Yes, it was my niche. And if you Google my name, Marina, Alex agile in sales, you will see that I took this niche and I was almost first in the world, and it was my focus for last more than 10 years.
Dave West: 3:45
But that, that that changed? What two, three years ago, is that? Right? Yes, in 2022,
Marina Alex: 3:52
everything changed for me, because I couldn't find enterprise clients anymore, and I thought something was wrong with me, right? Because before, my average client engagement was for one year, $200,000 per year at least, and suddenly I couldn't find any clients. And I thought, My gosh, something wrong with me? Right? Some it's my fault, but it wasn't. The market changed dramatically for me in 2022 and I talked with many agile coaches, they had exactly the same time, right? And I couldn't find any clients. And I found myself Dave. I found myself in a new country as a single mom with $12 in my bank account because I sold all my stocks, I couldn't find clients for more than one year, right? That's why I didn't have any income, and I sold my stocks, I spent all my savings, and then I didn't have another choice. I realized, like, I have to survive, right? And I had two, two ideas, right? All my friends, they told Marina, you just need to find a job. Just go, you will be great executive and sales and marketing. But I was independent. 1000 for so many years, right? And I No, no, I don't want to do that. I have a mission. I want to change the world. And then I discover this blue ocean. I know guys, if you read this book, the strategy of the blue oceans, one of my favorite books, I really suggested to read it. And I found this blue ocean small and medium companies in Knoxville, Tennessee and across the world. And my financial situation changed dramatically, and I started continue do what I really love, work with teams, with sticky notes, with everything.
Dave West: 5:35
Okay, so let's just lean into that a little bit. So you're sitting there in in Knoxville, Tennessee, which I've never been to, but I hear it's a lovely place, particularly this time of the year where it's sort of spring. Spring is opening. So you're sitting there, and suddenly your big clients have, you know they're not renewing. You know the pipelines dry, and for a year you're like wondering what's happening. How did you start that process of engaging with smaller companies? Because it's a very different, you know, small and medium sized banks, insurance companies, real estate agents, maybe a local doctor's surgery. It's very different from working with a multinational, you know, consumer packaged goods company. So how you know, what was your sort of what happened? How did
Marina Alex: 6:32
you do it? It's a very good question, because, first of all, it was, on the one hand, it was an accident, right? Because I was almost in depression, right? And I decided I need to go somewhere. And for the weekend, I came to the local resort, small resort, and I saw General Manager, and she was so unhappy in this place. And I just came like, hey, what's happening? I like, I see something. It's happening, right? And she told me about her problems, about the team, about turn over. And like, hey, I can solve it. This is what I have been doing for for big organizations. And she like, really, like, yeah, how much is it? And Dave, I didn't know how much is it, because it's for sure, it's not $200,000 right? And I just needed badly $5,000 in this day to pay my rent and insurance and, like, $5,000 and she's like, Okay, I will send you tomorrow. And tomorrow I receive money in Venmo. And I'm like, Oh, wow. Okay, I held them for five weeks. I changed them dramatically. They achieved great goals, right? And we started working with them. And she came to me after that, like, Rina. I just have one question, like, why it was so cheap. This is how I discovered that pricing should be different, right? But it was, on the one hand, it was an accident. On the other hand, for last more than 10 years, in 14 years in general, I have been working with not IT teams, they've I've never worked with any IT teams. It was sales. It was it was one resort, 400 people. It was big organizations, but they were not it. That's why I had this. I had this experience before, but I never think that I will work with company which has only 20 employees, right? And guys, we can change this company for several weeks, because we work with everybody, with founder, with the frontline people, right? And it's, it's amazing experience.
