IAM454- Coach and Strategist Helps Clients Clarify Their Idea

Dolores Hirschmann, ACC, CPCC, is an internationally recognized strategist, coach, speaker, and founder of Masters in Clarity, a coaching practice that helps clients clarify their ideas worth sharing and implement business growth systems. As a speaker coach, Dolores leverages the TED speaking platform to turn successful professionals into thought leaders in their fields.

• CEO Hack: Book- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• CEO Nugget: Trust yourself and the process
• CEO Defined: Caring, engaging, and outstanding human being

Website: http://mastersinclarity.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dolores-hirschmann-28620b28/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mastersinclarity/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DglarH
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mastersinclarity/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbc8sZ8Qs-IdmgH1CbHmXWA 

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and have a very special guest on the show today. The Dolores Hirschmann of Masters in Clarity. Dolores, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Dolores Hirschmann 0:38

I am very happy to be on your show.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

Yes, definitely super excited to have you on and what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about Dolores so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Dolores is an internationally recognized strategist, coach, speaker, and founder of Masters in Clarity. It's a coaching practice that helps clients clarify their ideas worth sharing and implements business growth strategies, and business growth systems, as a speaker coach leverages the TED speaking platform to turn successful professionals into thought leaders in their field that Dolores is are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Comunity?

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Dolores Hirschmann 1:07

I am.

Gresham Harkless 1:08

All right, awesome. Let's do it. So they kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And when did you get to start your business?

Dolores Hirschmann 1:15

Yes. So I think for many of us, allowing our career to full can be very stressful because you and I know. For me as a mother of four and an entrepreneur, I did not have enough choice. One day I woke up and looked up my LinkedIn and resume and what kind of recipe I cook with the ingredients right. I have done some corporate work. I had done some company and, I set up on my career that I was really trying to figure out, what is the one I really can help people with? What was missing for me was a common denominator skill that could wrap up my background, and for me, that meant going back to school to study coaching.

And so as I came out of that, and became an ICF accredited coach. I realized that I love working with people and understanding how they're wired, and what they need to feel fulfilled, and also have a great life and a great career. And on the other side, I'm a strategist, and I love the power of words and communication. So I kind of merged both. What I do today is, work more I work with corporations and communications, but mostly my clients are service entrepreneurs.

And we work on the tactical and strategic part of their business so they can grow. But I'm also a coach when they don't do the homework, it's not that they don't know how to do it, it's something that is stopping them. And he's either fearful or self-doubt, or whatever it might be, I turned back into a coach. And I say, okay, let's just clean up inside, let's find that alignment, like internal belief system that will say yes to taking this action.

I feel like a lot of times you have the coach that works with your emotions and the code and the strategies that help you grow your business, but they don't really talk to each other. And so the strategies will give you more strategies if you're not doing the work, and the coach will just, you know, do give you shyer just to get unstuck. But when you put them together, you get unstuck for a purpose, and you take action.

Gresham Harkless 3:13

Yeah, that's nice. I like that because it makes perfect sense. And I always thought like, kind of, you know, coaching was kind of, being able to have those really strong people skills to be able to kind of understand those gaps or opportunities that people might have. And maybe sometimes we're even ignoring ourselves ignoring the reality that we have, in those skills.

So just being able to kind of tap into that from from a different perspective by having a coach, but then, like you said. I mean, be able to have that strategist piece as well. Because you not only know why you're doing something, why you're not doing something, you also have the how on how you can actually execute that. And to be able to get both of those at the same point is definitely a great example.

Dolores Hirschmann 3:50

Yeah, because I know that what calls you a CEO or me CEO is no action no CEO.

Gresham Harkless 3:56

exactly.

Dolores Hirschmann 3:57

We have got to do stuff. And action translates into forward movement and into growth and whatever that means. Your goals are up and you have to take action.

Gresham Harkless 4:06

Exactly. Yeah, action is everything. And you kind of need both aspects of that, because you might have something that's blocking you that's causing that action or you want also to make sure you're making the correct action. So you want to have that expertise in that perspective as well to from it like a strategist consultant standpoint.

Dolores Hirschmann 4:19

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 4:20

Nice. So I know you touched on it a little bit. I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you're working with the clients that you work with. If a client was listening to this or a potential client, what would be the way that you guys would work with them?

Dolores Hirschmann 4:29

Yeah, so the first question I would ask is, okay, tell me what do you do in one sentence?

Well, let me tell you how I got here is cool. But I want to understand, if I have a problem, like I say that the world walks around, or people will crawl with their antennas, right? And that antenna is sunk in or in tune into finding solutions to my problem.

I'll give you a simple example. We just got a puppy about nine months ago, and all of a sudden I was attuned to every blog or article that was out Let me tell you how I got to hear or how to get like, you know, simple things. But that's just a simple example that when you have a business, you want to lead with the solution that you provide. And you want to be very concise so that people react to it, is it oh my God, tell me more.

