81 - Using your Intuitive Abilities for the Business with Sheevaun Moran

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Siobhan Moran, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO and founder of Energetic Solutions, and you can be found at energeticsolutions.com. Welcome.

Thank you.

So tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Oh, well, it's a long one, but I'm going to synthesize it really short bites, um, I was— that are pretty interesting. Uh, one, I was getting in trouble in school, like many people who are kind of ADD, and my parents put me into a coding school. You know, they threw me into coding, computer, computer coding.

Software coding.

Yeah, exactly. Software coding. Yeah, exactly. And I kind of was good at it. And then I go off to college and find that I didn't like it the same. So that was kind of fun. And so I got into art and marketing and math. It's a little bit of left brain, right brain. So that's kind of how my brain thinks. And then I moved to California. And one of the first companies that I worked for when I got here was this little, little tiny company. That was helping computers and accessories. And we went from 12 people to 150, and we went from under a million to many hundreds of millions. And then we sold it to Rubbermaid. And I thought, entrepreneurs, I like this. I want this. I'm good at helping these people. And what they kept telling me over the course of the couple of years I was there, 3, 4 years I was there, is that I had a unique skill of getting people to take action and then I could see into the future. I didn't know exactly what that meant until obviously what I'm doing today. But, um, that was the first time we did that. And then I did it again, and I did that 3 more times. And so I would go in and I would help small entrepreneurs or people who had an idea that needed to be expanded and exploded up and help them take that out into the world and get it big. So that coding thing with more of a consciousness sensitivity thing actually blended together to make energetic solutions.

Interesting. I, I started— I learned how to code in 1969.

Oh wow.

I learned BASIC, all-purpose beginner symbolic instruction code, BASIC programming, from the guy who invented BASIC. BASIC.

Oh wow.

Who was the president of Dartmouth College in those days. We— it was on mainframe. We had 2K of memory and/or storage, and everything was either on punch tape with holes or on holography.

Wow.

It was— you would handwrite out the code and then you'd have to type it in, type it in, and it just put holes in the tape.

You don't even—

you can't even tell whether you made a typo.

Wow.

You know where the term bug came from?

Do tell.

So you got the stack of Hollerith cards and they all have punch holes in them. Sometimes it would get a mosquito or a fly or a little gnat to get on it and the program wouldn't run right. You have to flip through all the cards and where's the goddamn bug?

I never heard that story. I love that.

And that was a long time ago.

Yeah, that's fun.

So what is it that you do today?

So I help CEOs and entrepreneurs who have a big idea and/or they already have something that is going, you know, up to, you know, about $250 million. And, um, there's always holes in how they're running their organization. And the holes are often— everything looks good, it seems good. And how an entrepreneur will find me is they seem to be running a cycle of things occurring again and again, a repeating cycle. And they can't quite figure out with all of the data and everything they're looking at. They bring me in, and then I start kind of poking around in the numbers I'm very numbers-driven too. I want to see the numbers increase. Of course, if I'm doing my work right to help them, then the numbers will increase or the relationships and the team connectivity will come together. And I work with the people at the top. And so I think a better way to describe this is an example. Uh, and so that example would be to say, I've got an entrepreneur client who in all of his workings looked like it was good, looked like things were moving along. He had kind of stepped back and they were about to— they're about to sell the organization, they're about to sell the organization, but he says, I kind of sense, get that spidey sense, something's off. And so I started working with him, and after the first month, what we discovered is he had this particular guy who was like second from the top, uh, and I said, I think you need to— let's look over here at this gentleman. He said, but no, he's amazing, he's been here 15 years, he's done everything right, he runs a really good team. And I said, yeah, I really actually think the way he's running the team is diffusing the opportunities. And he said, no, no, no, no. So I— we I got him, I convinced him to, you know, listen, you're paying me a lot, so let's do this, let's try this. So we started poking around, and sure enough, he was not treating the team well. Nobody knew it. Nobody had reported anything. Nobody said anything. His numbers, he was always shimmying to get to just enough. And I said, well, I think you need to give him about 60 days. And see if he's gonna, you know, rise to the occasion. And the guy didn't rise to the occasion. A lot of excuses, a lot of all kinds of things. And so that guy left, and I said, okay, so now we have a problem with the team members who have been with there. So we solved those problems with the team members. And so for the past 2 quarters, his numbers, his revenues have been higher than they've been in the past 15 years by solving those problems in a very different methodology about teaching them how to interact with the energy of the community, the energy of the group, how to, how to talk to them in a way that is different than, um, uh, maybe a coach would. It's kind of more an intuitive approach.

So when you talk about energy, are you talking about subtle energies?

Yeah, totally.

Okay, so just so you know, I'm a Tai Chi master and a certified Pranic Healer.

There you go.

So I do understand subtle energy. My wife is also a practitioner, far more advanced than I am. So how do you— how are you using subtle energies to do your analysis?

