CVC Succcess Group coaches Jerry & Sheryl Isenhour
In today’s episode of The Chimney and Fireplace Success Network, Jerry and Sheryl talk about
where inspiration comes from that makes us the people we are today, and who in your life has
made a great impact on you.
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.: Well, good afternoon, appreciate you joining us today. It is always an honor, it is a privilege, it is a pleasure to have people join us here. And as you’re aware, we’re now doing a live audio broadcast with video each and every time that we do an episode of the chimney and fireplace success network. So Sheryl’s with me again; Sheryl had a great idea this morning.
She said, let’s talk about this; who are the people that have inspired you? Who are the people in your life? I want you to think about this as we go through because we’re going to share with you some of the people that have inspired us in our past and in the present today. So, I am going to let Sheryl go first, so Sheryl, as you look back, who comes number one in your mind of people who have inspired you?
My Dad was always number 1.
Sheryl Isenhour: My dad is always number one. Who I am and what I am, and the values I hold came from him and my grandfather consecutively. I mean, both were, were what made me what I am.
Jerry I.: Okay. So what was it about them that inspired you? Tell me, what was the key thing that they did that was an inspiration to you today?
Sheryl: My dad’s work ethics and his friendship. I mean, when he passed away, it was unreal the number of people that were there to pay their last wishes. I never heard anyone talk bad of him; he brought us up under, it was a stern life, but he told us. And then my grandfather, other than just loving him to death. The thing he did for me, he’s the one that told me that I could do anything that I wanted to do, just do it.
Jerry I.: And we’re going to start here with people earlier in our own lives that inspired me. And as I was a child, I had two people that inspired me, and one was my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. My mother’s mother. You see, I never was able to meet either one of my grandfathers; they both passed away before I was ever born.
So I was never able to meet those gentlemen in my life. In fact, I just moved a table and a dining room set here into our studio that my grandfather made, believe it or not, 100 years ago in 2021. But what inspired me about my grandmother was that when she was 12 years old, she went to work in a cotton mill. And her husband, my grandfather, died, and she had five kids, and they were all young and still at home. And these kids, she raised them on their own.
I spent a lot of years with my Grandmother.
And as I started going to school, my mother was a person who worked, and we will talk about my mom in a minute. But my grandmother basically looked after me before I started to school. My grandmother worked the third shift in a cotton mill. So I spent a lot of years with my grandmother and was inspired by her of how she had looked after her kids, then looked after her grandson, who was me, and had other grandchildren.
And did this from a little bitty three-room mill house. It was really unreal. But the next person that inspired me was my mother. My mother was such an inspiration because when I was very young, my mother and my father got a divorce. And my mother, as a single parent, raised me and my brother. And she worked jobs and just kept going.
She worked a full time job but looked after us.
She worked a full-time job but looked after us, and still to this day, I do not ever know of a time that we ever wanted for anything. I mean Christmas time, there were always bicycles and gifts. And my mother was also, and I look back today, and my mother, was she had a voice of an angel. In fact, she was a soloist often at church. And I can look back at the memories of my mother, and she was an inspiration to me, the way she also looked after my kids.
She often thought they were her kids almost. But as my kids were growing up, she would take my kids to vacations with her and my stepfather after she got remarried, when I was in, I believe, the fifth grade. So those are two of the people. Who else, Sheryl, in your past life was an inspiration to you like this?
Inspiration more than you can imagine was my Grandmother.
Sheryl: Well, inspiration more than you can imagine was my grandmother, my mother’s mother. She taught me to look at nature, to figure out what was going on with the weather. To figure out how things operated. She was not a book person. She went to nature to find the answers. And you need to thank her because she is the lady that taught me how to cook.
Jerry I.: There you go.
Sheryl: I was like four, and she would stand me up on the chair and let me stir the pots. And then she taught me to sew and knit and tap and all those things that sometimes mothers don’t have the time to do. And so I look back on her, and she lived to be 93; I had her with me for a long time. And I wish I would have learned everything she knew.
