IAM2787 – Coach and Strategist Helps Clients Clarify Their Idea

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Transcription:

Dolores Hirschmann 00:00
Trust. Trust yourself first. Trust the process. Trust that you'll be okay no matter what happens tomorrow.

Dolores Hirschmann 00:09
Because if you are, if, if, if right now where you are standing, if you're listening to this podcast, wherever you're standing, if life is good in this moment, you accept it as it is in this moment. There's nothing you lack and whatever comes tomorrow will be great.

Gresham Harkless 00:51
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dolores Hirschmann of Masters in Clarity. Dolores, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Dolores Hirschmann 00:59
I am very happy to be on your show.

Gresham Harkless 01:01
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. And Dolores is an internationally recognized strategist, coach, speaker, and founder of Masters in Clarity. It's a coaching practice that helps clients clarify their idea worth sharing and implements business growth, both business growth systems. As a speaker coach, Dolores leverages the TED speaking platform to turn successful professionals into thought leaders in their field. Dolores, are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Dolores Hirschmann 01:29
Yeah, I'm so ready.

Gresham Harkless 01:29
Awesome. Let's do it. So, to kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story, and we'll let you get started with your business.

Dolores Hirschmann 01:36
Yeah, so, um, I think for many of us, allowing our, our career to unfold can be very stressful, right? Because we want to know where we're going. But for me, as a mother of four and an entrepreneur, I kind of had no choice. Like, one day I woke up and I looked at my LinkedIn and my resume and I What kind of recipe do I cook with these ingredients, right? Because I've done a lot of nonprofit, I've done corporate work, I've done some, I had started some companies. And I was at a point in my career that I was really trying to figure out, look, what is the one thing that I really can help people with? And what was missing for me is that kind of common denominator skill that, uh, would kind of wrap up my, 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 do 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. And what I do today is I 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 didn't know how to do it. It's something is stopping them. And it's either fear or self-doubt or whatever it might be. I turn back into a coach and I'd 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. Um, I feel like a lot of times you have the coach that works with your emotions and the co— 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 you— give you more strategies to get unstuck. But when you put them together, you get unstuck for a purpose and you take action.

Gresham Harkless 03:33
Yeah, that's nice. I like that because, uh, it makes perfect sense. And I always thought like kind of, you know, coaching was kind of, you know, being able to have those really strong people skills to be able to kind of understand understand, uh, those gaps or opportunities that people might have. And maybe sometimes we're even ignoring ourselves, ignoring, uh, the reality that we have, you know, in those skills. So just being able to kind of tap into that from, from a different perspective by, you know, having a coach. But then, like you said, I mean, be able to have that strategist piece as well too, because you, you not only know the why on why you're doing something, why you're not doing something, you also have the how on how you can actually execute on that. And to be able to get both of those at the same point is definitely a great example.

Dolores Hirschmann 04:09
Yeah, because yeah, I know that what calls you a CEO or me a CEO is no action, no CEO.

Gresham Harkless 04:16
Exactly.

Dolores Hirschmann 04:16
We've got to do stuff. And action translates into forward movement and into growth and whatever that means your goals are, but you have to take action.

Gresham Harkless 04:25
Exactly. Yeah. Action is everything. Yeah, exactly. 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 to also make sure you're making the correct action. So you want to have that expertise and that perspective as well too, from like a strategic consultant standpoint.

Dolores Hirschmann 04:38
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 04:40
Nice. So I know you touched on it a little bit. I wanted to hear a little bit more on how you're working with the clients that you work with. Like if a client was listening to this or a potential client, what would be the way that you guys work with them?

Dolores Hirschmann 04:49
Yeah. So the first question I would ask is, okay, tell me what you do in one sentence. Well, let me tell you how I got to here. Well, that's cool. But I want to understand if I have a problem, like I say that the world walks around or people walk around with like antennas, right? And that antenna is synced in or tuned into finding solutions to my problem. I'll give you a simple example. We just got a puppy about 9 months ago. And all of a sudden I was attuned to every blog or article that was like how to get your puppy to stop chewing or how to get like, you know, simple things. But that's just a simple example that, um, 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 as, 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 answer. And what I help them do is come up with a succinct kind of gut reaction answer to the work that they do so that whenever they're in any environment, it could be at an event at their kids' school or at an official networking event or speaking from a stage., but that the audience immediately feels that she or he is the right person to solve my problem.

Gresham Harkless 06:03
Right. And that's extremely powerful. And I know you kind of touched on that, um, in your story and on that communication piece. And I think it's so important and 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 the one sentence, uh, then it sometimes doesn't make, make any difference just because no one will hire us or want to work with us.

Dolores Hirschmann 06:22
There's no stickiness. Mm-hmm. And, and that work really, I didn't, and I didn't realize the need for this work, um, as so much until I became a TEDx organizer and I was selecting people to get on my stage. And so the first question we would ask my team or I, we would say, okay, what is the idea you wanna share on my stage? And on they went for 20, 30 minutes about all that they've done 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. And so that is how it began for me to understand the need for this service. And so now I, I have, you know, I do work with speakers. I do work with TEDx speakers, but for the most part, I work with service entrepreneurs that are growing a business out of a solution that they provide and, you know, help them communicate and scale it.

Gresham Harkless 07:15
Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. That's definitely like true entrepreneurial form 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. 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. So, Mark Twain. Mark Twain. Okay, perfect. Yeah. So the same idea and 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 actually have put a lot of the work in to really get really succinct on exactly what we do, what we provide, how we help the people, and are able to kind of say that very short and sweet, like Mark Twain said.

