Irene Stern Frielich discusses the attributes of courage, trust-building, and authenticity and how they have helped her achieve audacious goals she sets for herself. Setting those lofty goals, and having an operational plan to break down her goals and then execute on them, has helped Irene to grow her instructional design consulting business and has propelled her through writing and publishing her memoir. Now, Irene uses the same strategies to realize her goal of scheduling 50 events related to her book in the next year, while also achieving the business goals she’s set for EnVision.
Irene is the owner of EnVision Performance Solutions, an award-winning instructional design consulting firm based in Massachusetts. For the past 25 years, Irene and her team have been developing customized learning solutions for large and small corporations, not-for-profit groups, and public health organizations.
Irene’s memoir, Shattered Stars, Healing Hearts: Unraveling My Father’s Holocaust Survival Story, came out in October 2023 and has earned the #1 New Release in Jewish Biography and #1 New Release in Holocaust Biography spots on Amazon. Irene has spoken internationally about her family’s story and has had articles about her family published in German and Dutch media. She is deeply grateful to the eighteen courageous individuals who helped her family survive.
More from Irene Stern Frielich
Irene Stern Frielich discusses the attributes of courage, trust-building, and authenticity and how they have helped her achieve audacious goals she sets for herself. Setting those lofty goals, and having an operational plan to break down her goals and then execute on them, has helped Irene to grow her instructional design consulting business and has propelled her through writing and publishing her memoir. Now, Irene uses the same strategies to realize her goal of scheduling 50 events related to her book in the next year, while also achieving the business goals she’s set for EnVision.
Irene is the owner of EnVision Performance Solutions, an award-winning instructional design consulting firm based in Massachusetts. For the past 25 years, Irene and her team have been developing customized learning solutions for large and small corporations, not-for-profit groups, and public health organizations.
Irene’s memoir, Shattered Stars, Healing Hearts: Unraveling My Father’s Holocaust Survival Story, came out in October 2023 and has earned the #1 New Release in Jewish Biography and #1 New Release in Holocaust Biography spots on Amazon. Irene has spoken internationally about her family’s story and has had articles about her family published in German and Dutch media. She is deeply grateful to the eighteen courageous individuals who helped her family survive.
More from Irene Stern Frielich
Welcome to The Water Trough, where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Drawster, the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted. Hi folks. This is Ed draws to the small business doctor. And today I'm joined by my good friend, Irene Stern Freelick. Irene is the owner of envision performance solutions and award winning instructional design consulting firm based in Massachusetts. For the past 25 years, Irene and her team have been developing customized learning solutions for large and small corporations, not for profit groups, and public health organizations. Irene's memoir, Shattered Stars, Healing Hearts, Unraveling My Father's Holocaust Survival Story, came out in October 2023 and has earned the number one release in Jewish biography and number one release in Holocaust biography spots on Amazon. Irene's spoken internationally about her family's story, and has had articles about her family published in German and Dutch media. She's deeply grateful to the 18 courageous individuals who helped her family survive. Irene and her husband Seth treasure moments with their grown kids. Irene enjoys playing flute, kayaking, biking, and snowshoeing. And is an avid cook and home entertainer. Irene, welcome! Hi, Ed. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today. And I'm excited to have you here with us today as well. I'd like to point out about your memoir. I realize these are not the best of times, although I am encouraged by the recent, holding of events in the Middle East, which makes, hopefully for better times. And I hope for you and any members of your family, that everything is going well there. Thank you. So let's get into the nitty gritty about storytelling and I really think it's important that you are a storyteller because that's, I believe, the most powerful way to engage folks. It's not telling me what to do. It's talking about what I've done and then allowing me to insert myself. To the degree that I fit into those stories. So let's talk about some of the really critical matters that have played a big part in your life. What about courage? I feel like courage is an underrated and maybe unspoken about skill attribute. And what I have learned actually through researching my father's story is that I have a lot of courage, I never realized that before, and that that courage has played out in my professional career since the beginning, So, you know, I have thought about ways that I actually demonstrated my courage. And, there's a few examples I have. Would you like me to share one with you? I would love to hear one or two. So for example, early in my career, I started my business, by the way, 25 years ago, this month we're recording in November, 2023, so 25 years, long time to be in business, and I'm very grateful for that. Congratulations. That's excellent. Thank you. Thank you. And I still remember back to one of my very first clients starting out 25, 24 years ago, when I encountered a situation that I for a moment, wasn't sure how to handle and what happened was this, there was a team of us, both internal and external working on a project together. We all had our different areas and I was overseeing it in a way that I was pulling all the pieces together. And I had observed that