Career Coaching Secrets: Lessons from Executive Coach Michele Molitor

 In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, host Rexhen sits down with Michele Molitor, executive coach, clinical hypnotherapist, keynote speaker, and co-author of I Am Perfectly Flawsome. Michelle shares her journey from being a creative director in Silicon Valley to becoming a pioneer in blending neuroscience-based coaching with hypnotherapy. With over 25 years of experience, she has helped thousands of high-achieving leaders overcome stress, anxiety, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism through her Rapid Rewiring™ program. Together, they discuss what it takes to create lasting change, how to find your ideal clients, why referrals are the most powerful marketing channel, and how your deepest pains can become your greatest purpose.


Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelemolitor/
Website: https://michelemolitor.com/

Transcript

Michele Molitor: 0:00

I've worked with thousands of people all over the world, both men and women, and typically the ideal clients that show up that find me are in the 40 to 60-year-old range, that they've already established their business, their career in some way, shape, or form, whether that's a coach or a consultant or a business owner or an executive, and they're dealing with stress and anxiety.

Davis Nguyen: 0:30

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your our coaching business.

Rexhen Doda: 1:01

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host Regan and today's guest is Michelle Molitor, an executive coach, clinical hypnotherapist, keynote speaker, and award-winning co-author of I Am Perfectly Flawsome, How Embracing Imperfection Makes Us Better. As the founder of Nectar Consulting, Michelle helps high-achieving leaders and teams overcome imposter syndrome, anxiety, and perfection so they can lead with calm confidence. Her signature rapid rewiring program blends neuroscience-based coaching with hypnotherapy to shift long-held patterns in as little as 90 days. She also equips organizations with communicating with dignity to build cultures of acceptance, belonging and connection and hosts the weekly Mindful Minute Mondays meditation for nervous system reset. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Michelle.

Michele Molitor: 2:02

Thank you so much, Regin, for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Rexhen Doda: 2:05

It's a pleasure for us to have you on. And I wanted to talk to you about the beginnings of your coaching business. So first of all, what inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business?

Michele Molitor: 2:18

So I've been coaching for almost 25 years now. And in my former career, I was a creative director in web development here in the San Francisco Bay Area at a hot.com startup. I was And yet the market crashed that week instead. Big letdown. But we kept toiling on and ultimately I got bullied out of my position by two folks that I had hired. So it was pretty bad. devastating at the time. It crushed my confidence and my sense of value and worth and like, who am I and what do I do now? So coaching was a very nascent industry at the time. And my uncle wisely said, there's this new thing called career coaching. I was like, okay, where do I find one of those? So through the magic of the Google machine, I found my first coach. And in the process of being coached, it was a, I call them downloads. It was a download moment of, oh, this is the work I'm supposed to be doing. So I quickly pivoted, went on to get trained and certified and started my own business as a coach in 2001.

Rexhen Doda: 3:24

Beautiful. So you've been doing it ever since around 25 years now. So there's so many different, like when we think about 25 years, the coaching has probably changed when it comes to like, we didn't always have Zoom, for example. So it was maybe some of it on the phone, maybe some of it in person. So throughout the years and working with your clients, going through the coaching journey with them, what about it do you find most rewarding?

Michele Molitor: 3:50

The greatest reward of this work, the joy, the raison d'etre for me is really Those moments where a client actually really gets themself, right? That they finally have been able to remove the blinders of fear or self-doubt or stories that were put upon them many, many moons ago, and they get themselves and like, oh. am this. I'll share this with you because a recent client I just completed with, she sent this to me and it literally brought tears to my eyes because it was just like, and so her text message to me was, hi Michelle, many times a day from my gut comes the words, you are worthy of having, doing, and being everything you desire in life. It feels wonderful and happy and true Thank you so much for helping me on my journey. That's why I do this work.

Rexhen Doda: 4:51

Amazing. Oftentimes they probably, like when you think about your clients, you are the one who they could send this message to. There's no one else they could share the same excitement as you because they know they went through the journey with you.

Michele Molitor: 5:04

Yes.

