439 | How Transformative Is Purpose?

SPEAKERS

Joel Fortner, Chris LoCurto

 

Chris LoCurto  00:00

Why a clear sense of purpose might be just what you need to help you get you to the next level in life, in business and in leadership. That is coming up next.

 

Chris LoCurto  00:20

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show, where we discuss leadership and life, and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

 

Chris LoCurto  00:32

Welcome to the show, folks Hope you're having a fabulous day. We are glad that the sun is shining, we've had quite a bit of rain where we are and flooding. So we're glad that the sun is out. And it's supposed to be for a while right now. Today we're talking about purpose. Today we're talking about your purpose. We're talking about purpose in life, right? Purpose is the reason for which something exists, that's also true from a biblical perspective, for those of you that are believers, I believe that you are definitely not an accident. I do not believe you're some random, you know, atoms coming together and forming something that would be as complex as you are, right?

I believe that you're not an accident, I believe that you have a purpose. I believe that you were created with intention, I believe you were made on purpose, and that there's something that you're supposed to be doing in life, and that you have a reason, a destiny and a goal. Now, some people don't know or believe that. And when they don't know their purpose, what happens? They're often bored. They're often frustrated. Think about it, if you've ever had this time in life, when you didn't have something important that you were shooting for, right? Something that was purposeful, then you can become distracted, depressed, even anxious. So we're going to be hitting three parts today. Part one is that purpose propels us upward.

 

Chris LoCurto  02:12

It inspires us to achieve something beyond what we can currently see, you know, like a roadmap, when you have a purpose, when you have something to look forward to, when you have something to get up for in the morning, when you have something to achieve. When you have something that inspires you, then all of a sudden, it drives you to something beyond what you can currently see, even if it creates this ability inside of you to see things beyond where you are, to create new ideas, to imagine what it could be like once you get to this destination, right?

So purpose propels us upward by inspiring us to achieve things. It also inspires us to innovation, if you know, this is what you're called to, then nothing is impossible. It's amazing to me, when people do a j-o-b, that they struggle like crazy to solve problems. When somebody is working a job working a role, doing something that doesn't have great purpose in their life, then what's amazing is is that you can find them not being very innovative. Right? They just do the thing, they just do the job, they get the the amount of done that they need to get done to get their paycheck and go home. Why? Because it's not a great purpose in life. When you do have purpose, all of a sudden, you have this desire to actually be innovative, to make this thing happen to do what it takes to accomplish it.

Therefore, nothing's impossible. You can actually spend time gaining perspective, using creativity, doing whatever it takes to be able to solve the stuff that's in front of you. So when things look impossible, instead of the answer just being, "Oh well, it's impossible. We can't do that." When you have purpose, it inspires you to figure out how we can do it. It also inspires you to creativity. So giving you permission to think outside of what already exists. Again, it's it's a lot like what I just shared with on the innovation. When you don't have great purpose.

You don't try and solve stuff when you don't have great purpose, you don't try and achieve beyond what you can see. When you do have purpose, one of the great benefits is it kicks in those creative juices. It kicks in that creative process inside of your brain. Now, for years I used to say that I'm not creative. I'm not very creative because I always looked at creativity as something in the you know, the artsy kind of way, and I can promise you after the birthday gift I gave my mother when I was a kid, which was a painting of a squirrel, which doesn't look like a squirrel, and the misspelled word, "birthday" that didn't have an "H" in it, so it was just a "birtday", I can tell you that I've never been very artsy. It's not something that I've ever been, you know, I've ever excelled at.

No Chris LoCurto paintings or drawings are going to be hanging in the Lourve anytime soon. But that doesn't mean that art is just the only form of creativity, right? We in this business, spend hour every day, being creative on how to help you guys change your lives and how we can help ourselves change our lives to make better lives, right? When we're going through something like a Next Level Life or Straplan, it is nothing but creativity, helping us to help others have the best perspective they possibly can right?

Now, if there was no great purpose to it, then what happens to that creativity? It just gets put on the backburner. It's just not that important. So purpose propels you upward, it inspires you to achieve, it inspires you to innovate, it inspires you to creativity. When we come back, how understanding and owning your purpose propels you upward in life.

 

Chris LoCurto  06:22

Hey, folks, a couple years ago, I was visiting with a client, and the CEO said to me, "Chris, we're not going to hit our goal." I asked him what he meant. And he said, "We're gonna miss our three year revenue goal coming out of Stratplan by a few months." I didn't realize it at first, that he was having a little fun with me by saying they were about to triple their company in less than three years.

