Just Between Coaches- Episode 137
Exploring the “Laws of Growth” (Jerry Roisentul)
Jerry Roisentul: That’s how you create the habit of growth. All those little things you don’t want to do, it creates a new habit and that’s how you grow. Growth is not something that happens overnight. Growth happens over time, one step at a time.
Melinda Cohan: Imagine unlocking secrets to fostering consistent growth, creating impactful habits and guiding your clients toward lasting positive change. That is exactly what we’re going to do in this episode. We’re going to explore the laws of growth.
I’m Melinda Cohan and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. I run a business called the Coaches Console and we’re proud to have helped tens of thousands of coaches create profitable and thriving businesses. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experienced coach. Imagine a journey guided by the profound principles and the laws of growth. Now, as a newer coach, how can you harness these laws to not only empower yourselves, but to guide others on a path of sustained growth and success? My guest and I, we’re going to have some fun with this topic, so keep listening.
I’ve invited Jerry Roisentul to the show. He’s the founder of Champion Mentorship, Inc. He is a dynamic keynote speaker, does leadership mindset training for entrepreneurs, and he’s a John Maxwell certified coach with over a decade of experience transforming mindsets globally. As a bestselling author and successful entrepreneur, Jerry empowers individuals to conquer doubt, build confidence and achieve their fullest potential. Welcome, Jerry.
Jerry: Well, Melinda, it is an honor and a privilege to be here with you today. I’m excited to see where this conversation leads us.
Melinda: Oh my gosh, me, too. I have no idea what we’re in store for, but I know it’s going to be fun. And before we dive into the topic, would you share a bit of your background with our listeners?
Jerry: Yeah. So I have been an entrepreneur since I was probably 15 years old. I started out in real estate. I was a real estate broker for several years in my early twenties. I built a very successful network marketing business for over 18 years and then through some, you know, those challenges that happen that you have no control over, my business kind of imploded on me, but then I decided to take all the things that I’ve learned in my experience and really work with coaching and mentoring people.
And so I started Champion Mentorship. It’s going to be almost twelve years that I started Champion Mentorship and the whole purpose of the company was just basically how can I take the tools that I learned that took me so long to figure out and how can I package that in a way that I can talk to entrepreneurs and business owners and shrink that time down for them so they don’t have to struggle as long as I had to struggle. And that’s kind of what I’ve done and what’s got me to this point so far in a nutshell.
Melinda: Yeah, I love it.I know a lot of our listeners are going, yes, yes, yes. Because I think that’s true for all coaches. Like, we have an experience. We finally experience transformation. We’re like, wow, how can we make this easier for the people that come after me? Let’s talk about today’s topic. Let’s dive into that, and let’s start with the definition. We talk about the laws of growth. What do you mean by that? What are the laws of growth?
Jerry: There’s a lot of them. And the laws of growth, if you’re going to sum it up, basically means that growth doesn’t just happen. It’s something that we have to pursue. I learned most about growth 30 years ago when I started my network marketing business. And my first year in my business, I made an earth shattering $1,750. Imagine telling your mom when she says, how did your first year go? And so I went into my vice president, and I said, I need you to tell me how to make $100,000 a year.
And he laughed at me. I said, what’s so funny? He said, did you not see what you made last year? I said, yeah. He said, you asked me how to make 100 grand next year. I said, yeah. He said, sit down. This might sting a little bit, but it’s the truth. I said, okay. And what he said, Melinda, changed my entire life. Not just my business, my life. So, for your listeners that are listening, lean into this.
He said, jerry, if you were the person you needed to be to make $100,000 a year, you’d already be making it. I said, oh. He said, so here’s what I want you to do. Go out and become the person you need to become to make $100,000 a year. And guess what? The hundred thousand dollars will follow you. From that moment on, I became a student of professional development, personal development, growth. I realized I had to grow myself if I was going to grow my business.
So many times as entrepreneurs, we’re looking at the external things. What you need to do is start from the inside and work your way out. Growth doesn’t just happen. It’s a decision that we make to do it on a regular basis. And that’s where my growth journey began.
