In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Carl (Karl) Dierschow, a professional coach with Small Fish Business Coaching who specializes in mission‑driven, values‑based companies. Carl shares a personal story of being laid off during a recession, launching his own coaching practice, and learning that life’s messiness offers continual learning opportunities. He explains his coaching philosophy: meeting clients where they are, unlocking their inspiration by focusing on where they want to go rather than societal expectations. Carl emphasizes the danger of an internal echo chamber and the importance of external dialogue—coaches, mentors, friends—to break cycles of over‑thinking and create accountability. He offers advice to his younger self about patience, long‑term perspective, and paying attention to emerging opportunities. When asked about happiness, Carl says the key is choosing to be inspired rather than waiting for external circumstances. He cites Geoffrey A. Moore’s Crossing the Chasm as a pivotal book that shifted his mindset from product‑centric to customer‑centric thinking. His favorite quote is Gandhi’s “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” which he ties to personal ownership and purpose. Finally, Carl directs listeners to his online platforms: the business site smallfish.us and his values‑focused blog at valuesbased.biz.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Karl Dierschall with us. He is a professional coach with the Small Fish Business Coaching Group and he focuses on mission-driven, value-based companies who are out to improve the world. So welcome to the show, man.
Ah, thanks Tyler. I've been really enjoying listening to the other interviews on the show. Awesome.
Great to hear that, and I'm pumped to have you here, man. We'll jump in, Carl, to the first one. The first question I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Well, you know, I was thinking about that, and the one I relate to the most is that I fell into this field of coaching about 20 years ago, and I had been doing coaching work within the larger employer that I was with at the time. And then I launched off my own business when I got laid off in the middle of the recession. You know how that goes. And now I'm involved in helping other leaders develop and coaches as well. But the thing is that it's a really messy path. You know, it's not like what anybody would define as a normal career path in any sense. The lesson for me is that, well, life is messy. You have to keep learning, and nothing is wasted if you learn from it, even a negative experience. That, to me, that keeps my inspiration up to say, "I don't know what's going to be coming next year." But as long as I'm learning from it and I'm doing valuable work that's contributing to people, I'm going to be happy.
Yes, man. Thank you for sharing that. The next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Well, it's interesting that coaching is all about supporting people where they're at. Because everybody is on their own journey. And everybody is different. Everybody's situation is different. There's a lot of commonalities. I mean, with my clients, I run into a lot of similar things, you know, people always looking for more sources of revenue, they're always looking to get better organized, all that kind of stuff. But within that, everybody is on their own situation. They've got their own thoughts and desires and environment that they're working with. And when you realize that, then all of a sudden people's potential just absolutely explodes because what you're doing is you're tapping into their inspiration rather than saying, hey, you know, society says that you must follow this path and I know you don't like the path and you're not particularly caring about it. But, you know, the coaching model instead is to say, where do you want to go? And let's figure out how to get there. And it's amazing what happens when people's passion gets engaged. It's not that common that it happens actually. And normally in life, you know, people go through life being totally uninspired. So it's cool to be able to work with people who are inspired.
What's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Yeah, well, I work with lots of industries anyway, so the thing that I constantly come back to when I talk with people is basically your head is an echo chamber. You're thinking through stuff and my God, you can go around and around in circles for years thinking through things and, you know, gathering data and all that kind of stuff. And it's really when you start talking it through with other people who support you that that's when things start to make progress. And, you know, people use coaches that way, but that's also true of mentors and other kinds of roles, you know, maybe your best friend. Maybe your spouse or whatever. But that's when you can actually start making progress and, you know, you get accountable for taking next steps. That's a little bit of it too. But it's really about unlocking the inspiration.
And I'm excited for your answer on this one. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Yes, we're always so much wiser than when we were when you were young, right? Yeah, I know how that goes. Well, let's see. One thing is, you know, so I'm 63 years old and I have a little bit of a gift of perspective looking backwards. And so part of the advice would be, you know, it takes time to discover yourself and discover the world, even decades. And I know when you're you know, 20 or 25 or something, that just feels absolutely ridiculously long. But the fact is that you're in this for the long haul, you know, and maybe your life is 50 years or 100 years or whatever you're given. You know, let things unfold gracefully. And that means you have to be patient, but also paying attention because the opportunities will come from anywhere and everywhere and the learnings will come from anywhere and everywhere. So paying attention is an important part of it, watching what's going on, learning from it, that kind of thing.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Um, for me, it's the, uh, making the decision to be inspired. When I started out in my career, I kind of expected for others to give me a reason to be excited. You know, it's like, oh, the project I'm working on is not particularly interesting, or it's really super interesting. I love my boss and she's fantastic, and, you know, she does a really good job of inspiring me and the team. The problem is that that's not average. You know, the average is that the world around you doesn't really care that much about you as an individual. I mean, the people around who love you do, but the rest of the world just goes on, does what it does. So you have to decide what you want to be inspired about. You know, if you're going to be inspired about music or podcasting or software development or starting a company or whatever it is that's going to turn you on, jump in and do it. The key is to decide to be inspired, not wait for circumstances to somehow magically align to create your inspiration.
What is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Well, it's really interesting because I've read a lot over the years and scanned a lot of things, but the one that really consistently sticks out in my mind is a business book called Crossing the Chasm. It's pretty cool. It's got some neat ideas in it and everything, but what happened for me when I read that and the follow-up books was that I switched my thinking from being focused on the products that I was delivering or creating to being customer-focused. So it became an outside-in. It's like, oh yeah, business can't exist unless customers have a reason to give you money. You know, they need to buy something, you know, whatever it is you're selling. and, you know, oh yeah, there's other people's needs I have to worry about. And so it's like, it's strange, it was the right book at the right time for where I was at because I was stuck in this mire of, oh, we've got to make a better product that has more features and how cool is that? And totally ignoring the fact that at the end of the day we were solving customer needs and they were the ones that were making decisions. So anyway, crossing the chasm.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
Well, the one I keep going back to is, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," which is a Gandhi quote, very popular. And, you know, for me, it's because it's about taking a sense of ownership. And, you know, yeah, we all want to see the world change. There's a lot of things we don't like But waiting around for the world to change to align with what you want, but you can go your entire lifetime, we can go centuries without making progress on that until somebody steps up and says, okay, I think this is worthwhile enough that I am going to spend my energy and my resources on making it happen. Then stuff starts to move, and especially for you personally, because then you have a purpose in life when you say, "I am now being what I want the world to be, and now it's a fact of modeling it and helping other people to be like me." That kind of thing.
Yeah. Love it, man. Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
Well, they, um, I've got a lot of presences, but of course, uh, the business website is smallfish.us, um, and that's where you can find out about the services that I provide and stuff like that. The other thing is I'm pretty active. Um, I've been publishing regular weekly blog posts for 5 and a half years now on values, valuesbased.biz. So that's the primary blog that I'm active on. I've got a couple of others I maintain as well, but that's where I put in all of my new thinking about what's going on in this world of designing businesses that really change the world. So you can put that in the show notes or whatever, valuesbased.biz.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for joining us.
Fabulous. Well, thanks so much for the opportunity, Tyler. I really appreciate this.
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