Rexhen Doda: 5:05

So it's beautiful. Now, when thinking about the ideal client profile that you typically work with, I When it comes to this podcast, there's two types of listeners. There's coaches who are listening to these conversations because we are talking about the coaching industry, but there's also the audiences of the coaches we've had on the show before because the coaches have shared the podcast episode with their LinkedIn profiles, with their email lists. So we borrowed some of their audience too, which means that we might be like the audience that is listed, about 35% of them could be in your ideal client profile. So to help them understand if they fit or not how would you specify your ideal client profile is there a certain demographic industry psychographic or some common goals or other commonalities that you're seeing

Michele Molitor: 5:53

um sure so i've worked with thousands of people all over the world and both men and women um and and typically uh the ideal clients that show up that find me are in the 40 to 60 year old range um that they've already established their business, their career in some way, shape or form, whether that's a coach or a consultant or a business owner or an executive. And they're dealing with stress and anxiety. They might be on the verge of burnout. How do I do what I'm doing differently? Because something has to change. I can't keep doing it the way I've always done it, but I don't know what I need to do differently. And so they're caught in habits of thought and habits of behavior. that are no longer serving them, but they don't know what to do differently. And so when they come to me, they're often dealing with high anxiety, maybe not sleeping well, really poor eating habits, workaholism, and they don't know how to get off the hamster wheel, right? To change not only their mindset, but also their wellbeing, their physical wellbeing, because the stress, the anxiety can often lead to migraines or chronic IBS or even things like psoriasis and other physical manifestations. So through our work together, we're able to get at the root causes of what's causing the drive. Oh, I have to get it perfect. I have to keep going. I have to keep striving, striving, striving, which oftentimes are conversations that they learned many years ago at different points earlier in their lifetimes, right? Or it might even be conversations that were handed down from their grandparents or their parents to them that have left this indelible mark on their nervous system. So the work is really about identifying those root causes and then shifting, rewiring, not only their thought patterns, but then helping them reset their nervous system so that they can find that greater calm and confidence as they move through the world. Absolutely. So working with I work with individuals and with groups. My individual programs are typically six to 12 months long, and it's a combination of both coaching and hypnotherapy. So typically on a weekly cadence, we'll start with a deeper dive initial conversation of help me understand who you are and what brought you to my door. What are the challenges that you're dealing with? But also I want to know about your history, your family, your siblings And so that paints a picture for me to help me intuitively sense into what's going on for you. And there's, which you've probably heard this over and over again, Regine, is that the problem that somebody comes to at the surface level is not really the problem, right? Thank you so much. and it's intended for you to listen to as you go to sleep at night, to have you fall asleep. Because as your mind listens to these words over and over again, over 20 to 30 days, that repetition is what builds new neural pathways. Just like you can probably remember the words from your favorite songs when you were in high school, right? So it's the same principle. That's why I call it rapid rewiring because that methodology of listening to it over and over again is telling you new messages to override, to erase out the old messaging. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. I don't belong. I'm not lovable with, I do belong. I am infinitely lovable. I'm absolutely enough and always have been, always will be, right? So over six to 12 months, we're having a series of these coaching and hypnotherapy sessions that build on each other, right? So that it's a layered effect that really creates deep, long lasting results.

Rexhen Doda: 10:36

And that's what I want to focus a little bit on when it comes to long lasting. This is so hypnotherapy. Are there also possible chances of relapses of going back to your old thought patterns and thinking again that you might not be worthy?

Michele Molitor: 10:51

Yes. And it depends on it depends on the case, obviously. So let me give you an example. One client, Greg, who happily shares this story with folks, he came to me dealing with a lack of confidence. He was in a sales position and he was riddled with self-doubt, lack of confidence. He's like, I really want to boost that confidence. And ultimately he wanted to leave his company and go start his own business with his wife. And in his case, it was a really beautiful transformation because it was just like, it was the shot in the arm that he needed that had him go, right, I've got this. I mean, he's a national cyclist. He does amazing things. And he was reminded of that, right, at a much deeper level. And since, and this was many years ago, he started inching his way out the corporate door. He started their own company first on the side, and then he left completely. And now they have a thriving business that their whole family is involved in. So it's a beautiful thing. And he said to me, he said, you know, Do you think I need to go back and listen to my recording? I said, well, give it a shot. Turn it into a science experiment. Listen to it and see what your body tells you. And he came back to me a couple of weeks later. He said, yeah, I listened to it for about a week and then I was good. It's like, great. So some people continue to listen to their recordings for months and years. Others are like, OK, it's embedded. I've got it. And then they keep going. Oftentimes when folks tell me, you know, I'm I'm having that relapse so that those internal voices of self-doubt are creeping in. I'm like, start listening to your recording again and let it do its magic.