one of the internal, partners on this project was copying media from the internet that was copyrighted media and using it in the training materials. And I knew that that was illegal and wrong and also opened up the client for liability. So I was trying to think about, you know, what do you do about this? I could have just ignored it, but that would not be demonstrating courage. I chose to say something about it. I felt like that was the right thing to do. So I stood up and said something directly to this person who said, It's no problem. I do it all the time. It's not an issue. And of course it is an issue. And again, I could have made the decision to ignore it. Or to do something about it. And on the second time I said something to him and he said, it's fine. I felt like I had to bring it up for, a number of reasons. besides it just being the right thing to do. So I did bring it up to his. I don't remember if it was his manager or the project manager of the whole project, and let them know that somebody, was doing this and so that they could talk to the whole team to let them know what is okay and not okay. So this is an example of something I easily could have walked away from and not thought twice about, although I know it would be still nagging me today, just like the story is in my head today. that's kind of who I am. It will nag at me. I think that kind of stuff would nag at most of us. So, demonstrating the courage and actually saying something or doing something, I feel is, a really critical, good partner kind of thing to do. So at the time that you were experiencing this, what was going through your head? You talk about courage, which basically leads to the action, the following through doing something about it, if you will. But what led up to that? What was going on in your head? Well, you know, I thought. This person is going to get in trouble at some point in their career by doing this kind of thing. And if I don't say anything, and they keep doing potentially for years, and eventually it catches up with them, they're potentially going to be in a lot of trouble, and I could have prevented that, and I felt a sense of responsibility about, I see it, I can do something or not do something, and I felt like I had to, sometimes I wonder if there were, these parallel universes or branches, like if you make a decision today to do one thing and not the other thing, what would happen if the other thing were the way the world played out? We'll never know, but I always think about that. And, because I don't know, I feel. Even more responsibility to say something in that moment. So that was one of the things going through my mind. And I probably had a million different things going on, but the other one was thinking about the client in themselves, because they were a big organization, a big company, and probably nobody would find out about this one instance, but it was possible, and if it kept happening, they could be found out, and they could get a lot of bad PR for doing behaviors like this. One little, seemingly little thing. May not be a big deal, but if this becomes endemic in an organization and nobody says anything about it, it becomes a big deal. Was it easy for you to take those steps? That's an interesting question. I mean, yes and no, I would say. yes, in that, in my heart, it felt like the right thing to do. I knew I had to do this, but how to do it, what to say, whom to say it to. how to say it, how to position it, how to take it one step at a time. That was hard. And I did have to think that through a bit to not come off as the mean person, the mean external consultant, because that wasn't my intention. Um, yeah. So that part was hard. Actually executing on this, feeling that I had was hard, I think that's probably the question that a lot of people would have. It's the right thing to do. I feel it's the right thing to do at any rate. But how do I do it? How do I take that first step? And all those things that go through your head, as you said, I think that is the obstacle, the barrier, perhaps, to going forward. I think a lot of people would stop. And they'd go, yeah, it's not the right thing. I have to say something, but, and that's the end of it Yeah. I think it's really easy to go down that path. It's the path of least resistance, right? Oh, but we have to live with that decision and maybe it doesn't bother some people. Maybe it bothers some people more than others. I don't know. I know these things bother me. I remember such picky you and things seemingly picky and things that are important to me. So I need to say something. But I'll tell you, I think that this, idea of authenticity plays into this. Okay. So, what I mean by that is, if I am myself, and I am my genuine self at work and reveal a bit about who I really am, and just be myself, people are going to relate with me better. And that makes it easier to say the hard things there are to say. Sometimes a lot easier because we can say things to each other if we know each other well enough or in a way that we're both being authentic with each other and that builds trust and when you're building trust, you're able to say these harder things what I'm hearing. Now is that the courage is the result of your authenticity it's a standard bearer for you. If you are your authentic self, then you had to do something about this and the courage is that which allows you to go forward, not just simply to accept, you got to do something, but to do something is that. Correct. That's a really interesting connection of the two attributes that I love. So maintaining my authenticity would be really important to helping me have the strength to be courageous and say the things that are important to me to say or do. Yeah. I think they do go hand in hand certainly authenticity can help with courage. Well, it eases the burden because you're being no other than yourself, right? Right. This is me being me and that courage is the result of me being me. I have them to do something. I've got a responsibility, perhaps