17 Apr April 17, 2020 – Clarity Dolores Hirschmann, CleanLots Brian Winch and Your Rich Life Jonathan Satovsky
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Dolores Hirschmann – Founder and CEO of Masters in Clarity – Read interview highlights here
Dolores Hirschmann, CEO of Masters in Clarity, is an internationally recognized strategist, coach, speaker, TEDxOrganizer and author. Through both Private Coaching and her ‘5 Steps To Clarity Program’, Dolores helps her clients set the foundation from where they will design their strategies and gain the clarity they need to communicate and engage their audience, teams, and stakeholders. Dolores works with ‘Ideapreneurs’ to get out of their own way so that they will have an opportunity to impact others. She shifts her clients from talking about what they do to talking about what they stand for and become Thought Leaders. Dolores writes for different publications including Creativ Magazine, and is also the author of New Beginnings: a novel and 18 Minutes of Impact: Move Your Audience to Action the TED Way.
Brian Winch – Founder and CEO of CleanLots
Brian Winch is the Founder and CEO of CleanLots, America’s simplest and most effective litter removal business. What started as a side hustle way back in 1981 has now grown into a $650k a year operation. He believes if you’re ambitious & motivated, you can change your future even by starting a small side hustle and quickly turn that into an amazing and growing business anyone can do. He is passionate about making a positive impact on his community and teaching others to start a company that can make a positive change in the community. Brian is also the author of Cleanlots: America’s Simplest Business, an operations manual that details how to start and operate a successful parking lot litter removal business.
Jonathan Satovsky – Founder and CEO of Satovsky Asset Management
Jonathon Satovsky is the Founder and CEO of Satovsky Asset Management (SAM), a New York City based boutique independent registered investment advisory firm which provides advice on over $2 billion in assets and manages more than $500 million. Jonathan recognizes every client has unique visions, goals, and preferences and offers a custom-tailored approach, aligning advice and portfolio structure to deliver financial peace of mind. Not only is he deeply knowledgeable about the logistics of investment and asset management, but he approaches them from an entirely human perspective and talks straight talk. Jonathon is also the Your Rich Life, a book where he delivers frank talk on how to stay out of your own way and maximize lifetime returns as an investor.
Highlights from Dolores’s Interview
I think that communicating our message and being seen can go beyond the barrier that we’re facing with the COVID-19. Actually, I just received a message from TED Conferences this past week, and they’re hosting live Facebook interviews between Chris Anderson, the Director of TED, with different speakers or thought leaders. So the truth is that while the way we’ve been gathering to date is not possible right now, I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for redesigning ways to gather. But it definitely requires different abilities as a speaker, though. I coach a lot of speakers, not just TED, and I actually help people speak on many different formats, not just the TEDx platform. The truth is that what one thing about the TED-style speaking is that it is inherently a very clear, concise, and brief way of communicating. That’s why it’s been so popular, that’s why TED Talks online are so popular. So I think as we transition to the new world which we will go back; the quarantine will end but it will be a new world, I think there’s something to be said about how can you engage your audiences in a brief amount of time with very concise information in a clear way, so that you begin a journey with your potential clients through speaking virtually, but in shorter spurts of information.
Now, let me walk you through the process of finding clarity. So in any situation, virtual or in-person, we always ask what do we do. But when we answer that, we go on and about what we do, but not so much about how we do it. So you say, “Well, I am a consultant, I run small workshops, and in the workshop, these kinds of people come”, and eventually you get to what problem you solve in those workshops. But in communicating in a clear way, you have to lead with a problem that you solve and wait for the average person to ask, how do you solve it? Because the truth is that most people are walking around with these antennas in their heads, and those antennas are tuned into the problems that they’re facing; they may be self-centered, but we’re all self-centered. So you want to have your message use the words of the problem of the people you serve. When I say I clarify a message, people are looking around saying how can I get my message clearer? When I say that, it aligns with a problem that they’re facing, that they’re against. Now, I’ve never talked about how I do it, but it’s clear what I do.
