Dolores Hirschmann - Master Your Clarity

Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting Exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black, and thank you for listening. It's a pleasure to have you with me. Uh, pleasure to have you. And all of our listeners who have been with us over the last 1500 or so interviews that we've done on a wide variety of topics here at Exit Coach Radio, and we're going to move on to my next guest who is Dolores Hirshman. Dolores has a firm called Masters in Clarity, and they're a full service digital agency that believes being a favorite brand is more valuable than just being a famous one. Let me say that again. They believe that being a favorite brand is more valuable than just being a famous one. They craft beautiful beautifully useful connected ecosystems that grow businesses and build enduring relationships between brands and humans, and she has a really interesting story about how she got into business. So I'll bring you on now. Dolores, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you, Bill, can I hire you to introduce me for the rest of my life? Sure. Sure thing, you, you have a beautiful, a beautiful website, um, and it's, it's very interesting, um, you how you got into this business. Tell her, could we start off with that story? Absolutely. So, so we focus on helping our clients communicate effectively and clearly and you know in the journey of, of, of getting here, one of the, the main thing that that led me to to launching Masters in clarity was as a TEDx organizer we would have an application to receive figures for our event every year we, we run one of the largest events here in the East Coast. I was leading that event. And I was surprised because I would hop on, on calls with people so they would tell me more about their work. And it would take them over 20 minutes to tell me about the work and if you know anything about Ted and TAX, you can't speak on stage for more than 18. So clarity to sickness to sickness and straightforwardness was not their strength. And so that's where I started realizing how hard it is for people to clearly communicate their message and then grow their business and get the attention from you. Very interesting and so um the story I was talking about though was also um you your husband lost his employment, right? And and so you were you were thinking about a lot of this stuff, but all of a sudden you you were forced into action, it sounds like. Absolutely, so yeah, so I, I'm a mom of 4, and I've always had a privilege and the, and the, and I'm grateful for it that for most of the, the years when the kids were young, I was 2nd breadwinner. I was the the fun income, right? And so I was able to explore my own, my own skill sets and develop. And so yeah, just as you said, Bill, you know my husband, it's complicated, but he lost his job. It's actually a family business so it's actually not one of those that I lost my job and I'll go get another one. There's a lot of non-compete and we actually are in an actual lawsuit, um, but it was literally. One of those things that he looked at me and he said tag you're it you you now it's up to you to grow your business and he's like I was like I'm a coach like it doesn't work that way and, and, and then he and honestly it was a whole month of of crying in my pillow, um, and not believing that I could, um, but that next month and you will never forget it was January 1st. 2017 when most people are still partying, I was wrapping my head around how am I going to double my revenue this month and it was very specific. I need to double the amount of cash that will come in that month. So that I could pay the mortgage of the house and all the other expenses, it wasn't like an aspirational doubling. I needed X amount of cash, um, and what I, what I did, which, you know, ended up propelling Master decline is that I got really clear on what we added the value that we had for our clients, and we actually got really clear of what are some problems that we can actually solve because they're done for you. That's what you're, you're referred to as the agency. Um, well, we could actually solve the client problem because there are a lot of coaches and strategies out there that will tell you what to do and then you sit down and do it and you wanna hit your head against the wall because you don't know what how to do it like we don't have questions that we want to do something and then we get stuck, right? So for pretty much every hour of coaching or strategy that you get from me you will get 2 or more hours with my team doing the work with you or for you. Oh, that's excellent. That's excellent. So I know that uh some of the things that you do are to help people to number one, be clear, be very clear, that's masters and clarity about the message that they convey and you call it the TED way. I think you know all of our listeners know what TED Talks are, but what is the TED way? What, what do you, what is that process? Yeah, and that's inspired in again in my work as a TEDx organizer which I had to figure out very quickly. I, I learned two things. Number one is how many of the speakers that wanted to speak on my stage, um, we're doing amazing work but we're not clear on how to communicate it. That's lesson number one. And so we needed to start uh reading between the lines of this messy applications to find undiscovered jewel speakers, right? And so then I had to help them get ready for TAX and become incredibly clear and powerful in under 1018 minutes, so. To do that I created a framework which I call the TED way. It's, it's a framework of speaking that gets you to hone in on the value that you add to the world and, and, and use imagery and metaphor for your audiences to really get it um almost immediately. So talking talking in word pictures, so to speak, and let people helping people because people people um receive communications in what all different ways, right? Some are visual and some some are auditory, but certainly in a in a TED Talk I would imagine there's a wave of um uh just like there are in all talks, a wave of attention uh uh where it's very high at certain points and very low, so