an obligation. Yeah, I think you're right. And you know, I was thinking of this other example of courage that I think aligns well with authenticity also. Which is it's actually a general example because this has happened a few times in my business where a client will come to us and ask us to do X, Y, Z. So they're placing the order with us and our role is to develop custom training programs for our clients and we want that training program to impact. Work performance and to have a purpose in the greater business. So sometimes our clients do all the needs assessment and the work to determine what that training program should be. And they tell us and we build it for them, or they maybe haven't done all of their homework or they think they have, but then there are holes poked in it. And so when they call us in, If they place their order with us and we determine by asking them some of our standard questions that it just might not help them achieve the business goal. They think they need to achieve. We'll say something about that. I'll say, you know, I'm not sure if you're quite ready for this. Should we work on this other aspect and think it through a little more first. And I'll tell you, sometimes we've lost projects because of that. Not that they necessarily go to another consultant, but they realize that they didn't do all of their homework first, and they need to do a little more work, and they appreciate, that we're being helpful. Thank you. Thank you. honest with them and, trying to give them the best product they can get. We might not ever see that project or we might see that project and a lot more because we have, built this trust with them and this authenticity, but it takes courage to say something like that and potentially lose a project you think you're getting and that sometimes can be very lucrative. So, yes, you make a good point and I can see those going hand in hand.. I admire the fact that you're willing to forgo a lucrative project for the sake of getting it right. And when I say getting it right, I'm referring to the client being prepared. To go forward. I think a lot of people could take note of that and ask themselves, am I doing this? It's easy for us to administer to the needs of people under the bona fides of the quote expert, but We really need to engage that client, make sure they're fully prepared to take advantage of what we have to offer. I like what I'm hearing and I hope that people will take that away as an important lesson about courage, about authenticity, about being there for your clients. It's a lot more than getting a lucrative contract, right? It's not Jerry Maguire, show me the money. let us do it. Right. Correct. Yes. And I'm looking for a long term relationship. And so if I take on a project that isn't going to be quite right, they're never going to come back to me anyway, where if I turn it down and they understand why I'm turning it down, they are likely to come back to me. And that has happened where they'll come back either with that project when they're more ready or something else. I imagine throughout the course of your. Career that you've had many instances where your authenticity has given rise to the need to be courageous and go forward. But I'd like to go back to that 1st example that you gave when you 1st got into business, what lessons did you learn after that specific experience and have they come forward with you to this day and other really great question, Ed, great question. So one of the powerful lessons is to not sweep things under the rug, to realize that doing the right thing or what I perceive as doing the right thing with which might differ from somebody else's right thing. Hopefully not too much, but from time to time, it might differ. Sweeping something under the rug wasn't going to make me feel any better. And it certainly wasn't going to help the other people. And it was going to be hard to get to the other side of that. Thank you for asking this also because it's making me realize something I hadn't quite pieced together before, which is. When I'm facing a dilemma of some sort, whether at work or anywhere, at home or with this book that I wrote, and I'm feeling this tension in my body and this not knowing what I should do, which way I should go, I realize that often there's the best way forward, which is the hardest way forward. It is having a conversation with somebody about something tough, something that I don't want to have. But it needs to be done in order to get to the other side in a way that I think is the right way to go in a way that I will be comfortable with and in a way that I think won't create issues with people. It's not easy to do that. And, I probably don't do it as often as I would really like to have done it. But when I do it. And I resolve it by having this difficult conversation with somebody. I feel so much better and usually our relationship is so much stronger. This could be with a friend. It could be with, somebody I met in Germany on my travels. It could be with work. So that is something I have learned. And thank you for bringing that out because it just makes me feel like I'm going to do this more often and not. Question myself about which way to go. I just need to figure out the right words to say and how to say them, just is a big word there. Earlier, you mentioned trust and I clearly see how trust plays a big part, especially since you want lasting relationships. But even if you don't, I sense that building trust is something really vital to you and compassion and kindness are things that. You mentioned compassion and kindness in your notes to me, and I really see how that fits into building trust, and it's emerging in this. Most recent little piece of the conversation right here. How does compassion kindness fit into the building of trust for you? There's a great book. I would like to plug if I may. that guides me a lot. I was so happy to find this book. It's called the trusted advisor and it's by David Meister, Charles Green and Robert Galford. And in this