Rexhen Doda: 12:43

Beautiful. So, and this is a question that mostly all the coaches are going to find interesting as well, is when it comes to you finding your clients, is there a certain marketing channel that you find that works very well for you?

Michele Molitor: 12:55

Tried all the things over the years. I'm a writer. I've been on over 200 podcast interviews. I've written, this is, I Am Perfectly Flawsome is my fourth book that I've co-authored, actually. This one was with Tom Collins. I write articles. I post on social media. I've done all the things. And ultimately what I found to be most effective is actually good old fashioned networking, right? Meeting people, because what I do is very personal, right? And so people need to get to know me to build that sense of, well, I can trust her, right? She is a very good deep listener and intuitively she sees into me and helps me see into myself in a way that I hadn't done before. So yeah, I've had clients come to me in a variety of different ways from through Google, through Facebook, through Instagram, through writing my book. But ultimately, the best clients I've had have come from referrals of former clients and colleagues.

Rexhen Doda: 13:59

Cool. And it makes sense to me. And I was actually going to say at the beginning, I believe that potentially most likely the channel is going to work best for you is actually the referral network of the people that have seen amazing results and basically refer someone else to you. Now, when looking at the future of your coaching business for the next one to three years, do you have specific business goals that you're working towards?

Michele Molitor: 14:21

Yes, actually. About this time last year, I got another download and it was time. It's time to go back to grad school and get your master's after putting it off for many decades. So I'm actually back in grad school getting my marriage and family therapy degree. So the next level the next expansion of my work over the next three years is actually wholeheartedly putting on my therapist hat and becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist. So I'll be able to work therapeutically at a much deeper level with a broader spectrum of clients here in the state of California. And we'll also be able to continue working as a coach and hypnotherapist worldwide.

Rexhen Doda: 15:09

Cool, amazing. And so that is that is interesting. I feel like it kind of like connects with my other question, which is because going to that probably is going to be an investment there too. When thinking about investments that you've done already, what have been some investments that you feel really good about, either learned a lot or get a good return from in the coaching business? And what have been investments that you would have preferred to have avoided if there's any of

Michele Molitor: 15:34

them? Sure. Well, I'm a learning junkie. I'm a lifelong learner of how do we work as human beings? What makes us tick and why do some people people have confidence and other people don't have confidence and why do we do the things that we do? So the investments that have been wonderful for me are the ones that I have invested in my own learning, right? Going on to become a clinical hypnotherapist, right? Being trained in two different modalities in hypnotherapy, rapid transformational therapy under the training of Marissa Peer and the modality called heart healing under the teacher of Natasha Bray. And bringing those modalities, combining it with my coaching has been life-changing because it allows me to go into deeper, richer places with people than I could have with just coaching because coaching only works at the conscious level primarily. And so the combination of the prefrontal cortex, the conscious part in the back of the brain, your limbic brain in the, in the unconscious part is very, very powerful. Some of the things that haven't worked for me, what comes to mine was spending a whole lot of money trying to do Facebook campaigns and not having the right team in place. And it was like, well, that was throwing money into the wind. That was great. Let's rethink that next time, right? So making sure that you have the right people on your team is critical, right? And that they truly are experts in what they say that they are and getting proof of that because I probably have trusted a little too much in the past and have been bitten more than once. So lesson learned.

Rexhen Doda: 17:19

Cool. Yeah. There's always a lesson there. And so right now with your coaching business and think about your goal as well and coaching and hypnotherapy, when I think about hypnotherapy, I want to understand that a little bit better. Is that something that has to be done in person or could be also done in Zoom?