there's a lot of psychology to that isn't there? Absolutely and, and in the and so in the, in the, in the framework that I've designed for this, it, it takes the I help the, the communicator, the speaker, you know, break down their message into 7 parts. And the first one is meet your audience where they are. Don't start talking about you and your work until you prepare their brain to receive it. So it's almost like there's a, there's a diplomacy and communication on that you have to prepare your audience's brain before you, um you teach them something or you pitch or you talk about your work. And you know most speakers begin by introducing themselves. I always say, you know, I say gently, but nobody cares who you are until you give them a reason to care. So so start by connecting with where they are, what they are struggling with, what is going on in their head, then then give them an idea or a or a or um. Or, or something they can wrap their head around that, maybe it's of interest of them, and then you're gonna have given them a reason to care about who you are or want to know who you are. Very interesting so yeah so um people are I guess conditioned more and more these days to kind of tune out before they you know they need to be, they need to be uh uh coerced to tune in in some ways these days um. We have so many messages coming at us right on a regular basis. um one of the interesting things I read on your website was how you design a growth strategy that's aligned with who your client is as an entrepreneur so that so that they they're working from their their highest and best use to their their highest energy place and so everything flows more naturally and I find. That so many business owners I talked to are forced to be the CEO but not chief executive officer, chief everything officer, and so they find themselves dealing with a lot of stuff that they really don't want to do that there wasn't their passion. So what happens when people, when you find people like that and you're able to um help them focus on what flows naturally for them. Yes, and, and I mean, and that was part of my journey as I doubled my business because of my own personal financial situation, um, it it came to a point that I needed to ask myself, and this is what I have my clients ask themselves is like of all the things that you do in your business right now I would say make a list. And circle those that you actually get excited about those you, you have fun doing them they come easy, you almost lose track of time, you know those things that when you're doing them, you're just floating. And so that's what I call your brilliance, and the goal is to design your business, and this is not, you don't need money for this. You you just need strategy is that you need to design your business to spend 70 or 80% of your time in the zone of brilliance and then the rest of the time in your excellence. And then what you should let go of is things that you're good at but you're not great at that you could do but it's not great and then there's things that we might not realize but that we are actually incompetent. Let me give you an example. Last week I was doing a launch and I'm a helper at heart. I always wanna help, right? And so I was, I was the main speaker. I was like the, the, the person. Facilitating the room and and pretending we were like we had hundreds of people and all that stuff but I would, I'm, I'm a multitasker sometimes I shouldn't, but I would read Facebook comments and say hey where can I find the link for this or where and so I was literally facilitating the room and answering in Facebook because because I felt that they needed to be answered, right? And finally one of my team members said to me, please stop. Like you are great at being the speaker and the facilitator. Let us handle the quest, the Q&A and the chat, uh, because I was giving the wrong information. Um, so sometimes, yes, we, we might want to be the chief of everything, um, and we might actually be hurting the business. Certainly um as uh in in our listener base, Dolores so we have a lot of people that are saying I wanna be I wanna sell my business or transfer it to someone else. I want to get out of the day to day in the next let's say 3 to 5 years and so yeah that's one of the first things we say is well we need to list out everything that you do and start figuring out what you should be doing. Let's let's say we recast you as the president of a large multinational company, what would you be expected to do in that company as president? Certainly not uh change the copier um toner, um, or you know. That'd probably be off your list. So, so it's really a question and and as you say, you know, once they find out what they're um really gets them excited and what they're good at, um, it doesn't feel like work so much anymore, um, and so that's that's a trick, you know, an excellent way for people that are thinking about transitioning out of their business to start doing so right away and then you also have something where you say you need to then take consistent action. Towards implementing that strategy and growing your business, uh, and then you have something called the mom skills. Now tell us a little bit about what that is. The, the, the, the mom skills? Uh huh. MUM it says. And you, uh, um, uh, uh, well, I think it here's what it is is that as we start finding our own brilliance, um, and it doesn't stop with us because when we build a business and we have all of our team members in operating in their brilliance with clear what I call, you know, the, the SOPs which I know you do a lot of that work with your clients because without SOPs you can't transition out or. Exit or or delegate right um and so uh it's it's just the process of helping people and the company run without you and in the month basis you know I have 4 kids you know I, I always talk to my my with my husband is that if by 18 that our kids. Can't survive then we've done something wrong so it's more about, you know, the, the mom role of stepping down and and it's, it's torture because you watch them fumble or fail or or or get frustrated and it's and and it's the same for our team it's holding the