Jerry & Sheryl Isenhour, CVC Success Group coaches

CVC Succcess Group coaches Jerry & Sheryl Isenhour

With it being the beginning of an entirely new year, 2021 gives us the ability to take stock in what we are presently. It’s time to not only look deeply at any chaos and failures, but more importantly, it’s time to take stock in the victories of 2020. Let’s talk about putting together your business and personal goals for 2021. It’s time for commitment, not the simple New Years resolutions people forget about before the end of January. Jerry and Sheryl will share ideas to assist you, and give you access to free tools to help get 2021 started in the most effective manner. 

The Chimney and Fireplace Success Network is a weekly podcast brought to you by the CVC Success Group and hosted by industry expert, Jerry Isenhour. Each week you will find new presentations to assist business owners and managers in turning their business dreams into their business realities.

Transcript

 

Jerry Isenhour: 2021 it’s the beginning of an entirely new year. It’s time to take stock of where you are presently. It’s a time to look at the chaos, the failures, and the victories of 2020. It’s a time to put together your business and personal goals for the coming year.

Most of all, it’s a time for commitment, not simple resolutions that are not going to happen. Stay tuned with me as we share some words to assist, and we are going to give you access to some free tools to help you get started into 2021 in the most effective manner.

Reflect on the year 2020

As you reflect on the year of 2020, do you look at it as a year of chaos? Do you look at it as a year of failures? Do you look at it as a year of frustrations? Or perhaps, you may look at it as a year of victories in 2020. What you need to be doing right now is putting the groundwork together to decide what is the victories that you want to be celebrating at the end of 2021?

You know it was only a few short months ago that the world seemed like it fell into this huge pothole. We had been barreling down the economic superhighway at breakneck speeds. Suddenly, out of nowhere, somebody threw nails in your path. A great big pothole just opened up, and it felt like the world just careened and drove right into that pothole. More than likely, if you think back to March and April, what were your concerns at that time? As you look back over 2020, what have been the changes that have challenged you tremendously in 2020?

Was it COVID, was it customers, were you simply overwhelmed?

Was it COVID? Was it customers? Was it perhaps you became so overwhelmed as the economic wheels spun around? Was 2020 a time you couldn’t find people to place on your team, even though if you listen to the news and the news media, they’re screaming mass unemployment, but you couldn’t find people? What I’ve observed in the home service industries, 2020 was a roller coaster like no other. But we also learned a lot of valuable lessons in 2020.

Just think for a minute, put yourself in the position of many industries, let us take restaurants as one example. Where the government decreed you had to cut back the amount of customers that you could serve, you had to even change your work areas. You had to change your processes; you had to step up with entirely new systems. Suddenly, many restaurants survived because they understood how they could be delivering and serving takeout meals.

Severely compromised by 2020

It was a tremendous time, and the restaurant industry has been severely compromised by 2020. Think what it’s been like for companies who have moved to home-based workforces, remote employees, virtual team members, it’s been a significant change. But see, no matter what the world delivers to you, no matter what the economic outlook is, successful managers step up to the challenges.

If you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to ride through it. And to do this, you have to track, you have to measure, and you have to determine how to make things better. What about waste? Have you devoted any time in 2020 to this gigantic stealer of your profits? Just look at your gross for the year and imagine for a moment, what if your waste was 10, 15%, or even more? Look at the huge chunk that that takes out of your profit because waste comes directly from your profit.

Are your people truly at the top of the game

Look in the mirror, training, are your people truly on the top of the game? This is a hard one. Are they good, or are they just good enough to get by? You see, that’s what the year it means; it means it’s time to look at what your results are for the previous year. Is it time to answer that question? Which of the following three items was the cause of your mistakes? Your waste. Was it that you didn’t have an SOP? Or perhaps your SOP was wrong and outdated. Or was it that your SOP was ignored and not followed.