book, they propose something called the trust equation. I'd like to just tell you what the trust equation is, if I may, because it says it all right here. It says trustworthiness is the sum of credibility, reliability, and intimacy divided by self orientation. So to build trust. You don't focus so much on yourself and you focus more on being credible on being reliable and on what they call intimacy, which they describe as people trust those with whom they are willing to talk about difficult agendas. And I think that's really what I'm talking about here. So it's part of the trusted advisors, trustworthiness equation. I highly recommend that book just as a, a rubric for talking about trust in organizations. And it's something that I follow and I've written blog posts about because I feel so strongly about it. And so the compassion and kindness comes in this. Low self orientation. That's on the bottom of the fraction there. So you want to decrease your self orientation, which means, have more compassion and kindness for the other and that helps to increase trust. So that's a very analytical way to look at it for those who like the analytics, but it works and it works for me. It feels right and it works right in the brain. Also, Yeah. number 1, thank you for the plug. I completely agree with you and I can relate as I actually consider Charlie green a friend of mine and I have read this book and I am familiar with the equation and I just think it's. Really cool that you brought up that book the equation and his work. And yes, I absolutely agree that it fits right in here. Trust, compassion and kindness. If your authentic self is one who. Really believes in compassion and kindness who values nurturing and building trust in a relationship and recognizes the times when it's going to be difficult to do just that to be trusted, to be compassionate and kind. Sometimes it's going to take you to places that are uncomfortable, but we're so complex, all of us. And so that courage that you talk about is. Absolutely fitting. we have to be willing on that foundation that we have built, the authenticity being our own and that trust that we have developed. Then we can go forward and say, okay, this is awkward. This is difficult. This is challenging, but, but it's the right thing to do in the context of what we were when we started out. With all these things about being yourself, where do your expectations and goals fit in? how does that relate to your, efforts, both in your work, in your book writing? what is driving you? Well, first of all, I think I was born this way for better or for worse, or brought up this way. I'm not sure, but I always a high achiever, I was always aiming to get the highest marks in school, but my parents also expected that of me. So wherever it came from, whether I was born that way or brought up that way or whatever. I've always had these high self expectations. And so in order to achieve those high self expectations, I always need to put a plan in place. It just doesn't just happen. For example, when, I started out my business, I was really just hoping to earn a living. But as I saw that there was a real need for what I was offering out there and my business grew and grew, I realized this was a real thing. 25 years ago I started, but maybe 23 years ago it really started taking off and I couldn't even keep up with the work. So it became really a full business with a business plan and with team members and a lot of other things that and I incorporate it. So, in order to achieve. wHat were in the beginning kind of softish goals, I created hard goals, so I set goals for what our sales were going to be, what our, number of new clients per year was going to be, and I keep that up. I keep setting goals year to year. I actually have my three year goals, my one year goal. My quarterly goal in order to meet the yearly goal, and then somebody taught me the word a sprint, which I think technically is, a couple of days or a week in order to achieve that quarterly goal. I use the timings that work for me right now. It's my sprints are not really sprints, but they're three weeks. I break down all my work, in three week or so increments, all with a view of achieving my annual goal. So I'm setting these goals and I'm setting lofty goals. Some people call them BHAGs, big, hairy, audacious goals. I don't know what life is like without those, so I set them. And usually I achieve them, and I'm, in some ways amazed when I achieve some of these lofty goals. And in other ways, I realize if I never set that goal, I never would have achieved it. And I have the potential to achieve it. So that's how I do it for work and for my book. I mean, I'm not a writer. I write, articles and blog posts for work, and I write training programs that's very different than writing creative nonfiction, which is what my memoir is, and it's a complex book because it has multiple time frames in it, and we're jumping back and forth in time, and It's long. It's, 360 pages. And that's because I cut a hundred pages. And how to accomplish that when I really didn't know what I was doing when I started out. So my big hairy audacious goal was published this book and then breaking it down to What do I need to do to achieve that goal, which included learning how to write creative nonfiction memoir, learning how to write, for example, emotion. I had no idea. I couldn't just say, I cried. That doesn't work in a book. Right. And learning how to publish it, learning all these things. So I had to break it down so setting this. And my first goal of actually publishing the book was my lofty goal and now that it's published, which is incredibly exciting to me, unbelievable. Now my lofty goal is to plan to schedule 50 events in the next year related to this book, which is a lofty goal, but I can do it. And again, I've broken it down, I have a plan, and as long as I have enough time to execute on the plan, I think I can do it. So it's breaking down my, setting high expectations, breaking it down, and talking about