Um, well, I look at where they want to go. Say you want to— for his example, he wants to sell the company for X, and there he wants to sell it for X, and he's here.. And so that leads me to some really normal conclusion of something's not quite right. Um, all right, where are we going to look? And then I just start looking, um, at the energies of what's the numbers in each department. And then I start matching them with this formula that I have of, of an intake form of the CEO. And this intake form is about 10 pages long and it gives me all kinds of data so that what I can do is bring that together. And say, I think we're going to look over here. And oftentimes I think what we're going to look at isn't what we actually look at once we start working together, which is kind of fun. And like, I would have never thought this, this guy who was, you know, that high up was somebody we were going to look at based upon the documentation. But when we started working together through the documentation that I have them go through, that reveal showed itself.

How did you, how did you get into subtle energy work?

Oh, I've been doing it since I was 3. So you're a natural intuitive.

Yeah.

And people always used to say, well, you just seem to know everything. And I was like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And when I was in high school, people would go to a party and then I'd be backed into a corner, invariably, every time I go to a party. And there'd be all the kids just asking me questions about their lives and what needed to change and fix in their life with this energy or that thing or that parent or this problem or whatever. So I was always just doing this, which is kind of funny. And then I got into coding and it kind of started to really interestingly click together because I would go into the, I guess, the lab. And, you know, of course, coders always work at night and I'd go into the lab, right? And they they'd say, oh, I'm having a problem. Yeah, I need to debug it. Uh, and I'd be like, I think it's right here. And no, I'd get a lot of feedback of no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I was like, I think you need to go right here. I think it's right in this line right here. And, and pretty much every time I'd be right on the mark. And so I've always been doing it.

So it is the process that you just—

this knowledge just comes to you?

I mean, you just I really actually think— I actually think of myself, and now that we have this really fun, uh, language out there that's easier for everybody to understand, I actually think I've just been AI-ing things forever. Really?

So, so you get these intuitive hits or knowings of—

I call it just data. I actually just call it data. Right.

So you, you're able to access data that other people are not able to access as easily.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Or at all. I haven't ever met anybody who can do what I do. Okay.

And then, and then based on the data that you receive, you can say, well, this is what I think's going on. And then people can check it and see whether or not you're correct or not. And more often than not, you're correct.

Yes. And I like business. I mean, I'm a geek about business. I like helping business owners because I know that if I can help one business owner and help that whole thing trickle down, that, that means that their community their people's community, et cetera. It just spreads out in a much more holistic, helpful manner. And they become leaders in a way that they knew was locked inside of them. They just didn't know how to really express it in the outward way.

Do you work with—

most of your clients are based in Southern California, or are they all over the place?

All over the world. Like that particular client, they have a multinational organization. I've got another organization in Australia. I've got one in South America. Yeah, all over the world, a lot in the United States, of course.

How do people find you?

That's a great question. That would be a lot. We do a lot of marketing. I happen to have a very beautiful network of people who I mastermind with, and generally people come through our marketing and the mastermind.

How big is your organization?

Um, what, as far as people?

Yeah, I mean, are you a sole practitioner or do you have employees?

Oh no, no, no, we've got people all over the world. We've got about, uh, 15 folks.

Oh, okay. And you're all virtual?

Yeah, uh, no, we've got an office. We actually have an office here in Southern California.

Oh, good for you.

Yeah.

So what is it, would you say that this intuitive ability that you have is the unique thing that you bring to the table, or is there something else that you would identify as this is what really makes Misha von Moran really unique?

I would say yes, it's that, but more importantly, it's about taking somebody who, who wants to have those repeat repetitive cycles that aren't really solving, um, and teaching them how to identify them, how to deal with them, and then how to work within the system that I teach them.

Oh, now you got my curiosity piqued. When you talk about your system, can you describe— I don't want you to tell anything proprietary, but no, it's okay.

Generally describe for us, what do you mean by system? Yeah. So what I have found is there are 6 pillars. So physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, financial, right? So everybody, I pretty much start on financial because I like metrics and I like to see numbers rise. That's kind of my business geek side. I want, I want a business owner to thrive and succeed. And generally there's something always going with the, going on with the physical. And this gentleman actually found me because he wanted something soft with the physical. I said, oh, I bet there's something happening over here too. And he said, oh, no kidding. And, uh, or there's something going on relational. And so all of those pillars, actually, I teach people to do this thing called an upward trending spiral. So what can happen is they don't get into a down because most businesses do this and then this and then this and then this, no matter how good the business is. And so what I teach the entrepreneur to do, the owner, the CEO, the leader, I teach them to go into an upward trend so that that down is smaller and smaller each time. Interesting.

Well, what is it that gets you excited and gets you up in the morning?

Oh, this. I mean, just sharing, sharing the concept that your business is an entity, an energy entity in and of itself. And that if you understood how your business and energy can relate, uh, it's, it's really just, it's kind of like hot knife through butter. And, um, it, that's the thing that's been exciting me forever.

What do you, what do you do with people who are skeptical about what you talk about? I'm sure you see that. I know I do.