Jerry I.: Yes. And Brandi’s been on here with us, and Brandi posted a while ago that her grandmother was why she became a nurse, went into nursing school. And their grandmother’s farm was a huge inspiration to me, and then also she said this.
Sheryl: Thank you, Brandi.
People that inspire us from our youth.
Jerry I.: So anyway, we talk about people that inspire us, and right now, we are coming up with people that inspire us from our youth and different people. So, Sheryl, was there anybody else in your young age that inspired you like you talked about?
Sheryl: Just my family in general. My aunts, my uncles, every one of them gave me something, some of them probably more than the other ones would want me to have. But they all gave me a part of them. I grew up in a very tight-knit family; I mean, every Sunday, you had dinner at my dad’s parents, my grandparents.
You were special to them, and you knew it.
And you were special to them, and you knew it. And I think that’s what makes; I just want to say my heart as big as it is. I have got my knowledge from other places, but I got the inside from family.
Jerry I.: Yes. And other people that inspired you from your youth, I can remember a gentleman that went to church with us. His name was Joe Edwards; they actually called him Bill Edwards. But Bill was a person that was always dealing with the young people in the church.
And Bill and his wife Elaine, they were the chaperones that would take the church kids in the group; we had something called Luther league, we were raised as Lutherans.
So when you’re young in Lutheran church, you have what’s called Luther league. But I remember that Bill was a person that all through my life, every time I saw Bill, he was an inspiration. Because Bill was dedicated to his family, he was dedicated to his church. He was always friendly, I can remember. At my mother’s funeral, when we were going out of the sanctuary, and Bill was standing there, so who else.
Sheryl: Well, you’ve got to remember before we go any. Further, my father had a large family, so we were half the church, okay. So there, there was a group. The other people there, I can look back on people in the industry that have made a big difference in situations. And I think I draw from everybody I know; I think, I really do.
I try to look for the good in everybody.
Because I try to look for the good in everybody, and you learn. All you’ve got to do seriously is open your eyes and look at people. People can teach you so much; they inspire you. I have just got so many I could go on; this would be way too long if I got into names.
Jerry I.: Yes. Well, there’s other people I can remember when I was a teenager. There was a gentleman that ran a local service station; you may have known him; his name was Rich Page. But Rich ran a service station, and he was like he knew everybody in the community and probably would have done anything for anybody that came to him.
He was, I would say, probably pretty wealthy for a guy that owned a service station. But he was always helping other people. So that’s a person that I saw as an inspiration in business. And I think sometimes I look back today at Rich, and how he ran that service station, and how he was trying to serve people every single day, looking after their cars, looking after their kids, and everything else. Did you have people like that in your professional life when you started working that may have had an influence on you?
Sheryl: My uncle, my uncle Reese, he is passed, but he hung sheet rock. And he, actually, when I started into, having to go out and get the job so I could feed my kids, he took me to meet the contractors. Even though my dad was a contractor, I was going into the wallpaper hanging business.
And so Uncle Reese took me to see his contractors, and he had such a great work ethic that, to be honest, I had big shoes to fill. And so yes, I had to do that. The main people that have inspired me are the people that told me I could not do something, though.
Jerry I.: Right. So, Brandi said something a while ago, I want to go in a little deeper into present day, and that is a friend of ours that is in a coaching group, I mean, his name’s Charles Coachman. So howdy, howdy Charles to you. Okay, they try to get rid of you for a very special price for free.
Charles, we really appreciate and appreciate you joining us today, brother. I always love to see your shows and get your input. You’re the kind of person that inspires me a lot because we’re very lucky because we’re able to network and have met some pretty significant people in this world, in the world of motivation. And we meet people all the time, and we try to share those relationships with others in our coaching business.
And try to share those out there. So, Sheryl, as you went on through life before you became a coach, was there anybody that inspired you in the business world that you have met in a professional relationship that said, hey, that is the kind of person I want to follow?
Sheryl: Nobody that was ingrained before I started in the business.