So when I work with my clients, I first ask them what they do, and then I evaluate their answers. What I help them do is come up with a scent, kind of gun reaction answer to the work that they do, so that whenever they're in any environment, it could be at an event at their kid's school, or an official networking event or speaking from a stage, but that the audience immediately feels like she or he is the right person to solve my problem.

Gresham Harkless 5:43

Right. And that's extremely powerful. And I know you kind of touched on that, in your story and on that communication piece. And I think it's so important, definitely correct me if I'm wrong, like, we know what we do. Sometimes we know the value that we provide, we know what we're an expert in. But a lot of times, if we aren't able to communicate that we aren't able to say that in one sentence, then it sometimes doesn't make any difference just because no one will hire us or want to work with us.

Dolores Hirschmann 6:02

There's no stickiness. And that work, really I didn't realize the need for this work so much until I became a TEDx organizer. And I was selecting people to get on my stage. So the first question we would ask my team or I would ask is, what is the idea you want to share on my stage, and on the way in for 20-30 minutes about all that they did to that date? And we the curating team immediately realized, Oh, well, they're not very clear what they do, or they weren't, they're not very clear about their idea.

So that is how it began for me to understand the need for this service. And so now I have, you know, I do work with speakers, I do work with TEDx speakers. But for most of our work, we serve as entrepreneurs who are growing a business out of a solution that they provide, and you know, help them communicate at scale.

Gresham Harkless 6:54

Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. That's definitely like a true entrepreneurial forum where you're able to kind of see a gap or opportunity or something that's not being fulfilled and be able to kind of provide that. And it kind of reminds me of that quote. I think it goes,  I can't remember who said it, but it says, If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Dolores Hirschmann 7:11

Mark Twain

Gresham Harkless 7:12

Mark Twain, okay, perfect. Yeah, so the same idea in concept where a lot of times, we're not as prepared when things are longer, but when they're shorter. Then that's really when we have put a lot of the work in to really and get ready to sink into exactly what we do, what we provide, how we help the people and can kind of say that very short, short and sweet like.

Dolores Hirschmann 7:28

I think it was in quote, Einstein said. If you can't explain something simply, you're not that clear anyway.

Gresham Harkless 7:38

Exactly, I love that. And I definitely appreciate that. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce, and it could be for you or your organization. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Dolores Hirschmann 7:49

So thank you for the question.

I would say, in general, my secret sauce is where we started this interview is that the combination of my skill set and my capacity as a coach, as a life and executive coach, and my background, my knowledge of marketing, and digital marketing, and what I call relationship marketing. So combining those two makes me stand out from any other coach, like, an executive coach, life coach, or any other business strategies.

Gresham Harkless 8:19

Yeah, that makes sense. And I figured that might be right in line with what you were gonna say, just because I think that it is rare that you have both of those aspects, usually have to go to one person and then go to another person and then share it, hopefully, try to marry the two. And a lot of times they aren't in alignment because advice that you might get from a coaching standpoint might be completely different from a strategic standpoint. And you kind of have to figure out that should I do this or that and not understand how to marry the two.

Dolores Hirschmann 8:39

Yeah. And here's another kind of secret sauce that I think for anybody or if anybody listening, I want to pay attention to because I think this is something that sometimes people feel it's a weakness or a shortcoming. And I want to say it's not and I think one of my strengths is that I use English as a second language. What that means is that I listen differently, number one and number two, that I can play the card when I'm working with someone, someone explains to me what they do. And I don't know, it's my understanding, but it's convoluted. I said I am so sorry. I'm English.

And you say it in plain English. So I use it in that context. But I think, for me, and for anybody speaking multiple languages or a foreigner working in a US market, it could be the US, Canada, or England. Don't ever underestimate the power that your listening skills have, because you will listen from a different perspective.

Gresham Harkless 9:34

Yeah, absolutely. Especially in this kind of entrepreneurship kind of perspective the whole idea of it is not to think about things in the same way.

And a lot of people that start businesses are actually. You know, immigrants or foreign-born are from a different country because they usually have whatever they might have at home, or whatever they might be cuisine, it might be whatever they don't have, when they come to the States or just whatever, they have that different perspective, they understand that differently, which they look at things in a different way. And a lot of times that's where opportunity gaps that he's kind of present themselves.

Dolores Hirschmann 10:01

Yeah, exactly.

Gresham Harkless 10:02

Nice. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call A CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Dolores Hirschmann 10:15

So the book that I love, and I recommend it a lot. it's  Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl was a psychologist in the Second World War he was from Austria, actually an Argentinian Austrian. But um, he talks about life purpose, and he focused his work on life purpose. And I always say that to live on purpose is not about having the perfect context around you.

But it's for you to be clear your what you're called to do, and strive to do that day in and day out independent of when, and where you're living. In that book, what he talks about is that in a concentration camp, which is what he was in, he could tell when people would give up on their life purpose. And think about who can live their life purpose in a concentration camp.