Melinda: That right there become the person you need to become. I don’t even know how many episodes we’ve done where that has been a continuous theme. I was just having a team meeting this morning, planning, okay, what are some of the added things we’re doing this year to better serve our folks, to help them get greater results? And one of the questions we asked, not just what marketing strategy or what program or what product, but who do we need to be for this to be a reality was part of the exercise, and then fill in the blank for whatever it is to be a reality.
Now, let me ask you this, because in doing this work, myself, coaching my team members, other folks in our journeys, this is not an easy question to answer. So how does somebody begin to dig into answering that question?
Jerry: I think the beginning part of that question is the understanding and the acknowledgement that we have to grow to where we’re going. You know, one of the things that John Maxwell teaches is he talks about the law of the lid. The law of the lid states is that you will only rise above the lid that you’ve set for yourself. So let’s just say that your lid, your level of experience, of expertise is a four. Well, you’re naturally only going to do things and attract things that are at a level four or below.
And so if you want to attract eights and nines and tens, it’s difficult when your lid is only a four. And so one of the things that I learned in my beginning growth journey from my vice president, who gave me that harsh conversation that truly changed my life, was that I had to first determine, where is my lid? What level am I at? Am I a one, a three, five, an eight? When it comes to knowledge, when it comes to experience, when it comes to what I need to learn, where am I on that scale? What do I need to do to lift that lid and to grow that lid so that I attract the people that I want in my business. We attract who we are, not who we want.
When I started my network marketing business, I was broke, frustrated, complaining about everything. I was mad at everybody. How could this be my life? And so all of a sudden, as I started bringing people into my business, there was a day I sat back and I said, wait a minute. These people, they’re all me. They’re complaining like me. They’re broke like me. They’re agitated like me. They’re angry like me. Why? Because we attract who we are, not who we want.
If we want a different client, if we want a different person in our business or on our team become the person you want to attract, then you begin to attract the person you become. It all begins in that place of acknowledging that in order to grow, it’s going to have to start with me. And it’s not a natural process for people. And what I found is that people are so anxious to change their circumstances, but they’re unwilling to improve themselves.
Melinda: Okay, let’s dive into that right there for a second. I’ve got two questions. One is personal, and you can be like, no, let’s don’t go there and whatever. I don’t think you’ll say that, but I’ll give you the right. When you heard this for the first time and you’re like, all those people are me. Let’s use that example you just gave. What’s an example of something you did to raise your lid to a five or a six? What’s an example for our listeners?
Jerry: Sure. I first had to be honest with myself and I had to sit down and do a self-assessment. What areas do I really need to get better in? And I think for every entrepreneur we have to learn, where do I need to grow? I couldn’t lead myself out the front door of my house yet alone think of leading other people, which is why I attracted all of myself to the business, because it was easy to talk to them, because I was talking to me.
So once I realized that, okay, I need to grow my leadership, well, how do you do that? I had to find resources. So I went to my vice president, said, I got to grow my leadership. What do I do? He said to me, there’s three books I want you to read, all by John Maxwell. Now back then, 30 years ago, I didn’t know who John Maxwell was. The premier leadership trainer in the country. He’s now written over 100 books, sold over 30 some million copies around the world.
So my vice president said, I want you to get the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. That’s going to teach you the basics of leadership. I want you to get Developing a Leader Within You because you can’t develop others if you don’t know how to develop yourself. I want you to get Developing Leaders Around You so you can learn how to develop people around you. I want you to read them in that order. As a good student, I did what he told me to do. I bought the books, read them in order. My confidence began to change because I had insights and understandings of the area, I needed to grow the most in.
Some people might say, well, you know, one of my biggest problems is I deal with limiting beliefs. You know, I have lots of limiting beliefs that are holding me back. Well, the first thing I would do is recognize you have these limiting beliefs. This is an exercise I do in greater detail, one on one, but to give your audience something that they can chew on. So I would say, okay, write down four or five limiting beliefs. Let’s stick with leadership for a moment.