McDonalds is a system

Or maybe it even involved your people not following your SOP. One of the most intriguing stories in a movie format that I ever saw was a movie by the name of the founder. And the founder was about the McDonald’s brothers and Ray Kroc when he went and found the McDonald’s brothers. And they started putting together a franchise model. You see, the McDonald brothers had a system. A system to deliver the customer order in 30 seconds or less. And if you look at the founder, which I suggest anyone does, you could see how they devised their speedy food system. They drew their restaurant out on a tennis court, and from there, they analyzed the movement of everyone in that business.

What is the story of McDonalds?

And when you look at McDonald’s, what is the story of McDonald’s? Billions and billions of hamburgers have been served. But one of the problems is McDonald’s has now deviated from the original plan. McDonald’s now tries to give you something for everybody. Are they a coffee shop? Are they a high-end sandwich shop? What are they?

It is no longer 30 seconds or less

Because commonly, it is no longer 30 seconds or less. Go through the drive-in, and now the McDonald’s person at the window may have your order ready, or they may tell you to pull over, and someone will bring the order out. You see, it’s time to answer the questions. You got to answer those questions, what are the reasons for your failures? But you know each and every one of us has a choice.

And the choice is that we can continue to undergo the pain of needed change, or we can decide that we will just suffer through the pain we are in day after day, after month after month, year after year. Don’t you think that in 2021, it’s time to balance it all out? Don’t you think that this is the year, with all the chaos of 2020, that it is time to make the changes that are needed? You know what you need to do, it is a matter of pushing yourself to get there.

Tidbits of wisdom for the week

Stay with us. Sheryl’s going to be coming on in a minute, and she’s going to talk about what she feels is her tidbits of wisdom for the week. But stick around with us because after Sheryl gets done, we’re going to give you some free tools in order to put 2021 together for you. So, stick around; Sheryl will be right with you. 

Sheryl Isenhour: Here we are again, the time of the year when we start trying to fix all our self-problems with the New Year’s resolutions. Well, how’s that going so far? How many of us have the same resolution we had last year, maybe even the year before? You may have to listen to what I am going to say today, the questions I am going to ask.

You may have to listen twice

You may even have to listen to them twice. If you need to pause this to give yourself the time to think, that’s a good thing. Because today it’s all about you, all about who you are. Because I believe until you know these answers, you will never truly know yourself. So let’s begin. Do you know what your values are? Bigger question, do you follow them?

Are your priorities clear?

Are you clear with your priorities? Or do you just take things as they come and hope for the best? Do you know what you want to achieve in your life? Do you continually work to change your bad habits? And open new doors for good ones? Do you set goals? Both short and long? And are they realistic? Do you work on them every day?

You are never promised time

Or you assume you have a lot more time to work with them? Remember, you are never promised time. Are you grateful for the people and the things you have? Or do you take them for granted? Do you procrastinate? Do you set your priorities before you start the day, or do you just free will and pick them up as you go by? Do you celebrate your achievements? And more important than that, do you celebrate your efforts?

Do you forgive yourself?

Do you spend some time in the day just on you, just you? Time to dream, time to reflect, time that’s just for and about you. Do you get enough sleep? Is it routine or haphazard? Do you get enough exercise? Do you eat the right foods? Do you like yourself? Yes, do you like yourself? Do you smile enough? Do you laugh? I don’t mean just a grin, but I mean one of those gut-rolling laughs where it hurts. Do you forgive people? More important, do you forgive yourself?

What kind of people do you surround yourself with? Do you enjoy your job or your career path? Are you happy where you’re at in your job? Do you feel you’re fairly compensated? Are you a team player? Or are you just a loner? Do you ask for help when’s needed, and are you always there to help others? If you own the company, would you hire you? If you are the owner of the company, would you work for you?

I am not perfect, and I know that

To me, one of the most important questions, do you plan the number one task for the day and complete it first? The one task that will make all others simpler to accomplish? Now, these are some of the questions that I ask the clients that I work with. These are also the questions I ask myself. Many of these questions I must work on daily. Several ones still remain the infamous New Year’s resolution. Hey, I’m not perfect, and I know that. But I refuse to give up on myself. Some of these questions I find myself letting slide. But I do often look back to my list. The list I hold others accountable for, and I ask myself, are you doing this? Are you working on this? If I can’t work on my list, how can I hold others accountable for theirs?