Dave West: 8:29
Yeah, it is interesting. So I've been fortunate enough to use Scrum in some very odd places. For instance, a friend of mine was running a Animal Hospital, and she was having some challenges, you know, particularly during covid. And so we brought scrum in, in there. The it was and it was revolutionary. It was fundamentally different that nobody had ever sort of thought about it before, but, but that's the problem, though, isn't it Rainer? Isn't that the not only when you get in there, it's great because it's brand new and everything, but people don't think that they can look for a solution with Scrum and Agile and these ways of thinking. They've got problems, but they don't connect the two. I mean, you were lucky. You met somebody, General Manager in this resort. You, she took a gamble, and you took a gamble, and it worked out. But that's quite rare. So how? I mean, what can, what can agile coaches do to sort of navigate to this new world?
Marina Alex: 9:40
First of all, we have to change our mindset before we can do anything. What I'm talking about is we were focusing on it only, and we were focusing on frameworks, Kanban, Scrum, DevOps, OKRs. This is what we were selling, right? People came to. Us, and we were selling Scrum, for example, right? And then suddenly, nobody asked about Scrum or Kanban directly, right now, right? But they ask, hey, help me, I have turnover, right? Or help me, I, I'm I work in the business, not on the business all the time, because I use command and control approach. Help me. The problem is that they don't know that we exist, right? And we don't know that we can help them. That's why the first step to change our mindset and say, Hey, forget about all frameworks. What kind of problems I have been solving for last 2015, whatever, 25 years, and create a list of them, and they're like, Hey, your local business community, they have the same problems, right? And you need to translate your value right to business language. Because businesses, they don't think about velocity, right or a time to market right now, right? They thinking how we can achieve our revenue goals, right? That's why we have to learn their language and after that, okay, the first step you ask me about the strategy, I will tell you, step by step plan, first of all, to really think and rethink about your value from problems perspective, which business problems you're solving. Okay, when you're clear, okay, next step, you have to go in this environment and be visible, because what's happening, it was with me. I have been working online, and Knoxville, it's small town, right? And they didn't know that I was exist. I started build my network outside of Agile world, it wasn't easy. Guys, right? I came and they asked me, oh, hey, how are you? What is your name? What do you do? Like, and I'm, I'm an Agile coach, and everybody like, it's like dogs, it's football. Like, no. And I came back home like, Hey, I have to do something, because people, they don't understand what I'm talking about. And for 10 years, I've never had this problem before, because if I like, Hey, I'm an Agilent sales expert and everybody, oh, wow, this is cool, right? That's why build this network. Build In very simple language, explain who you are, go outside of your comfortable zone, right? Use your social media. Because, again, we didn't need to have this hunting mood anymore, right? Because we had clients all the time. They came to us and we just were sitting and just receiving clients and money, right? This time is gone. We have to be proactive. We have to hey, I have a lot of value, but I need to be visible in my social media, in my allocation business communities as well. Then you will need to adapt your tools, right? Because all of us, we have different tools, Kanban, Scrum, whatever, right and adapt them for local businesses based on their problems. Because they're not buying safe or scrum from you, they're buying, hey, help my team to achieve their goals, right? And this is what's happening. But guys, it's a huge blue ocean, if from data perspective, right, only in the United States we have about about 6 million small and medium businesses with employees, because it's our target audience, right? We have about 45 million businesses totally, but we're targeting for companies with employee and we have about only about 25,000 enterprise companies. From even data perspective, we have a lot of opportunities, because there are millions of companies who needs your help, right? You just need to go and help them. That's why this is the plan. And for sure, adapt your pricing, because nobody will pay you what enterprise paid you before, but you can make more money here in this market, for sure.
Dave West: 14:07
And so let's just so go back to that networking. So I understand that, reframing your experience in terms of outcomes and in terms of business you know, benefits that you've that you've achieved and and thinking about that, then you talked about, you know, building that network. Where are some places that that Scrum Masters, Agile coach should, should try to go? Is it like trade association meetings? Is it like Chambers of Commerce?