Somebody says I’m not a great leader. If you keep saying that, you’re not going to be a great leader because you keep speaking all the things you don’t want. So I would ask them, first of all, why do you say that? Where does that come from? And anytime people are learning to grow, I always like to ask, where does that thought come from? Where does that belief come from? Where did you learn that? Who told you that? Because it’s amazing the things we have so deeply rooted in our subconscious minds, we don’t even realize it sometimes.
And so I teach them, take that limiting belief, I’m not a good leader, and change it into an empowering belief that says something like, every day I’m becoming a better, stronger, more confident leader. And you start speaking that out of your mouth. Now, when you do that, you’re not going to necessarily believe what you’re saying because you’re looking at your results going, well, that’s not true. But if you don’t speak what you eventually want, you’ll always have what you currently have.
Melinda: Love it. And what I love about this topic is it’s simultaneous. We can do it for ourselves, for our own growth. I truly believe we need mentors and guides and coaches around us to help us. But it’s also something we can take our clients through to help them. You’ve talked about the law of the lid. What are some other examples of laws of growth?
Jerry: One of the keys is the law of intentionality. The law of intentionality is growth has to be intentional, not accidental. It has to be something we choose to do on a regular basis. And then what we do is we find out that when we make a decision to grow, we’re going to find these little, you know, we call them growth gap traps. They’re traps that keep us from growing because they’re the things that we’ve told ourselves in our mind all of these years. Like as an example, here’s a couple of growth traps we sometimes fall into.
You’ll hear somebody say, it’s not the right time to begin. That’s a timing gap. When somebody says it’s not the right time, when is? You just do it. You do it. You figure it out. And I tell people, if we’re going to wait till everything in our life is perfect before we choose to begin something, see you at your funeral because that’s the only time perfection happens. No problems, no challenges, no nothing. So we have to get beyond that. The right time to begin is now. It doesn’t matter how much you know, do something with what you already know. The things you need to know will follow you. So that’s one idea.
Here’s another one. The inspiration gap, that talks about, well, I don’t feel like doing it. You know, in business and as entrepreneurs, you know, we have this, well, I don’t feel like making those calls. Well, I don’t feel like following up. Well, I don’t feel like doing this. And let me tell you a hard truth that I’ve learned, Melinda, in 30 years, if everything that we choose to do in our business is based on how we feel, we will fail because we’re not always going to feel like doing what we need to do. But what leadership is, and growth is, is that I’m going to do what I don’t feel like doing because I know at the end, the results are going to be beneficial.
So how do you get yourself beyond the feeling of doing something? Here’s how you get beyond it. You think of the reward on the other side of the feeling. I don’t feel like working out. If I focus on that feeling, I’ll never do it. But if I focus on how I’m going to feel when I leave the gym, I’ll push myself to do it.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jerry: You know, so we could be in business. I don’t feel like making those calls. Okay. Well, if you focus on that, you’ll never get it done. But what’s the reward on the other side? I don’t feel like making calls. Well, I made them. You made progress. You pushed through something you didn’t want to do. That’s how you create the habit of growth. All those little things you don’t want to do, it creates a new habit, and that’s how you grow. Growth is not something that happens overnight. Growth happens over time. One step at a time.
Melinda: Yeah. When you talk about that inspiration gap, it makes me think of two things. Every January I do a detox cleanse. First year I did it, I’m like, am I really going to do it like this? I don’t know. But you’re exactly right. Let’s think about February 1 and what that’s going to feel like. It was harder the first time because I didn’t have that feeling ingrained in me. It was more of a hope. I knew, but there was a little bit of doubt, and I was hoping I would make it. But now I know what it’s going to be like. And one of my favorite sayings is, we didn’t come this far to only come this far.
Jerry: That’s right.