Jerry I.: Okay. So that was ingrained into you before you started. And let’s say you go into it and you meet people every day, and so often they can inspire you. I mean, just 10 minutes before we started this broadcast, a gentleman who had never met me sent a message to me, and it was all of well wishes. Hoping that I was doing okay because of health issues I had a couple of months ago; that was an inspiration just to hear messages.
Because ever since I had my heart attack, it’s been amazing the number of people that I’ve never even met; we may have communicated on Facebook like Charles Coachman there. We may have talked through other ways but have sent their well wishes.
And the people that you meet, it’s like in the industry that I come out of. I spent a lot of years in the chimney service industry, and I met people all across the world when I was traveling and representing the United States in the year expo, which is the European federation of chimney sweeps. But people jump out at you that were an influence.
And that was Pete Luter.
One of them, we just celebrated, maybe celebration is the wrong word to use, but yesterday was the 11th anniversary of his passing. And that was Pete Luter, because when I met Pete, I had just gotten into the business, and I found somebody that has such innovative ideas.
Yes, sometimes Pete could be ornery, and Pete could be out there, but at the same time, he was like a brother to me in there. So his relationship was one that inspired me a lot to where I go on because I think Pete was a person that drove me to strive to be a leader among the industry. What about people like that?
Roger Charon was an extremely important person to me.
Sheryl: Roger Charon was an extremely important person to me. When I came in with you into the industry, he was the first person to take me under his wing. Is that a good way to say it? And he accepted me right in, just as if I’d been in there for years and years, and he taught me some stuff. And he and I have a ladybug story that will go back for years, and anybody that knows me real closely knows what that story is. But he’s given me things that I see every time I look at a ladybug.
Jerry I.: Why don’t you share the ladybug story? Because to be honest with you folks, the ladybug is very special. And Sheryl, if she’s up to sharing that story, she can share with you about why the ladybug is so special to her.
We were going through some very bad times.
Sheryl: Well, and I will do this the best I can. We were going through some really bad times, and you get to the point you kind of lose hope, and you don’t know which way to go. And so we had gone to have dinner with Roger or with a couple of people. And prior to that, I had gone to see Roger for the last time in my life or his life, excuse me. And he had a brain tumor, and we weren’t sure how much was real and what wasn’t.
But he started talking to a couple of us about a ladybug infestation. And so I had to glance up at his wife because I wanted to make sure it was real because I wanted to know how to comment. And so she shook her head, and he was talking about ladybugs here and ladybugs there, just everywhere. And as me and Ruthie were leaving and looking in the back window for the last time, there was a ladybug there.
And you just kind of put it away, and you go on with life. But it came back when we were having dinner with these business associates. And I, for the first time to one of my dear friends, Ken Warren, I told him the story about the ladybugs and Roger. And we kind of laughed at it, and I said you know it seems like though every time I get down now, a ladybug I do not care if it is spring, fall, winter, cold, hot a ladybug will land on me somewhere, or it will be on my windshield of the car.
He knew we were having a bad time.
And so, I told him, he knew we were having a bad time, and he knew I was really upset. And we walked out in the parking lot, and I thought he thought I was nuts. I mean, you just don’t do ladybugs. But we walked out in the parking lot, and he went off walking one way, and I was walking the other.
And all of a sudden, from the other side of the parking lot, he’s hollering, Sheryl, come here, come here, and I went over there, and it’s kind of like okay, I thought something was wrong and got over there. And I’m looking, and I said what is it? He said look, and there was a Volkswagen with a ladybug medallion on it. And all of a sudden, everything was okay.
Roger was a very inspirational guy.
Jerry I.: Yes, Roger was a very inspirational guy. Like I said, we lost Roger quite a few years ago; he died way too young. But Roger was like a brother to me, and did he have a deep influence? You better believe it. A lot of times, Roger would share magic words with me; I still remember one of the magic words he shared with me.
And this was back in the days when the internet discussions just started going, and you know how social media discussion would go. And one day, I was verbally challenged by an individual. And Roger saw it, he sent me a message, and he said Jerry, never argue with an idiot from across the street, nobody can tell who the idiot is.
I have learned to hold back.