Yeah. I mean, you know, if they're skeptical, then they're not the right situation for me. I mean, listen, I always say that if you're skeptical, it's good. I'm kind of still skeptical, even though I've been doing this for a long time. I'm kind of still what I call healthy skeptical, meaning I don't buy my stuff hook, line, sinker, and pull. I'm a scientist, so I want to test it. I want to see if that's really the true way to get a result, etc. And I want my hypothesis to work again and again and again. That's science, right? And so if somebody is skeptical, you know, we go through a process of questions and answers. But usually by the time somebody has found me, as they've tried a lot of things, they're like, yeah, it's been good. It just hasn't been awesome. It hasn't been something that's really moved the dial. Like this gentleman, this gentleman that I'm working with currently, And he's like, "Nobody could have ever found those things in my business. We have looked and had people in it for several years looking for these kind of things. Nobody could have found that but you." And that kind of thing is the thing that if somebody's ready, you know, skepticism floats away. And there's one other phrase I say is, if you are open to the possibility, you don't have to believe in me or what I say or what I do. If you're open to the possibility of the door being open just a little bit, then you know what, let's see what wonderful things can occur.

And I take it that a lot of times wonderful things do occur.

Yeah, pretty much always.

Pretty much always. Well, that's great confidence.

Yeah.

This show is called Listening with Leaders, and that's because I am, I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker, and my business is in listening. And I'm wondering about the importance of listening in the work that you do.

Oh, it's powerful. Um, I actually, when I work with people, I actually don't do Zoom so I can just hear and I can really deeply listen in a way that I guess I've honed over the years. Um, listening is paramount to the whole of everything, I think. Of us being better at what we do.

And when you listen, what are you listening for?

I don't know. I actually have—

that's a fair answer.

The cool part about that is I have, I have decided that an expectation of what I'm listening for is completely irrelevant. It means I just go in and it's just like, all right, let's just see. Let's just see if there's something that is right or something that's wrong, whatever we're going to uncover. I use this gentleman I keep using as an example, and when I saw the data from the intake, I was like, oh, you know, I suspect we could go over here, but listening and going through that process with him led me to this way other different place.

So when you're listening, You get— pick up a data point, or you pick up subtle information that informs your intuition, that— or whatever power you have. I don't know what we call it, but whatever it is, all of a sudden you say, oh, I just heard something that suggests this to me.

It's not quite like that. It's more like I'm listening and I just get what I call insanely curious. About something, and it's kind of like pulling on a thread of what I'm— the information, data again, right? Data. Good thing I was trained as a computer programmer, or else it could be way out there, right? So I'm pulling on the thread so that what can occur is then I can ask more questions. So I think it is not just listening, it's about being good at asking the right questions to see what the other person is going to share. And so listening is important, but the questions are almost more important.

And, and as you ask these questions, what are you feeling inside yourself as you start getting the answer, as people start giving you feedback? Do you feel anything?

It's No, it's just data.

Nothing that you can really explain?

No, it's, it's not. It's nothing for me. It's just light, you know what I mean? So, so when somebody isn't, doesn't, isn't the me, right? Uh, it's just who I am and how I've always been, you know. I, I guess I always thought— so here's something interesting, and I always thought everybody did the same I thought everybody behaved and did the same thing, right? Because it was just a natural part of who I am. Right.

Interesting. And it's quite shocking to find out that you're unique, isn't it?

I, you know, it's just like, oh, right. You don't think like that. Okay. Got it. But, but, you know, Doug, here's something important that requires people. And I always say this in our trainings is it requires people to get better with using their language so that it's a little bit more expansive and it allows people to come into the conversation.

So you do teaching too as well? You have training?

Yeah, absolutely. So I take people— I, I use the words that everybody is familiar with, but it's a little different when we're in actuality. So it's work on your business rather than in your business. So if you're going to work on your business, then we're going to actually go into our 3-day environment. And I have some processes I take people through and I get them to reveal to themselves some really interesting pieces about their business, their choices in their business, how they behave in their business that they would have never ever uncovered. And so the processes are really quite magical, if I may say. It's really fascinating to see the results that come out of it. We have a guy and his brother who have a dental practice, and they, they came in through the training at about right under $1 million. And they, you know, they're at $4 million or more in a short amount of time by this process. So it's pretty wonderful.

Wow.

So people really, really can scale and grow.

Yeah.

As they learn ways of looking at the world.

Yeah. It's kind of like do more with less, do more with the right energy. So it's actually less, so you have more life.

Right. Exactly. Well, interesting. One more question and I'll let you go. What's something, Siobhan, that we would not know about you at all unless you revealed it to us?

Oh, what's something about me? Uh, well, I could tell all kinds of wild things. Um, uh, let's see. I was a hot air balloon pilot at one point in my life for a short bit.

Yes, went out to, um, Paris, out in the desert there.

Uh, it was in Colorado, up high up in the mountains. And, uh, yeah, and, and at the time, before Before I started doing that, I actually got dumped into the basket. I thought I was terrified of heights, and after that I was like, oh, this is kind of cool.

Well, that's pretty interesting. I fly airplanes and helicopters myself, so—

Oh, that's amazing. I don't do that, but I've been in a lot of them.

Well, this has been a really enjoyable conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.