Melinda: And I think of that a lot in this moment. And then the other thing, Coaches Console is going to be 20 years old this year. And it was an idea that I scribbled on a napkin, and I framed that napkin with all my scribble, chocolate smear, smudge marks and everything, and it hung right in my office, so that every day is the first thing I looked at. It’s like, that’s why I’m doing it for the people that’s going to experience what’s on that napkin. And then I’m like, okay, what do we need to do today to make that happen?
Different sources of inspiration helped me think of that reward on the other side, like you said, to just push through. Now, this is interesting because push through. I’m not sure where this is going to go, but let’s see where this takes us. Push through. That’s a very masculine approach. I don’t mean men and women. I just mean masculine energy. Push through. The feminine energy is to create through, to receive through.
And so here I am, sitting and me back then, like, I’m running all my masculine energy to get that business launched to make Coaches Console happen so that we can be here 20 years later. Tens of thousands of people helped, but now it’s like, I don’t want to push through. So what’s the feminine version of pushing through?
Jerry: That’s a really good question. Guys want to push through, but women want to grow through. They understand the importance of growing. Men are more driven to get it done right here, right now. And there’s lots of women like that, too, by the way. For most, especially women, I think they have a more gentle approach to how they want to do things. But this is what I tell the women that I coached. Okay. I don’t coach genders. I coach leaders. Leaders’ a man, a leader is a woman.
Don’t care what it is. I talk the same way regardless of whether you’re a man or woman. I talk the same way because I’m talking to leaders. I see everybody as a leader, but I think everybody has their own journey and their own way of doing it. But it all centers around our level of growth to get to that next place.
Melinda: Yeah, yeah. And that’s why I said masculine, because every one of us have the masculine qualities and the feminine qualities. And I know for me, I was like, this is what I know. I’m going to push through; I’m going to be driven and just make it happen. And that was my approach. And over the years, what I’ve learned is that in that feminine approach, it’s also about collaboration. It’s about listening to intuition.
Jerry: Yes.
Melinda: It’s about receiving those synchronicities and messages. What I’ve learned is when I blend the masculine and feminine, my greatest growth happens.
Jerry: Absolutely.
Melinda: I love the inspiration gap. And, you know, it reminds me of something you said in your introduction. You know those situations where we can’t quite control. And what I’ve learned in those challenges, those obstacles, those setbacks that occur, we’re like, oh, my God, what just happened? A lot of times we think this happened to me, but when we remember this is happening for me, the faster we get to that reframe of that statement. Jerry: That’s right.
Melinda: The growth opportunity exists. Can we talk about that for just a second? Any thoughts on that?
Jerry: That is a mindset, and that’s one of the major things I’ve taught in the last twelve years. Things don’t happen to me. They happen for me. It’s hard to say that when you’re going through crap, for lack of a better word, when you’re going through the tough times. But this is what I’ve always taught people in relation to that statement. You and I cannot always control what happens to us. We have total control of what happens in us, how we respond to the things that happen to us. Okay?
So I’m going to give you a personal example based on these things don’t happen to us. They happen for us. Last year, I went through a divorce I never saw coming after five and a half years of marriage. And it wrecked me. So I could not control that because it wasn’t my choice, it wasn’t my doing. I just had to roll with, that’s what’s going to end up happening. And it was really devastating. I had to sell my house, find a new place for my son and I to live, and the emotional part, anyone that’s ever been through a divorce understands what I’m talking about. It’s very difficult.
But here’s the thing. Immediately when I thought, this isn’t happening to me, it’s happening for me for a reason and a purpose I may not see yet, but I know there is a gem of gold in this that’s going to manifest itself at some point. And because of how I’ve trained my mindset and because I worked so much with entrepreneurs on their mindset, I was able to take that horrible experience. And I said, no, this happened for a greater purpose. And in that period of time, I kept digging in, and what most people do is they retreat.
Then what happened was, towards the end of last year, I started to get a glimpse of why that happened for me because my ex-wife is living a different life than I am. And where I wanted to go, she didn’t want to go. Where she wanted to go, I couldn’t go. Didn’t see it all then, but I saw it clearly now. So that happened for me, not to me. And I’m growing through it and being stronger than I was beforehand.