And that advice has stayed with me to this day of him sharing that. And each and every time that I may feel like I see something on social media, that’s really disturbing. The same time, I’ve learned to hold back because people from a distance don’t know what’s there. You also mentioned a while ago, Ken Warren, Ken Warren is another person, and if he’s listening great, because that’s like a brother to me also. When I’ve gone through some of the lowest points of my life when it gets down, and you’re counting who the people are that you can count on.
And you got more fingers on one hand; then you have friends that you can realistically rely on; that’s when it really gets to you. So Sheryl, does anybody else come to mind? Because I’ve got several more, I’m going to share in this.
Sheryl: A real good confidant right now, when I need her, she is always there, is Brandi, Brandi Biswell. I lost my best friend the week Jerry had his heart attack, and Brandi’s just kind of stepped in.
A real confidant when I need her is Brandi Biswell.
Jerry I.: Yes. So anyway, these are the inspirational people. So you know there’s inspirational people in your life. Like I said, here’s the whole thing. I sit here now, and at the age we are, she just said her best friend passed away a couple of months ago.
And that’s what it’s getting like now, it’s like okay, who’s not going to be with us? Who’s going to be that this is the last time that we see this person? When we say farewell, goodbye and see you next time. It’s coming to realization that our ages a lot of times there is no next time, there isn’t one.
So it makes it more special when you do see someone because it’s such a special time. So let me ask you this, you’ve been really fortunate, Sheryl, because you have mixed and mingled with the Ziglar family. Tell me about that, are they an inspiration?
I never met Zig.
Sheryl: Oh, extremely so. I never met Zig, but Tom and Julie and all the sisters, they’re so special. It’s so nice to know you can pick up the phone and call them and talk to them. I mean, if I have a problem, and I need to talk to Tom, he responds right back. You just cannot get that with everybody.
Jerry I.: And you do not, and that is what I mean. But also, his sisters, what were they like?
Sheryl: Oh, they were a hoot. I don’t know what to say; I mean, I love them all to death. They’re people that, as soon as you walk into a room with them, the room lights up. They have a heart that a lot of people will never muster up.
That have inspired me through the challenges.
Jerry I.: And there is so many more. Like I said, if we sit here and start naming them off, it is like God, we will never stop these names of the people that have inspired us through the challenges, through the victories, they are there in the good times, they are there in the bad times, they are there in the hard times. But there’s a lot of people that have been that way.
I know recently, a couple of weeks ago, I was able to do an interview, a live interview with a gentleman that’s in his mid-80s, and he had some things to say, and I knew this from a telephone call. And I was able to set up and do an interview with him, and we’re going to turn this into an article and also into a webinar podcast presentation of his words looking back over 30 and 40 years in the industry that we serve.
It’s like, let me ask you this, you know we’ve had coaches that have been there for us and taken us to those new levels. Some of them are hard guys to get along with. I mean, if we take this dude named Larry Winget, what kind of point of view has Larry got that just digs right in?
Sheryl: He’s got a star man. But when you get to know him, he is not near as bad as they think.
Jerry I.: No, they are not. And another guy that we worked with as a coach, his name is Randy Pennington. What about Randy? Did he have positive influence on you?
Did Randy Pennington have a positive influence on you?
Sheryl: He did. Randy’s a very soft person, and so he persuades you in the right direction.
Jerry I.: And then another person that we work with today, his name’s Scott McKain. This is a guy that has turned into a mentor, a confidant, a coach, and a super good friend. What about Scott? How does he influence you?
Sheryl: Scott’s a friend; I do not know any other way to put it. It doesn’t matter how much I learn from him, how much he coaches me. He’ll always be under the realm of the friend.
There is another gentleman by the name of Glenn Mooreshower that influences me greatly.
Jerry I.: Right. There’s another gentleman that influences me greatly every time I get to hear him speak, and his name, he’s an actor. Never had the privilege to meet him, I look forward to the day we can, and his name is Glenn Mooreshower. And I got involved with the coaching group that Ken Walls, a very good friend of mine, puts on.