Michele Molitor: 17:39

No, no, it's a very legitimate question. I actually have always done my hypnotherapy over Zoom. I'm completely remote. I work from my home or wherever I happen to be. And it works beautifully because in a state of hypnosis, your eyes are closed. You're just simply listening to the sound of my voice. It's very relaxing. It's intended to take you into an alpha brainwave state where you're half awake, half asleep. So your body is very, very relaxed, but yet you're able to hear me. You're able to answer my questions you're able to tune into the ideas, the images, the sensations, the feelings that all bubble up to the surface, not to relive past events, but just to notice them as if you were looking at it on a second monitor, like, yeah, that happened to me when I was six. Isn't that interesting? But where I am now, I'm safe. I am worthy. I am deserving. I am lovable. And resetting that messaging so that you can reset your nervous system. So it works brilliantly over Zoom. Always have it

Rexhen Doda: 18:43

Interesting. So that is good to know. And one thing about the coaching business, together with the hypnotherapy, what are some challenges that you're facing right now that you're trying to solve for next? Is there any challenge that you're trying to solve for?

Michele Molitor: 18:58

Honestly, right now, it's just solving for time. because I'm going to grad school full time while running my business full time. So it's, there's a lot, there's a lot of things to read and papers to, I have three papers due this weekend. And so, yeah, it's just making sure that I'm managing my time and my energy effectively. So for example, the first half of this year, I probably did 25 different talks and keynotes. And the second half, I had to have a little talk with myself. I'm like, self, that was too much. And so In order to walk my talk and not burn myself out, I had to like dial way down on the talks and things that I'm giving. So this is one of just a handful of talks that I'm doing the second half of this year, just to maintain my own sanity and make sure that I have the energy to apply to all the things that I am doing.

Rexhen Doda: 19:53

That makes a lot of sense. And I feel like, yeah, I feel like you're probably going to be adjusting very well, even though you keep doing this full time. The beauty of like, being a coach, I feel, and I'm not sure about hypnotherapy because you were the first one that I've interviewed, but coaching is I feel like many coaches have found it to be one of the best things that they've done compared to whatever they've done before that. So when you had your full-time job comparing it to this, how do you compare them?

Michele Molitor: 20:24

I've essentially made myself unemployable by others because I've worked for myself for so long now, right? The thought of getting a J-O-B within another organization kind of makes my whole body cringe a little bit. But, you know, Having your own business, being an entrepreneur, it's not for everyone, right? Some people need, desire that security or that perceived security of getting a weekly paycheck or a monthly paycheck and all the benefits that go with that. I give myself a paycheck, right? And I give myself benefits and whatnot, but it's a different mindset, right? So it's about really being grounded and you have to really love what you do, right? Because there's always ups and downs. there's always ups and downs no matter how hard you try not to have them right especially with crazy things that are happening in the world there's always going to be some curveball that shows up out of left field but sometimes those curveballs are really good too absolutely

Rexhen Doda: 21:25

my final question is this is going to be for coaches who are listening that are trying to scale their impact touch more people's lives change make make a bigger change for those coaches is there any advice you give to these coaches that are trying to scale their impact

Michele Molitor: 21:39

get really clear on your message, get really clear on who you want to impact and the deeper why behind it. Because it's your why, it's your passion and purpose that is what people will be drawn to. From my experience, I've learned this, your greatest source of pain is your greatest source of passion and purpose. So when you can take your pain and turn it around as a gift and then give it to the world, that's what makes you unique and what will attract your perfect clients to you so that you can impact the audience that you're here to

Rexhen Doda: 22:17

thank you thank you so much michelle thank you so much for taking the time to come into our podcast today it was lovely having you on the show and for anyone who wants to connect with you or find you they can look up on linkedin michelle molitor they'll be able to find your profile they can also i believe go into the website michelle molitor.com

Michele Molitor: 22:37

yes and it's michelle with one l so yeah look me up and

Rexhen Doda: 22:41

uh

Michele Molitor: 22:41

You can read more about the work that I do and the talks that I give and the book that I wrote, all the programs that I have on my website.

Rexhen Doda: 22:49

Cool. And we'll put that in the description of this podcast as well so people can find it easily. Thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you for coming.

Michele Molitor: 22:56

Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Davis Nguyen: 22:57

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit joinpurplecircle.com.