Marina Alex: 14:38
Yes, it's a great question. First of all, in the United States, we have Chamber of Commerce. It's a great organization, but be careful, because I was a part of many Chamber of Commerce, and they're not very active, not not all of them, they're super active. You have to find the active one and become an advisor, because. Become a speaker for them, or coach right, and help them to understand your value and help and be on the stage as well. That's why first step, at least Chamber of Commerce, different business associations, Entrepreneur Center, but don't focus on startups because or solo entrepreneurs, because they don't have problems which you can solve, and they don't have money, right? Because, in my pricing right now, people pay me$20,000 right? Because they have at least 20 employees, and I can help them achieve their revenue goals. That's why, from from business perspective, it's profitable, right? That's why you're going to help companies to achieve their revenue goals, right? But if they don't have employees, they it's not our audience does make sense?
Dave West: 15:53
Yeah, yeah. And the catalyst that you used to sort of drive, you know, even standing on stage. Was it framing, you know, around, hey, this is how silly. You know, Silicon Valley software companies can deliver, deliver more value, the secret sauce. Or is it, you know, around, AI, or is it around? What are the sort of like the the hooks, I think is the word that people use
Marina Alex: 16:25
right now, because everybody are crazy about ai, ai, it's your hook, okay? And, for example, me, I became very good in that, right? I have all automations for my business right now, and helping with that as well. But the interesting thing is that I always start my free talks, whatever meetups about AI and humans, right? And then I explain, like, Hi guys, the problem is that AI is not going to solve your problems. You have to really have very strong team, very strong culture, right? And really invest your energy and time in your team and humans. And then you will add AI and you will create cross functional team. In this case, I share like, Hey guys, I can help you with top five problems, right for sure, AI and technologies, because about 77% of all American small and medium businesses, they are not tech heavy. They don't have IT department at all. That's why, for them, technologies, it's something that they hate it, right? And you guys, almost 90% of all agile coaches, Scrum Masters, you guys, you have development experience before, right? That's why you're just perfect for that. Anyway, I always explain like, I will help you with technologies and AI. I will help you with culture, because this is how what we do, right? Culture, it's important structure, because traditional waterfall doesn't work. I will help you to make it flat processes. I will help you create new processes which you've never had before. For example, one week sprint is perfect for them. Retrospective in the end, planning session in the beginning, visualization board with sticky notes or software like it's just game changer for them, they fall in love with that right. And daily, every day, 15 minutes, right and number five, I will help you to put customer first, because again, for sure, our audience, we have a lot of Scrum Masters, right, but we also have agile coaches. And our job not just implement scrum our job to make our clients happy with our product, which we deliver, right and in businesses to help them to have this customer centric mindset. It's critically important. That's why, if you're going to become a modern management coach or expert, whatever you call yourself, and you will solve five problems, they will pay money, and you will be in demand, for sure, in your in your hometown, your home city. It is interesting.
Dave West: 19:03
You do have to find, from my experience, you have to find the hook and, and, yes, we have been, you know, very lazy, because the hook has been, you do Scrum. We need Scrum or whatever. And now that has, that has definitely reduced, I wouldn't say, gone away, but it has definitely reduced, and now we have to actually position that in terms of other things that organizations, that organizations need. The other thing that I found so recently, I was helping my son's school. We did a podcast on it actually around how they use Scrum to improve the parent teacher conference process. The things that I took away from that in that that engagement and helping them was empowered teams was something that's kind of different and something that you. That most organizations that are small, yes, you don't have that kind of formal kind of engagement around empowerment. And people that work, for instance, on the reception at the pet hospital, or the people that are nurses there don't feel that they own the admission process, for instance, and having that clearly described, and having that clear ownership articulated, and having a process around it in terms of, Hey, what should we improve? What can we change? Made a huge difference. Do you see the same 100%
Marina Alex: 20:38
for me, I do believe that this is the future of everything. What we know especially about creating cross functional teams, because usually they have silos between departments. They have 20 people, 50 people, and they have six departments. They don't communicate with each other. They have different AI solutions in each department and different software. It's Silas between software, it's a mess, right? And when you put in one team, people from sales, marketing and a product together, and they work together right around common goals, and you help them to change their KPIs, because it should be team KPIs, right? Basically what you're going to do, you're going to help people to first of all, empower people to make decisions as a team. And business owner doesn't need to control and comment on them every single day, and you will free up the time for this person, and this person will think about strategy perspective and create more hotels or whatever. Right restaurants. I have several cases in restaurants, and it's just amazing, right? Because in this case, you don't need to have a manager, because you have self organizing, or I call them self management teams, and people will pay for that because other business consultant consultants, they don't know that it's exist. They use MBA approach. Let's create different departments, but Scrum Masters, good Scrum Masters and good agile coaches, they know how to do it, because you guys, you have like, 20 years of experience, 25 right? It's your goal. This is why we have this podcast today. We want to inspire you, right? Because the world. They need you. They need your experience. They need your help, right? And your great doctors business doctors who can help them solve so many problems.