And this was all about learning how to do what we’re doing right now, broadcasting and streaming those kind of things. So one of the people in that group his name is Glenn Mooreshower. And Glenn just blew me away. Listening to Glenn with the wisdom that came out of his to him from his mouth as he spoke. And what it was, I even told him I said Glenn, I have attended, and I am certified by John Maxwell, but your words influence me more than Maxwell.
And spending this hour to two hours with you tonight listening to the wisdom that you’ve espoused that was more valuable to me than the days I spent going through my John Maxwell’s certification, which was three solid days. But again, let me ask you a question, who inspires you? What is it that inspires you? You see, one of the things that happens to us in life is we all go through chaos at different times. My God, I went through it; I went through it so bad I wrote a book about it called chaos to reinvention.
And when you look at this, and you look through what’s going, who were the people that helped pick you up? Who were the thought processes that you can go to and say, hey, there’s a way through there, there’s a strategy that we can build for this? We can get by this; we can win, we can conquer over this.
We developed points of view going through our speaking training.
I mean, Sheryl, one of the things that we did was we developed points of view going through our speaking training. So let’s share with everybody, what’s your point of view? What’s the point of view that you developed working with Larry Winget and Suzanne Evans? What was your point of view you came out of that with?
Jerry I.: Be able to say I am glad I did, instead of I wish I had.
Jerry I.: Right. And what’s the basis of that point of view? Where does that come from?
Sheryl: My grandfather.
Jerry I.: Okay.
Sheryl: And my dad. The thing is, after taking care of dad when he was so ill. I got to say the things that I wanted to, and I am so glad I did. There’s very little I look back on and wish I had it done. And I have tried to do that all my life, that was why my point of view was so easy.
I got mine early, took you a long time. But I got mine early because that’s the way I was raised, and that’s what I tried to do every day. And in a little, I would need to bring this back around to what this has to do with the chimney and the fireplace industry.
Jerry I.: Yes, we do. But like said, you see Charles Coachman who’s watching and listening to us today, and the comments that he’s just made here. And Charles is one of those guys; I see him out there. Charles is in California, he is in the real estate industry out there, which is challenging times for sure.
It is not a matter of making sales today.
It is not a matter of making sales today; the challenge in the real estate industry is just getting the inventory to sell something today, from my understanding, because it has really been unreal. So like Sheryl said, where does this come around? Where is this success? Why is this something that we will be talking about today? So, Sheryl, what is your thoughts of why we want to share these thoughts with our listeners, our watchers today on our podcast?
I have had enemies that inspired me.
Sheryl: My thought for bringing it up is because what happened and the people that inspired me is what got me here. I didn’t get here by myself. I had people; I had friends; I had enemies. I’ve had enemies that inspired me almost as much.
But I am what I am because of the people I knew. And we are the chimney and the fireplace group because we are in an industry that have had the people in it that have inspired us here. We’re here, and we’ll be here for a long time, I hope.
We are all going to get through the chaos in our lives.
Jerry I.: Right. And see that’s what you got to do because you’re going; if you are human beings, we’re all going to go through chaos in our lives. One of the things that we’re taught from a leadership aspect is you’re always going to lose more than you’re going to win. That may be hard for us to accept. But as Dr. Maxwell says, you’ve got to learn to fail forward each and every time that there’s a failure.
There are things to learn from your failures. But the lowest time that you look in life, and I can still remember. If I went through low points in life, naturally death of a parent that’s a low point. I’ve never suffered the death of a spouse or a child; that would definitely be a low point. But many things are caused by the real world.
And it’s like back ten years ago now; I was going through the worst chaos of my life. And a gentleman who was an inspiration to me spoke to me, asked to have breakfast with myself and Sheryl in Hartford, Connecticut. And that was ten years ago right now; I think it was about the same time frame, Sheryl. But anyway, everything was going down; I did not know where I was going to go.
Jerry, these guys need you.
Did not know what I was going to do going forward; the entire world was coming down. And he asked us to have breakfast with him there in Hartford; we were there for a convention. I got a really high honor the night before, one of very significant award in the industry I’m in. But the next morning, but he told me something there that inspired me, that drives me every day today. And that was Jerry; these guys need you, you need to become a coach, okay.