space for their learning. Um, so that you can step out, but every time we go save the day, like the, you know, the chiefing officer, every time we go save the day we are delaying the exit strategy and in our case we delay the exit strategy as well. They're, they're going out into the world. I don't want boomerang. That's, that's a brilliant, brilliant statement. Every time we save the day we're we're delaying our exit. That is really that's so true and um and a lot of owners think well but by the time by the time I teach someone else how to do this, I could have done it 3 times. Yeah, yeah, and that is true, and there's the truth, but here's the thing, by the time you teach this, you might have done it 3 times, but if you teach it to one person who can teach to another person, you will never do it again so you might do it 3 times in once. Um, but then you'll never do it again for the rest of your life. And the and of course as our listeners are transitioning towards selling or exiting their business, they, they need to be busy in preparing for that new task which is completely different than running your business. And so when you talk about strategies for for clear growth, I think that's very, very important for our listeners to to. I recognize that for a lot of them the only way they're going to get out of their business in the next 3 to 5 years is to grow their way out because they've been running their business like a lifestyle business and it's not as valuable as they think to the outside world, so they really need to be working on that. So what are some of the steps that you take and how do you Uh, how often do you communicate with your, your clients? Um, how does it look when they engage you for, for some of these uh services? Absolutely. So I run my company on a methodology that includes a lot of what we've been talking about Bill, but I put everything under what we call the idea message which touches on the clarity of messaging touches on the system to run the company, you know, and delegate it touches on what we call trust fund. Because we don't talk about sales funnels, um, proprietary systems, business model, etc. it's 9 layers of clarity. So when a client comes and starts working with us, the first thing we do is we do a clarity assessment. We, and again this is what I did to grow exponentially when my situation needed me to. Is that we, we break down the company into the 9 layers of clarity and we assess from 1 to 10 what is working and what is not so that we don't start first of all, so we, we, we don't throw the baby in the bathwater because I'm just entrepreneurs say everything's not working nothing's working, right? Well, that's not really true. Uh, but they don't, then don't have the, the knowledge or the, the clarity to break down the part. The first thing is to get a clarity assessment, see what we need to focus on first, and then we start focusing on that part. Let's say it's sales and growth, then we go into the trust fundel and see what's your marketing and sales strategy, how are you engaging, nurturing, and closing your clients? And it may be that that is what I call the pebble in the shoe that's what's bothering them, not enough sales. But maybe it's not a sales pro problem but it's a nurturing problem or it's a product problem so wherever you start in the clarity process, it will lead you to the next immediate part of the business I need to focus on. Excellent. So they may start from a variety of different places, but they're gonna, they end up going around the wheel, right around the wheel with uh with you they end up touching pretty much all the layers of clarity. Now on your website, masters and clarity.com, um, you have all kinds of ways for people to learn and get in touch and sign up for workshops and appointments and all kinds of different things. You have a lot of information and you've published a lot of information. Uh what's what's next for you? What do you, what's next on your uh on your busy agenda? Uh, 00, so looking forward to in, uh, what, what we're working on. So one of the things that I love that you're an exit specialist, I sold one part of my business two years ago now, um, because I'm a creator. I believe that at heart I'm a creator, so I, I create more products than I could. That I will ever grow inside of my business. So one of the things that I'm working on is first of all teaching other business owners are very creative and they are, they, they, they have their brilliance is to create new products and sometimes the companies don't need, they don't need more products, but they, that's what they love to do. So I help them use the companies as as labs to pilot products and then sell them to companies that might not be great at creation uh at at product development specifically in the service industry, um, and then next for me is by end of 2021 I. Well I'm going to launch my uh clarity business coaching certification. um I'm going to help people learn the idea method and use the ADM method and our proprietary system and our all of our content license all of our content so that they can, you know, um, open a business coaching, uh, practice right away without having to do all of the work of content creation etc. That's fantastic. Well, you're, you're very busy and again in, in kind of an era of, uh, let's call it confusion, there's so many, there's so many um marketing platforms and messages and thoughts about branding and uh you know, going, do you uh do you go virtual there's so much going on it would really be who of anyone um to to talk with you, Dolores and and your team and and learn more about how they can become really clear. Uh, because I think that the world really responds to that. So Masters Inclarity.com is the website, and Dolores, there's tons again, go there and learn more and get, get engaged and get involved with Dolores Hirshman and her team. Thank you, Dolores. It's a pleasure to have you on the show today and really enjoyed it and hopefully we get a chance to talk again sometime in the future. Bill, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Hey friend, I know how this feels. 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