Jerry is getting ready to come back on, and he’s going to offer you a much more detailed list of questions that will make you think, that will make you analyze yourself. That will make you analyze your business. Take advantage of these, and work towards being the best you can be. For only, you can change. But as you change yourself, others will see you in a new light and will begin to change them.

Be the light to others

Be the drop in the pond that sets out the ripple effect. Be a light to others. With these thoughts, I’m going to turn it back over to Jerry as he brings our thoughts together and ushers us into a new year. And as always, be able to say I am glad I did, instead of I wish I had.

Jerry Isenhour.: It is our mission here at CVC success group to help people, to give them tools, to give them ideas, to give them concepts. And I want to share some of those with you today. These are completely free, no-obligation or anything; all you got to do is click a few buttons to get to these. Now before I go there, I want to tell you a little story.

The wheel of life

And the story is about when Sheryl went, and she got her Ziglar certification as a trainer and a coach. She came back and shared with others about the wheel of life. Now, as you go into this, often life is a rocky road. It’s just full of bumps; sometimes, we wonder the shock absorbers gone on life or what’s going on. But usually, when it happens, the wheel is out of round. So a lot of what we’re going to share with you is ways for you to get your wheel, where it’s completely round.

You see, often, we only look at certain things in our life and our business, the things that are challenging us the most at that moment. We just can’t take that 30,000 view of our life from above. So in order to get these tools, all you got to do is go to our website CVCsuccessgroup.com. Here’s tool number one, you can take your self-analysis of your business, it is a questionnaire. You can answer these questions for yourself. If you would like for us to give an opinion of what we are seeing, you can click submit, and it will come to us, and we will review, and we will set up a call and have a conversation with you, that is completely your option.

Use the questionnaire for your own self-analysis

But you do not have to submit it to us. Use this questionnaire for your own self-analysis, that’s what it’s intended for. Tool number two, each and every year, we prepare a year-end self-analysis and goal setting guide. You can download this right off of our website, go through it. It is chocked full of the questions that you answer in a yes or no manner. To figure out where is your world out of line and what do you need to get your wheel rolling smoothly.

Because when you take this self-analysis of your business, it’s going to point out to you what your weak areas are. Point out to you, that’s right. You can forward us. Also, we’ll be glad to set up a call if we can help you in this. But as you go through this, you are going to see there is a goal-setting guide there to take you through setting your goals.

The weakness is often the absence of standard operating procedures

Here’s tool number three, so often the weaknesses we find in business is the absence of standard operating procedures. So there’s a link on this website that you can click, and you can get a free electronic version of my book standardizing standard operating procedures. Just click on the website, and it’ll take you right there to your own free copy. No requirement, nothing to buy, it’s our free gift to you. And we have just recently rolled out another tool, it is a book that I released just a week ago.

Step up to success, how to grow a novice into a top performer

The title of the book is step up to success, how to grow a novice into a top performer. You can now order this off of Amazon in both the printed and the kindle versions, and I’ll be soon setting up to do an audible of this for the people that prefer audible books. These are tools for you to put to use in your business, in your life to help you. These tools are assembled from the training we have done in our coaching careers and what we find works.

Because our mission is to help people in the home services industry. You see, we’re CVC success group, and again, our mission is to provide the assistance that business owners just like you need in their own businesses. We do coaching; we do training, we mentor in various forms. Isn’t it time we had a conversations? Our process has worked for many; maybe that’s what you’ve been looking for. If we can help you, let’s set up a time and let’s have a conversation.

To do this, all you got to do is reach out to us at info@CVCsuccessgroup.com and let’s set up that needed conversation. It’s all in your ball court, no charge, we just have a good conversation and get to know each other. And with that, I want to express to you my gratitude to each of you to take the time to listen to our thoughts.

To listen to our processes, that hopefully maybe we’re making a change in others, making a change in their lives and then their business processes. So, everyone can live their business and their personal dreams. Appreciate you joining us; talk to you next time on the next episode of the chimney and fireplace success network.