But he talks about an internal life purpose, that if you're born to serve in this way, or that way, serve in whatever context you are, you don't need to start a business, you don't need to change your job, you don't need to dump your spouse, to live your life purpose, start with waking up today, and say today, I'm going to live in purpose and go about your day, whatever that might look like. Because your outer reality will change. As an exercise of you being on purpose, no matter what.

Gresham Harkless 11:27

Right. So that's really, really powerful. Because I think, so many times whenever we want to change something in our lives, and this might be from, you know, advertising and marketing as well, too. It's always those external reasons why you aren't able to be whatever you want to be. But I think, you know, of course, they always play a part. But I think that like, just as you said.

If you aren't really clear, and have that purpose, have that mission, and you do kind of like that inner work and understand that we sometimes will skip over that and say, Oh, it's that, or I need to change this or change my job or change my, my spouse, as you said, or maybe I need to get a dog or cat or whatever it is. And none of those things kind of build-up.

Dolores Hirschmann 12:01

I've traveled the world a lot. I spent a good amount of years trying to find my happiness and my purpose outside of myself. You know, I'm not talking like, it's been a journey for me. And I literally will travel, I was lucky to travel since I was young. And anywhere in any city that I will arrive in within a day or two, I realize that oh, it's still me. Whatever was keeping me sad back home, it was Rome or Malaysia, whatever I was, you have no choice but the luggage that you always carry, the internal one, you cannot put it down unless you choose to. And so it is internal.

Gresham Harkless 12:40

Yeah, absolutely. And so was that book that prompted you or gave you that spark to figure it out?

Dolores Hirschmann 12:45

Yeah, that book is a reminder. And I recommend being purposeful and taking action. And as long as you are consistently looking for opportunities to live in your purpose, then you will design a job or a business or life that is worth living.

Gresham Harkless 12:59

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And definitely, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm glad you said the action pieces. Well, because I think a lot of times, we think that if we kind of maybe read a book and we don't take any action, then the purpose will just happen. But I feel like it probably takes both hands in the hands of having that awareness, of having a purpose and what that might be, but also of kind of chopping out the tree, so to speak, until that actually happens.

Dolores Hirschmann 13:19

Yeah, I tested that quite a bit in high school. I will put the book under my pillow hoping for osmosis.

I actually had to read the book and take the test otherwise I don't get an A so yeah, you gotta read the book and take action.

Gresham Harkless 13:35

There you go. You could definitely tell that to the kids as well, too.

Dolores Hirschmann 13:39

Yes, got it after reading the book, And don't fall asleep.

Gresham Harkless 13:44

Exactly, exactly. And so that would have asked you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this you might have already touched on but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Dolores Hirschmann 13:56

Trust, Trust yourself first, Trust the process, and Trust that you will be okay no matter what happens tomorrow.

Gresham Harkless 14:07

That's it. That's it.

Dolores Hirschmann 14:08

If you are right now, where you're standing, you're listening to this podcast, wherever you're standing. If life is good in this moment you accept it as it is. At this moment there's nothing you luck on whatever comes tomorrow will be great.

Gresham Harkless 14:21

Yeah, and I think kind of right and wrong, right in line with what we talked about before. It's like I kind of feel like we're always kind of either future-focused focused or past-focused. We're not focused on the present, we don't have that trust or that peace and understanding everything will be alright, it'll work its way out.

So sometimes we're always kind of either forward facing or you know, back facing, and we're not trusting the process and trusting that things will work out. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show so Dolores, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dolores Hirschmann 14:53

And I did not read the question. So I'm not. So CEO to me means caring, engaging, and outstanding human being.

Gresham Harkless 15:03

I definitely appreciate that. And I think especially, you know, right in line with everything we talked about is that you know. I think when you have that kind of mission-driven kind of purpose in your life, you start to care for yourself, you care for others, could you have that peace around you, but engaging and understanding that we're not in this life by ourselves, and just making sure that we are providing that leadership as well as we were are great aspects and characteristics that CEOs should have.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Dolores, thank you so much for your time. And what I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get ahold of you, and find out about all the awesome things you've been working on.

Dolores Hirschmann 15:38

Awesome. Yes, I would say you know, if you're a CEO, or striving to be one, just don't forget that whatever role gets you to a CEO. You didn't get there alone. And always remember to care and to engage with the people around you. mastersinclarity.com is where you can find me and also on LinkedIn. @mastersinclarity on Instagram and Facebook. But if you go to Mastersinclarity.com there's a button that says Start Here. Come and have a conversation with my team and let's see how we can help you gain clarity to move forward.

Gresham Harkless 16:10

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Delores. We will have all those links and that information in the show notes as well too. So everybody can click through and follow up with you. But again, I appreciate your time. Appreciate all the awesome things you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

OUTRO 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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