Dolores Hirschmann 07:49
Adding a word into quotes, Einstein said, “If you can't explain something simply, you don't, you're not that clear anyway.” Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 07:59
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 08:09
So, thank you for the question. So, I would say in general, my secret sauce is what we started this interview with is that The combination of my, my skillset and my capacity as a coach, as a life and executive coach, and my background and my knowledge on marketing and digital marketing and what I call relationship marketing. So combining those two actually makes me stand out from any other coach, like executive coach or life coach or any other business strategies.

Gresham Harkless 08:39
Yeah, that makes sense. And I figured that might be right in line with what you were going to say, just because I think that it is rare that you have both of those aspects. Usually you have to go to one person and then go to another person and then try, hopefully try to marry the two. And a lot of times they aren't in alignment because the 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, should I do this or that and not understand how to marry the two. Yeah.

Dolores Hirschmann 08:59
And here's another kind of secret sauce that I think for anybody of anybody listening, I want to pay attention 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 am English as a second language. What that means is that I listen differently, number one. Number two, that I can play the card when I'm working with someone, someone explains to me what they do and I, I know it's, I might understand it, but it's convoluted. I say, I am so sorry, I'm English as a second language. Can 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, um, corner working in a US market, it could be US, Canada, England, um, don't ever underestimate the power that your listening skills have because you will listen from a different perspective.

Gresham Harkless 09:54
Yeah, absolutely. Especially in this kind of like entrepreneurship, um, kind of perspective, you, the whole idea of it is really not to think about things in the same way. And a lot of people that start businesses are actually, um, you know, immigrants or foreign-born or from a different country because usually 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 the different language. They look at things in a different way. And a lot of times that's where gaps and opportunities kind of present themselves. Yeah, exactly. 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 app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Dolores Hirschmann 10:31
So there's a 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 Second World War. He was from Austria. Actually, I'm Argentinian-Austrian. Um, but, um, he talks about life purpose and he focused his work on life purpose. And I always say that to live in purpose is not about having the perfect context around you, but it's for you to be clear what you are, what, what you're called to do and strive to do that day in and day out, independent on when where you're living, because in that book, what he talks about is that in a concentration camp, which is what he was, he could tell when people would give up on their life purpose. And think about who, 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 in 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 a, as an exercise of you being in purpose, no matter what.

Gresham Harkless 11:44
Right. That's, that's really, really powerful because I think so many times, uh, 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. Um, 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, like you said, or maybe I need to get a dog or a cat or whatever it is. And none of those things kind of, uh, build up.

Dolores Hirschmann 12:18
I've traveled the world a lot and, and I, and I, I spend my, my good amount of years trying to find my happiness and my purpose outside of myself. You know, I'm not talking like I'm, it's been a journey for me and I, and I, I, I, I literally would travel. I was lucky to travel since I've been young and anywhere, any city in the world I would arrive to within a day or two, I realized that, oh, it's still me. Whatever was keeping me sad back home, it will be today in Rome or in Malaysia, wherever I was. You, you have no choice. The luggage that you always carry, the internal one, you cannot put it down. Unless you choose to. And so it is the internal work.

Gresham Harkless 12:56
Yeah, absolutely. And so was it that book that prompted you or gave you that spark to figure out, I guess, what—

Dolores Hirschmann 13:02
Yeah, that book is a reminder and I recommend that is that, that being purpose then take action. And as long as you are consistently looking for opportunities to live in your purpose, um, then you will design a job or a business or a life that is worth living.

Gresham Harkless 13:16
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And definitely, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm glad you said the action piece as well too, 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 hand in hand of having that awareness of having a purpose and what that might be, but also of kind of chopping at the tree, so to speak, until that actually happens.

Dolores Hirschmann 13:36
Yeah, I tested that quite a bit in high school. I would put the book under my pillow hoping for osmosis, and it never worked. I actually had to read the book and take the test. Otherwise, I would not get an A. So yeah, you gotta read the book and take action.

Gresham Harkless 13:50
And there you go. You can definitely tell that one to the kids as well too.

Dolores Hirschmann 13:54
So yeah, that, that, you don't even have to read the book. Just go and stick with that and don't be, you know, don't fall asleep.

Gresham Harkless 14:02
Exactly. Exactly. And so, uh, now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this, you might've already touched on, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Dolores Hirschmann 14:14
Trust. Trust yourself first. Trust the process. Trust that you'll be okay no matter what happens tomorrow.

Gresham Harkless 14:22
That's it.

Dolores Hirschmann 14:24
That's it. Because if you are, if right now where you are standing, if you're listening to this podcast, wherever you're standing, if life is good in this moment, you accept it as it is in this moment. There's nothing you lack and whatever comes tomorrow will be great.

Gresham Harkless 14:36
Yeah. And I think kind of right in line with what we talked about before is like, I kind of feel like we're always kind of either future focused, past focused. We're not focused on the present. We don't have that trust or that peace and understanding everything will be all right. It'll work its way out. So sometimes we're 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. Nice. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the 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 15:04
I did not read the question, so I'm not prepared. So CEO to me, it means caring, engaging, and outstanding human being.

Gresham Harkless 15:16
I definitely appreciate that. And I think especially, you know, all 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 know, you start to care for yourself, you care for others because 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 too 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 15:48
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, um, you didn't get there alone and always remember to care and to engage with the people around you. Um, mastersinclarity.com is where you can find me, also on LinkedIn, Dolores Hirschfeld. Masters in Clarity 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 16:21
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Dolores. 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.