Melinda: Wow. Like one of mine was, I got fired from my job. I couldn’t even see straight because I was freaking out so bad. It took years before I could say that didn’t happen to me. But the more that I practiced and exercise this, now it’s in the moment, I’m able to say, I don’t understand it, but this is happening for my greater good, my highest good, and I will see it soon. But it takes a while before we can do that. So be gentle with yourself, be compassionate with yourself as you’re going through that, and then it’ll become like second nature.
Jerry: Don’t beat yourself up. There’s no benefit. Just realize and say to yourself, this is a chapter of my story, not the end of my book.
Melinda: Let’s talk about how in our growth journeys, you know, often we’ll encounter plateaus. It may not decline, but, you know, it might hit that plateau. How do the laws on growth guide individuals to overcoming these plateaus? How do you coach your clients through a stagnant phase?
Jerry: Yeah. And that’s what it is. It’s a plateau. I’m not growing. I’m not going backwards. I’m just staying at the same place for a longer period of time that I had hoped for. So here’s an example that I give people. Now, for those that are listening, you may not be able to see this, but I’ll verbally explain this so you can understand this. So, Melinda, what am I holding in my hand?
Melinda: A rubber band.
Jerry: Rubber band. Okay, so I’m holding a rubber band in my hand. Now, if I place the rubber band in my palm of my hand and it’s just laying there, that is not what this rubber band was designed for. It was not designed to just sit around and lay around. The rubber band’s value comes when it’s stretched. We were not designed to just lay around and do nothing. We were designed, like the rubber band, to stretch. When we hit a plateau, we’ve got to say to ourselves, this means I need to stretch to the next level.
Now for everybody, that’s different. In those plateaus it’s easy to become complacent, even though we don’t want to be, but we don’t know what else to do. We’re just staying the same. But you weren’t designed to be that way. So if I’m going to get out of this plateau, I’m going to have to stretch. And here’s some things that I can tell you about stretching. It always starts from the inside out. You’ve got to look within yourself. And it’s hard to be specific because everyone that’s listening is in a different business. But you got to start from the inside out.
What are the things I need to do to stretch myself? Stretching is always going to require change. There’s no way you’re going to stretch to the next level doing exactly what you did to get you stuck in the plateau. You’re going to have to change the way you approach things, the way you call people, the numbers you’re working. But stretch always requires change, and stretching gives you an opportunity to really grow to that next level. Stretching and growth go hand in hand.
And every time I do this with people, Melinda, it is always funny to see that they stopped doing in the plateau the very things that they did to help them grow to that level. So we got to go back and start analyzing what are the things that we did when we were growing. Now it’s time for me to stretch.
Melinda: It’s interesting. I love the rubber band example. I mean, it was just really powerful. As soon as you said, it’s not what the rubber band was designed for, not just to lay there, but the purpose is a very different purpose. And it brought up two things. The first thing I want to go back to the law of the lid. Being an overachiever all my life. A type a personality.
Jerry: Me, too.
Melinda: Recovering perfectionist. That’s me.
Jerry: Yeah.
Melinda: I’m like, oh, I’m a four. Okay, we have to get to ten. We’re going to ten. And just the big leap. One of my mentors once told me, no, no, no. Just what does it take to get to five. Do that right now. Okay, great job. Celebrate that. Now. What is it going to take to get to six? And I’m like, oh, I don’t have to leap the Grand Canyon. And it was so foreign to me to have it be so simple. I’m like, surely that can’t be all I have to do.
Jerry: And let me tell you why that’s important. I just wrote a book in October. I released it. It my first book called Don’t Let Doubt Take You Out. Why did I write this? Because doubt almost took me out. 17 years ago, I was on the floor of my apartment writing a goodbye letter to my son, getting ready to take my life. Part of the reason was the enormity of doubt that creeped into my mind, not just from myself, but from people around me. It literally almost took me out of the game.