When I talk about how to clarify your message and how to state your value proposition or talk about your work in one sentence, I use a very specific framework which is “To (ACTION) so that (OUTCOME).” That’s what I was talking about, what is the problem that you solve? Because the outcome part is what will hook your audience, and then the action part is what action you make them take. In your world, the outcome is anybody can be an entrepreneur, and the action part is to disrupt the thinking of what it is that you need to be an entrepreneur so that anybody can do it. But most people can’t do that with their work. It doesn’t mean that you turn your 10-sentence paragraph into a sexy one sentence, but you turn it into a very clear one sentence, and then you can make it sexy later. When you can abbreviate your whole paragraph answer to the question, what do you do, then you can start creating a very attractive one-liner that will get you traction.
Let’s now switch to the topic of getting a TED talk. First of all, let’s make a clear difference between a TED talk and a TEDx talk; two different animals, the same kind of genetic pool. So a TED talk is a talk delivered at the main TED stage that is organized by the main TED office, which is based in New York. It used to be easier to get on one of those, but now, it’s a little harder with a lot more competition. Now, a TEDx stage is a licensed event that TED offers licenses and you can apply and get a license to, they are happening all over the world and they can be a feeder to the main TED stage. That’s one thing I want to say. So let’s talk about how to get on a TEDx stage because me or nobody out in the world will have a proven formula of getting on TED stage because it’s like almost winning the lottery; I would say buy a ticket, apply or give a TEDx and make it very successful.
Let’s talk about how to get on a TEDx which is an easier space, even though very competitive right now. It starts with clarifying your core idea and being able to communicate that clarity through an application and an interview or an audition. I’m not currently running my TEDx, New Bedford. I ran it for three years consecutively but I just run out of bandwidth to do that because it was a volunteer position. But one of the things we did as we auditioned our speakers is, the first question we would ask would be, what idea do you want to share from our stage? If you are taking more than one or two minutes to answer that question, you probably are not that clear. Let me put it this way. If you’re applying to deliver an 18-minute talk; which is the length of an average TEDx talk, and you take 20 minutes to answer that question, we have a problem. So what you have to do is condense your 20-minute thesis talk into 1-minute for the audition, and then eventually into 17-minutes so that you can actually deliver it.
Each TED event is supposed to have some kind of a theme, and that’s a challenge for an organizer because you want a theme that is broad enough to be able to accommodate very different conversations, but that it also has a through-line and positioning. So that’s kind of the challenge for the organizer. There are some events with great themes and very exciting types of conversations, and some that are not so much. Honestly, it depends because some of them are very exciting to some people and some others will be to some other people.
When you are a speaker, this is something I say all the time, and you’re looking to speak at a TEDx event, you must look at the themes and ask yourself, am I honestly able to talk under the umbrella of this theme? It’s not like the Cinderella Syndrome of making the shoe fit no matter what. You really want to be honest with your message and your work and say, do I have space under this theme or it just doesn’t fit? So don’t force it if it doesn’t fit, because there’s plenty of opportunities out there. But when it does, just make sure that you weave that through-line into your talk when you’re delivering it. Because your talk has to be a really good fit in the conversation that the event team is putting together, but it also has to be able to stand alone online. Because ultimately, there are two purposes for you delivering: your target is to enrich the audience that shows up that day, but also to have a talk that lives forever and enrich the audience of each viewer that can experience your message.
Now, here’s some advice on how to get through the application process. First of all, clarity, brevity, a concise answer to the questions is imperative. So if you’re not clear, go get some clarity and come back, but you don’t need to be inventing something new. Every time people come to me or I get an email saying, “Hey, here’s my idea. Do you think it’s a new idea or a good idea?” I usually answer “No, it’s not a new idea. But that doesn’t mean you’re not deserving of a stage.” So I want everybody to know that while your idea might not be new; I pretty much guarantee most people’s ideas are not new, but the question that I ask the speaker is, what about you make this a new idea maybe or a new approach to an old problem? Because there’s always room for improvement in a problem that’s already being solved in another way or by someone else. I always say, if your idea is one of a million of the same type, thank god, because that means there are at least 10 times that many people suffering from that problem and you are another helper.
To find more about me, go to mastersinclarity.com. I have a website, I’m on Instagram and on Facebook. Basically, we help you master your clarity.