That guy was John Meredith.
And that guy was John Meredith, who has inspired a lot of people. And as I look through the course of the people we meet every single day, the people that inspire me are the people that can get up from their failures. They go, I mean you look at them. And as I said, yesterday we spoke to a really good friend, her name was Emily Luther that was Pete Luter’s wife.
And he passed away 11 years ago today. And Emily is somebody that inspired me. And hopefully, yesterday, when we talked to her, we gave her some inspiration to go for it. I mean, what do you think?
Sheryl: I think so; I really do.
That is the message today, you are going to run into potholes in life.
Jerry I.: So that is the message today. What you’ve got to do is you got to decide that you’re going to be inspired, you got to decide that you’re going to win. You have to understand you’re going to run into roadblocks, you’re going to run into potholes. It’s going to feel like the world is caving in on you at times. But here’s the whole thing, if you put yourself to it. If you look at there, you’ve got a brain up there, and you can figure out a strategy of how to get through these things. It just involves you making that decision that you are a winner.
Winners lose more than they ever win.
And keep in mind winners lose more than they win. So what you got to do is be able to rise out of the ashes of a failure and turn it into a win. And I honestly believe that you can do that. It’s all in the mind, it’s all in where you can go. When you look at it, this world gives us all the same opportunities. No one gets more opportunities than another one. And we only live on God’s green earth so many days.
And what we’ve got to do is take advantage of the opportunities are placed in front of us every day, do the best we can, keep ourselves going towards that goal of what we have. And that’s kind of why I think we did this today. So, Sheryl, you want to add anything to that?
Sheryl: Well, the way I look at it, Jerry, this was a much more personal progress than it was a business. But everybody needs to look at it, businesses are made up of people, and before you can have a business, you have got to have good people.
Jerry I.: That’s it. So hey, if you’ve joined us today, we really appreciate it. Like I said at the beginning, it is an honor, it is a privilege, it is a pleasure to be able to talk to people in this way. We’d love it if you’d share our broadcast out to others, and hopefully, our whole mission in doing this is not to earn a dime, folks; I’m just going to tell you.
The reason we do this podcast, the reason we do of our broadcasts, and the other things we do. We’re hoping it’ll change your life. We’re hoping that what we do together and what we each do singular; we hope that it will give you an inspiration. I thank you more than you can imagine. Because you’re a person who also since you came on here, you’re a person who has inspired me greatly since I’ve got to know you.
And yes, you’re a client, but you’re much more than a client. You and Mark are very close, very dear friends. And when we see it, it might say you face significant challenges, and you’re coming out, and you guys win as always. So I applaud you because you’ve always got it. You’ve always got the right things going on. Your mindset is there, and I want to applaud you.
So there Brandi that’s been with us, Charles Coachman has been on here, it’s all good there. So, Brandi, it’s always good to take time to reflect on those who have inspired us through our life. So, Julie, I’m sure as we went through this knowing you, you probably look back into your past and the people who have inspired you because they truly inspired you into greatness also. You are an amazing lady.
And just like Brandi on here, that’s someone she said we inspire her. Brandi has no idea how much she probably inspires us and how grateful we are to have her, not just as a member of our team here at CVC success group, but to have her as a very dear and close friend. Her and her husband Jeremy, that is where they are at, okay. So Julie, appreciate it.
And you know we’re here for you at any time. So starting this a while ago, we’ll end it now. I appreciate you joining me. That’s thing about it, a lot of times; people say how long can you talk Jerry? Well, Jerry can talk a while if you know Jerry; if you’ve ever been to one of my classes, I just don’t run out of things to say.
But again, as we close this out, I want to thank you for joining us. It means the world for us whenever you come in; you post your comments on there like you do. You support us and what we’re doing in our mission here. So we’ll talk to you next time here on the chimney and fireplace success network. And we really appreciate you because you are what inspires us. Talk to you later; you have a wonderful weekend.