it. That was one of the big things that led to my success in most things that I've done professionally, with my book, and also even with, And I'll explain that, but I tell people what my plans are. So I told people I was writing a book in the early days of writing when I had no idea if I could really do this or not. I told everybody I knew I was writing a book because there was no way I could back down from that. I mean, there was. But I didn't want to. I had to, maintain my self, my dignity, is how I saw it. I'm kidding a little bit, but it helped me stay focused on writing the book. And with writing a bicycle, I had wanted to do a metric century bike ride in New York City. That was a big goal of mine. So that's, about 60 miles. Okay. And. I've ridden 20 miles, 24 miles. This was about 10 years ago when I was in a little bit better shape. And so I thought, well, 50 miles, 55 miles, the actual ride was 55 miles, but we ended up doing the metric century because we got lost and stuff. So I, consider it a metric century, but you know, I broke it down to what did I have to do to be able to accomplish that? And I told everybody I was doing that. So could I do it? I didn't know if I could actually do it. there were some moments during the bike ride that I didn't know if I could actually do it because I wasn't eating enough food. Uh, but I did it and I did 65 miles in a day, and I'm very proud of that, but it's not as likely as I would have actually done that if I hadn't told people I was doing it and committed, to the world in a sense that I was doing it. So, accountability is having yourself and someone else to hold the expectation to you. Absolutely, yes. I have a question here. Certainly, people are familiar with the idea of goals, but listening to the way that you've set this up. You know, the sprint, the quarterlies, the annuals and such. I think a question that might come to mind for people is how do you manage to track these things? The idea of goal setting is. Relatively common enough by itself. How do you track all these things? Because you got a lot of stuff going on here. You might say you're juggling a lot of balls in the air. So I have an operations mindset. I went to business school, I always liked being organized in an operational kind of way. So I set up for my business, a lot of operational, let's say spreadsheets. I'm the spreadsheet queen, people call me. Okay, and they're not even that complex, but there's a lot of information on them. So I track my prospects on a spreadsheet and, prospect through sale and all the things I need to do to complete that sale and onboard that client. And then follow up with that client. That's one whole operational sheet. I have an operational sheet on, on networking and making sure that I keep up with people because that's an important part of what I do, maintaining relationships, even with people that I haven't worked with in years or have never worked with, but we have a good. Relationship and we help each other out from time to time. So I want to be sure that I'm being in touch with people in a thoughtful way. So I have a separate operational sheet for that. So I have a number of operational sheets that I go to, to help keep me organized because I would not remember to do these things, in a regular way. And then I just put placeholders in my calendar for, alright. doing my marketing activities or my networking activities. And I also have all the projects that we have at the moment. So I have a separate spreadsheet for that because I have an amazing team of people who do most of the work and I will manage the projects. Or I'm sometimes I'm not very involved, but I need to know what's going on. So I need to track all of those projects. So that's yet another spreadsheet. Oh, and it's funny you asked this though, Ed, because I was just thinking about, how I'm going to manage such things for this, these events that I want to plan in this next year, these 50 events related to my book. And I'm trying to decide if I want to, I mean, it's a business, right? I'm treating it like a business, but do I want it to be as operationally oriented as my Envision business is? And that's something I'm working through right now. I don't want it to be so systematic in a way. I mean, that will be more efficient, but this is, really a labor Of love of deep love and I want to keep it there and so I'm actually struggling with that at the moment and I'll need to be working that through. I have a suspicion that you're going to do just fine with that based on the things that you've done thus far. Thank you. I hope so. Thank you. I believe you will. So listen, Irene, we're running out of time here. So is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we close up? I'd like to say, don't doubt yourself. Don't second guess yourself to your listeners. Go with what your heart tells you and figure out a way to move forward with that. Because I think the heart is where all the answers are. If we all worked from our heart, this world would be a very different place. I believe. I thank you for that, and I do agree with you. Folks, this is Ed Draws, the small business doctor. I want to thank you for joining me today with my good friend, Irene Stern Frelick. The information provided here, I hope will be of value to you and inspiration for things. I really appreciate Irene, the way that you use the storytelling approach to this, as I am a Absolute fanatic about storytelling. So thank you so much for everything that you brought to us today. I want to remind folks to that. There will be some follow up information here about the envisioned performance solutions and also Irene's book shattered stars, healing hearts and raveling. My father's Holocaust survival story in the text with the podcast. So I encourage you to go there and take a look as well. Irene, I want to thank you so much for everything. Thank you so much, Ed. I appreciate your having me on today. It was a pleasure. Folks, until next time, I want to wish you a healthy business. Take care.