How freaking awesome is that? Folks, these are the kinds of results that businesses get by coming through our four day Stratplan event. On average, we find $2.1 million worth of revenue in the next 12 months that the company was not planning on. And this event is for all size businesses. If you're small, medium, or large, it works for every single business, because it's not industry specific.

It's about gaining all the information about all the things inside of your business that are holding you back from success, and then giving you a plan and a process on how to walk that out and be successful in your business. By discovering the things that are holding you back, it helps you get to all of those goals that you've been planning on for a long time. So if you're ready to get the perspective you need to solve what's holding you and your business back so you can grow faster, then you need Stratplan. To learn more, go to chrislocurto.com/stratplan. That's chrislocurto.com/stratplan.

 

Chris LoCurto  07:59

While purpose is transformational, a lack of purpose is destructive. You probably already know this in life, a lack of purpose deconstructs our motivation to move forward. Folks, business leaders, business owners, you have probably seen this on your team, you've probably experienced this at some point, because I believe every one of us, everybody who's worked for any decent period of time has probably had a dead-end job.

You know, if you've never ended up in leadership or owning a business, it doesn't matter, you've still probably had a dead end job somewhere. Here's the thing that we need to understand. When we don't have purpose in life, when we don't have something to drive towards, it actually becomes very destructive.

Have you ever heard the saying, "Idleness is the devil's playground."? Or sometimes people will say, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Without a clear purpose, it's easy to get distracted, discouraged and even lazy. Think about whether it's you or somebody you know, that doesn't have something driving them forward and how do they respond to life? What are the things that are important to the person who doesn't have great purpose? We are seeing a world of people that are spending their day focused on social media.

You know, how many hours a day are they spent focused on scrolling through social media, we see people that are spending their time trying to obtain things in the idea that obtaining those things are going to make them super happy. We see people who are spending their time talking negatively about pretty much anybody that they can, complaining consistent basis, because they have no great purpose.

We see all over the place all these destructive and negative outcomes of people who don't have great purpose. For a lot of you young folks out there, oh my gosh, there are so many young people who do not have a great purpose in life, or they do have a great purpose right in front of them, but they're not grabbing hold of it, so instead, they make the problems, the people, the situations in their lives, all the important things.

And what happens is those also start to drive a whole lot of anxiety, negativity, issues, worry, frustration, fear of man's opinions, and so on and so forth. We've all seen this happen, right? Viktor Frankl who was a Holocaust survivor, we've quoted many times on here, great information from Viktor Frankl. He says, "When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him."

 

Chris LoCurto  11:16

Now, I know the moment I said that- "they distract themselves with pleasure", you probably thought of at least a couple of people, and maybe you thought of yourself, right? I can tell you that I do this for a living. And as I do this, it causes me to think, are there things that I'm striving for in life that are about pleasure, as opposed to create purpose, instead of something that is meaningful, right?

And if so, what do I need to change? What do I need to do about it? Now, that doesn't mean that you can't have pleasurable things in life. That's not what this is saying. What this is saying is when you do not have a great sense of meaning, when you do not have a deep purpose, then what you do is you distract yourself with filling your time of you, finding pleasure. And whatever you can, whatever is the thing that probably gets there the easiest. So a sense of meaning, and a worthy goal are necessary ingredients to the human development.

If we don't have those, then the deconstruction takes place. So part two, purpose is transformational. So here's an illustration. Massive, transformative purpose, MTP in a 2014 book called, Exponential Organizations, authors Malone and Van Geest, analyzed the 100 fastest growing organizations and synthesize their key traits. They discovered that every single company on the list had what they call a massive transformative purpose; an MTP.

An MTP is a highly aspirational tagline for an individual or a group, a company, organization, community or a social movement. So here are some examples of MPT's that they point out that you might already be familiar with. If you take a look at TED Talks, Ted, "Ideas worth spreading", if you look at Google, "Organize the world's information", now, there's lots of pushback that can happen on that right there. But you get the concept, right? Tesla, "Accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation". So think about these statements, right? They are massively audacious, but they're also incredibly clear and precise, right?

So they have this transformative purpose that is in their own tagline. If they are making that culture, then guess what? That becomes purpose for everybody who is working for them. So we're going to talk about what this means for you, and how you can make sure that you have a higher sense of purpose in your life when we come back right after this.