Dave West: 22:30
I Yeah. I mean, after our conversation, I definitely left with a reminder that a lot of what we do is actually still very new to a lot of people and, and shockingly new, I guess, schools and universities, though, they do teach from they teach it in, you know, the robot club, or they teach it in the software development area and, And obviously, a lot of people go to school and college and aren't in those areas. They might be, you know, in veterinarians or education or on that and we, we really don't teach these practices outside of a very niche areas, inside our university systems and our college systems and our education systems.
Marina Alex: 23:21
Dave, I was shocked first time when I started work with the small businesses, because enterprise was spoiled. My retrospectives in enterprise were with serious Lego series play like very high level of I had three huge, huge suitcases with different stuff with different toys, right? Because I wanted to deliver great, great and like, show them why they paid $200,000 right? But here I just have a retrospective with sticky notes. What went well? What didn't Well went well, what we're going to improve. And they're absolutely happy Dave, because they never, never had retrospective where they just shut down everything and just talk about everything, about work, about feelings, right? Because usually people are very we're humans, right? And for them, just put sticky notes on the wall. And I felt and they were absolutely happy. And I came back home like, oh my gosh, I did it like, 15 years ago, right? I forgot about simplicity. But they don't need complicated stuff. They need very, very simple stuff, retrospective or plan together, or priority, right? When you explain them, hey, we need to create priority, right backlog, you need to adapt backlog. They don't have a product, but still planning session all together to do, doing done. It's just game changer for them.
Dave West: 24:51
It's interesting you say they don't necessarily have a product, but what's really interesting, from my experience of employing Scrum is a service and a product. The same thing, and actually the discipline to describe, describe it in terms of outcomes, in terms of value, in terms of cost, in terms of profitability and vision. You know, we certainly found that at the Carroll School that we're working on the parent teacher conference, PTC, we obviously gave it a three letter acronym, you know, because I'm still an IT person at heart. And you know, what we found very clearly was they didn't have a vision Well, I mean, they have now, they didn't have an understanding of the impact and cost. They do now they, you know, there's, there's, it was really kind of refreshing to provide that clarity, because the discipline that we naturally apply to product thinking is something that most organizations don't really think of their capabilities, particularly smaller organizations or non Traditional organizations, like schools, they don't think of their capabilities in terms of in that, in those ways, and that can be very rewarding.
Marina Alex: 26:07
Dave, I'm with you for 100% because they don't see their service as a product. And I will give you very short, very funny story in one farm. It's huge Farm, 65 acres. I work with them, and they had a huge garage with a lot of stuff inside, right? And they like, Oh, we don't have time to do it. And it was all the time complain around this. And then I told them, hi guys, what if it, do you know about MVP, minimum, valuable product? What if we just finish something and then something and then something, right? And for them, it was a game changer, right? Minimum, valuable product, and after that, they started to use it everywhere, right? We don't need to change whole organization. We just need to change the most important part of this project or another project. That's why I'm with you in based on my experience, and believe me, I have a big experience right now with like many different industries, like 35 so far, TV everything, right? They don't have this product mindset. That's why, if you help them to see everything, what they do as a product, oh my gosh, it's a game changer, because you will help them receive feedback from customers for this product and continue change this and improve this product, right based on feedback from their customers, even if it's restaurant, Dave, when last time you was in restaurant and somebody asked your opinion, what they need to improve in any restaurants?