I wrote the book to help people because we all deal with doubt. The reason I share that is based on what your mentor told you. When you go from a four and you’re going to jump to a ten, you’re going to open the door for doubt to come in and just start creeping into your mind when you don’t do it fast enough. Doubt’s going to come in and say, see, you’re never going to be a level ten. You weren’t designed to be a level ten. You’re only going to be a level four.
The bigger the gap from one goal to another, the greater the chance for doubt to creep in and take you out. So by going from four to five, it shrinks that gap for doubt to come in on a massive scale.
Melinda: Now, one of the things when we talk about the laws of growth, like we’ve got a lot of new coaches listening, are there any glaring mistakes that we need to make sure we land in this conversation when it comes to either ourselves or working with our clients, one big mistake that you might share with our listeners.
Jerry: Consistency, that is the key to success. Motivation, that’ll get you going, but it’s discipline that keeps you going. People ask me this all the time, or I ask people this all the time, how do you create momentum? Every business owner knows the importance of momentum. If you love sports, you see momentum on the stage all the time. One team has it, then something happens and the other team gets it. And now that team has lost its motivation and the other teams got it. And that’s how it works. But what creates motivation is consistency. And consistency is a habit.
Consistency is something entrepreneurs do every day, all the time. Good, bad, up, down, growth, non-growth because consistency is what’s going to change the dynamic of your landscape. Making the decision that I’m going to be consistent every day with whatever it is I’ve set out, and every day that I’m successful in that, that’s a little step of growth that I’ve made that day. You pile those on together, all of a sudden, you’ve got a growing machine.
Melinda: Yeah. Well, I want to summarize a few things we’ve talked about today. I love how you kicked off our conversation with the statement, become the person you need to become. Whatever laws of growth we’re talking about, that is where it’s rooted, and that’s where it begins. We talked about the law of the lid, which I absolutely loved, and talking about, where is your lid? And we also brought in later, you don’t have to catapult all the way to level ten, just go to the next level. How do I get to a level five if I’m a four? How do I get to a level six if I’m a five? And I love when we talked about the law of intentionality and you shared some of the growth gap traps. Love that phrase.
And I loved when we talked about the inspiration gap. I don’t feel like doing this. I know this is true for so many new coaches and entrepreneurs when they’re first getting started. A lot of times I don’t feel like doing that. I feel clumsy. I don’t feel professional. That’s an inspiration gap right there. And how do we get beyond the feeling? And I love where the conversation took us. The masculine version of pushing through, the feminine version of growing through and creating through, and the distinctions about aspects within ourselves, of how to navigate that.
We talked about the plateau, and you gave the extraordinary example of the rubber band and how to get to the next level. And then, of course, we wrapped up with the importance of consistency. Jerry, do you have any parting words for our listeners?
Jerry: Sure. I mean, my parting word is, first of all, congratulations for making the decision to be an entrepreneur. Whether it’s a coach, whether you’re running your own business, whatever avenue of entrepreneurship you’re in. Congratulations. The journey of an entrepreneur is a journey. Work daily on your mindset, because the stronger your mindset, the stronger you navigate the ups and downs. Focus every day on how can I grow a little more today than I did yesterday, and then make sure that every single day you do your best. I taught my son this when he was in school. I said, all I expect of you, son, is this. Do your best, be your best, and give your best, because your best is all you’ve got.
Melinda: I love it.
Jerry: If you do that every day, you’re going to be a champ.
Melinda: I love it. Thank you for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches. And a big thank you to Jerry for this incredible conversation. You can find out more about him at championmentorship.com. That’s championmentorship.com. And in the show notes, you’ll find the link to his website and his new book, Don’t Let Doubt Take You Out. Jerry, thank you so much for coming to the show.
Jerry: Thank you, Melinda. It’s been an honor and a privilege to be here and have this great conversation with you. I loved it.
Melinda: I’m Melinda Cohan, and you’ve been listening to Just Between Coaches. Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as To Lead is Human and Course Lab. To catch the great episodes on Just Between Coaches, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It is the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thank you and see you next time.