 

Joel Fortner  14:21

Hey, it's Joel Fortner here. I'm the Vice President of leadership development on Chris's team, and I oversee our Next Level Mastermind business coaching program. Most business owners and leaders lack a clear path to succeed in business. They question whether they're making the right decisions, if they're focusing on the right things to really grow their business. If this is you, you need a coach in your life.

Coaches help you make better decisions, navigate uncertainty, lead more effectively, and grow your business without sacrificing your life and your family. In their first year, our clients typically see an average of 67% increase in gross revenue, and an average of 138% increase in net profit. And regained hours of time, our clients stay in the program for three and a half years simply because of the results they get. So if you're ready to run your business at the next level and see the growth you've been wanting, then visit chrislocurto.com/mastermind. Again, chrislocurto.com/mastermind, today.

 

Chris LoCurto  15:22

So let me ask you a question. What does the purpose statement for your life or mission statement for your business say about your impact on other people? "Well Chris why is that even important? Why does it have to say something?" It doesn't, but understand this, when you are focused on you, then your purpose is always about you. Which means that you will always be focused on the pleasure side of taking care of you.

When you have a purpose that is bigger than yourself, in other words, when it's the legacy that you're going to leave behind the good that you've done in life, then it changes your focus and instead of it being about you seeking personal pleasure in life, it becomes about something bigger. So part three, why we need a higher purpose. Now, we all want something that goes beyond the everyday routine of work and life.

So you hear it at the beginning of the show all the time, business or work, is what you do. It's not who you are. Right. I encourage each of my team members to have a personal mission statement. Now here we use, Ziegler's will of life we believe that there's multiple areas that you can have mission statements on In other words, a mission statement is the purpose for existence right?

So I business mission statement should be the purpose for the business to exist ours here is worship God, by loving people and guiding individuals and organizations to greater perspective, that is what we do. We have people tell us all the time, you've changed my life, you've changed my family you've changed in the answer for us is, we didn't change it. We got to do to the greatest perspective we could get you to. And then you made the change. Our job is to help you get to that great perspective. And then you get to make the decision.

If you want to change, you change. If you don't, you don't. The great thing is is that people who want change are going to take that perspective and implement it, they're going to do something about it, they're going to be proactive about it. So that's our purpose for existing here as our business worship God, love people and get individuals and organizations to greater perspective. You've probably heard me say it before on the show.

Money is not our number one motivating factor profits, not our number one motivating factor that will always affect our bottom line. Why? Because it's not the number one thing we go after the number one thing is God. number two thing is helping you change your life. In that order. Number three is profit. Now, we're always going to have a profitable business. I'm not going to run a business that's not profitable.

But it doesn't keep us from helping you. Make sure that you have the most profitable business that you can have. But if you also want the god peace while then we're going to help you out there as well. So if you haven't developed your own personal mission statement, then I'd like to point you to a buddy of mine, Andy Andrews, who will walk you through that process step by step.

So if you go to his website, Andy andrews.com, slash, personal hyphen, dash hyphen dash, what is it hyphen, Isay, hyphen, personal hyphen, mission hyphen statement [email protected] slash personal hyphen mission hyphen statement, then he has got a great process that can help you to put together your own personal mission statement. Why is that important? Well, it's everything that we've talked about today. What is your purpose in life? What is your purpose of being here?

Now I will tell you, as a believer and a child of God and a somebody who spends a whole lot of time working on and learning more about God, I will tell you my purpose is to worship him. I was put here for his will and purposes I believe every single person listening to this was as well. My goal is to spend my time discovering what his will and purposes for my life is and then submitting to that.

So when it comes to this business, this business is not About Chris, creating something that that allows him to obtain pleasures in life obtain achievements in life, this is a place and for those of you that have been with us a while or that have been through the stuff that we do, you've experienced that this is a place that we get to worship God by helping you.

 

Chris LoCurto  20:22

This is a place where we help people to get to the best perspective we can. This is a place where we help people to make the best decisions in life that they can to change situations that they've experienced. That's what we do here. That's our goal. That's our that's our purpose here, right.

And we do that in worshipping God. So for us, we believe that is the will and purposes that He has for us at this time. That that's what we're supposed to be doing. We have a lot of stuff coming up. I don't know if you saw the one of the recent Facebook Live posts where we were talking about, it was just a little bit we didn't share a whole ton, but about the what we're doing at the ridge, and how we are working to create this place.