Dave West: 27:37
No, I don't think I've ever, I've never had that, though I did go into the restaurant in London. That's the scrum restaurant where they used scrum that famous one that scrumming got involved in, but they still didn't ask me for my improvements, and very sensibly, I'm not sure I know much about restaurants. Okay, so I will come to end the time, but I do really want to there's one topic that we need to address before we before we leave this podcast, and that's price and money. And the reason why I asked that because, from my experience, I, you know, running small and medium sized businesses myself back in the day, and you know my I'm fortunate to have many family members that run their own businesses, etc, with staff. And you know, money isn't plentiful, that they that they're very much running a tight ship. It's not Bank of America or Goldman Sachs, or that, those sort of organizations. So how do you, how do you price? How do you, how do you persuade them to take this leap of faith from a cost benefit point of view, when, when, one, this is all alien to them, and two, they money isn't super plentiful. Do you do value based sort of contracts. Do you pay? You know, you give them, like a percent, you know, time up front to do some work, to demonstrate your value, and then get into the contract. What do you do?
Marina Alex: 29:14
I learned that the easiest way to deliver value and and receive money back. It's to sell your service as a packages, right? When you, for example, for five weeks, you can change dramatically, like small businesses, right? And you can charge 5000 I started, as I mentioned, from $5,000 now I charge 20, right? But those companies, they have at least 20 employees. That's why they have money, right? And I always ask, what is your revenue? What is your profit per year, right? And I know that I can impact and help them to increase their profit. That's why they will invest $20,000 but I will help them to achieve their goals, and it will be more than like 100,000 whatever, right? That's why packages and usually you have several clients at the same time, because they don't have time for three days workshops. Okay? They have time just being with them in planning session, retrospective demonstration of results, right? Or run some workshops about six hours per week only. They can't shut down restaurant because you came for today's workshop. It's just impossible. That's why. I have packages for like, three months, for example, for two months, right? And I just be with them six hours per week, and I have several clients per month, right? That's why. And you charge 5000 or two in the beginning, I would suggest you to start in the United States, everything, based on my experience in the United States, in Tennessee, that's why I start with 5000 right? And then you'll increase, and you will have clients, and you will charge 20,000 right? But even if having two clients per month, and it's 10,000 per month, doing what you love, working like 12 hours per week. That's why it's profitable.
Dave West: 31:06
No, no. I mean, it's, it sounds amazing. Okay, so we're looking at to time. We try to keep these relatively short, and we could talk all day on this topic. So, you know, I'm an Agile coach, maybe, or scrum master. I've just been laid off, maybe from a large enterprise. I've been doing Agile for the last 12 years. Maybe I'm listening to this this podcast, what would be the one thing you'd want them to take away this podcast,
Marina Alex: 31:35
remember who you are and increase your self belief and self worth, because when agile coaches were laid off, they stopped believing in themselves, that's why the first maybe it's strange advice, but please remember who you are and see your expertise with enterprise for last 20 years as a superpower. And then you will go to local business community and you will tell them, hey, I have a mission right now to help local businesses and help my home city, because I have so much value and knowledge. That's why, first of all, to start with with yourself and self belief and self worth. And then you will go and you will find clients, and if you have any any troubles with them, you can find me in LinkedIn, LinkedIn, right? And I will send you a guide how to do it. But everything will start from your self worth and self love and self belief.
Dave West: 32:30
100% that's that's a great message. Reena, thank you so much for spending the time today on the scrum.org, community podcast. And you heard it, you heard it from somebody that's done it, somebody that was very down on her skills and experience, and then realized that she had something special to bring to the local business community and and has done that, and obviously will provide lots of links for the show so you can all get access to it. And thank you for listening today's scrum.org community podcast. If you like what you heard, please subscribe, share with friends, and, of course, come back listen to some more. I'm lucky enough to have a variety of guests talking about everything in the area of professional Scrum Product thinking and of course, agile. Thanks everybody and Scrum On, you.