Because we believe that God has opened up this opportunity for us to create a space and a place for people to come and get even deeper healing in life, to spend time growing and making better decisions in life. Those are things that we believe God is doing to help his people. And we believe that that's what he's directing us to do.

So that is another one of the will and purposes that we believe that we're following, what would I be doing? If it was up to me, I think a lot of you could probably guess this one, I would have a minimum hobby vineyard, out in Sonoma, maybe even Napa, but out in that area, with a restaurant on it. And I'd be teaching people from that.

That would be my you know, ultimate goal, right is to, if I could do what I wanted in life, that would be the thing that I would want to do. However, I truly believe that God has been guiding me to a much greater purpose than that. Which is to spend time teaching, helping, growing, guiding, directing, whether it's through our business, whether it's to my team, whether it's to my family, whether it's to our ecclesia no matter what it is.

That is something that I believe is the will and purposes that God has put in my place. Now, I believe there's a lot more to it than that as well. I believe that it is my job to be the best husband I can be. And I can tell you, I've screwed that up many times in life, I I believe it is my job, to be the best friend I can be. I have screwed that up many times in life. I believe it is my job to be I believe it's a will and purpose of God for me to love on people really well.

I've screwed that up many times in life, right? The will and purposes of God are the things that I am looking for my purpose in life is to worship Him and to seek what he wants me to do. And then go after it wholeheartedly and submit to it and release the things in my life that are of me, that are not of him.

Because that is what he wants. So as I do that, there's an amazing thing that I have discovered, the more I get focused on that purpose that I believe he has shown me, the more blessings I receive in life, the more I love being on that path, doesn't mean that there aren't hard times doesn't mean there aren't difficult times. It just means that as I continue to obey Him and seek Him and submit to Him, the more he blesses me so that is why I believe it is incredibly important for you to discover what is your purpose in life?

If you're a believer, then I think, you know, we got to spend some time discovering what our owner tells us we should do our Creator tells us we should do right. What is your specific purpose? What is the will and purposes that He has for you, right? If you're a non believer, then you have to put something in place that drives you to something greater than yourself. As Viktor Frankl says when a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

What a man actually needs is not a tension list date, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of Him. So folks, in conclusion, the sky's the limit. So I want to encourage you in this clarity is key, get to clarity on your purpose, right your purpose in life, your purpose in business, your purpose in marriage, all those things. So the clearer Your goal is, the clearer your purpose is, the better chance you You will obtain it. So just how transformational purpose is, depends on how clear your purpose becomes. So, what are you aiming for in your marriage?

 

Chris LoCurto  25:14

Are you aiming for the best possible marriage? Even if your spouse isn't? Are you aiming for the best you can possibly do? What about in your personal finances? And I'm not saying that your spouse, as I just said, for a lot of folks, what we tend to hear from time to time is, well, my spouse isn't doing this, why should I do it? Because you need a purpose, right?

You need to be focused on making the best possible relationship you can. What about your personal finances? What are you doing about that? What are you shooting for there? What about your family? parents? Do you have a greater purpose of making raising children for God and raising adults instead of children? Because they need to be adults, when they leave your house? Not kids?

Do you have a greater purpose that is to push away the crap that the world is teaching us and focus on God's teachings for your kids? Or our kids just a part of your life? Are they just something that you know you love them, you take care of them, you feed them, but you have much more focus on you instead. If you find that you have much more focus on you, that means that you don't have a greater purpose.

So back to the beginning again, for you leaders, for you business owners, what are you aiming for in your leadership? What about on your team? In terms of sales or clients? What are you aiming for? So here's the point. And I don't know who said this, but it's a great quote, We are changed into the object upon which our gaze is fixed. So take a hard look at what you're gazing at.

Right? Whatever your eyes are fixed on, that tends to be the thing that you become changed into. So as we talked a lot about influence last month, think about this. If you don't have a quality purpose to point to, then what you are pointing to, is pretty much the thing you're going to be changed into.

So purpose is incredibly transformational. So clarify your purpose. today. Well, I hope this has helped you. As always, our goal is that it does just that. This is something that you can take, you can change your leadership, you can change your business, and you can change your life. do those things and join us on the next episode.

Don’t Be Shark Bait: Define Your Mission, Achieve Your Purpose

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