452 | The Story of the Ridge

Chris LoCurto 0:10
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto's show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Chris LoCurto 0:22
Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous new year so far, which it's, we're a couple days in hopefully this year has started off better than the last one. Hopefully you're doing well. We are doing great. And I am super excited because joining me on the on the show today is my amazing and beautiful and incredible wife, Heather. So welcome back to the show, babe, it's good to have you on, it's good to be here, I would say we are I'm joined in the studio. But today we're actually not cutting in the studio, we're cutting up the ridge. And so we've got a pretty amazing view right now we have a pretty spectacular view. And you may actually hear from time to time, some sounds of some animals, guineas in the background, like being around making noises. And so that's definitely a possibility. But we want to get into some relatively private things that we've been mentioning, before at our live events. But we've not really been able to give much detail on that before now. So we're gonna kind of talk about that today. But really quickly, before we dive into all of that, I want to remind you about the next level leadership live event that is coming up soon. So if you are a business owner or leader, this event is designed for you. This is our premier once a year event, and it's open to the public, so you don't want to miss it. This year, we have even more of what you love both the leadership sessions and live sessions.

So right now we're in the extreme earlybird phase where you can get 30% off of your tickets, it's easy to do just go to creditkarma.com/next level leadership to reserve your seats today. All right. Now having said all of that, let's kind of dig into this story of the rich. Now before we do that, you know, a lot of you have been with with us for a very long time. But we have a lot of new folks coming on a continuous basis. So I just kind of wanted to share what we're called to do. Our our Point Main is our corporate name, obviously, the brand is crystal Accardo. But our corporate name is the point main group. And Point Main actually is a specific type of Shepherd. It's a kind of shepherd that would love its flock, heal its flock feed his flock leave the 99 for the one. It's the kind of shepherd that takes care of it's like we feel we are called to help people understand and gain perspective and grow in ways that changed their decision making that change their relationships that change how they lead people that change how they love on people, right? So those are the things that we feel that we are called to do. And God has continued to bless the business over the past eight years, well, actually nine years. I mean, in a in a few, just a couple of weeks, it's actually nine, we'll be celebrating nine years crazy to think that how crazy is that mine goodness. And so I kind of wanted to just talk about the heart of a shepherd and how that factors into what we do. Now we do the work of a shepherd and like I shared that's what Point Main means our business is focused on creating an environment where people feel safe, where people feel loved, where they feel supported, where they feel equipped, or they feel nurtured so that they can get that life change that business change that relationship change. So when we come back the process of how God came through, as we took steps of faith into the next season of our lives, our work and the ministry that he's calling us to

Unknown Speaker 4:04
freedom, it's so powerful, I felt rejuvenated, almost renewed, I just felt so welcomed and loved and accepted for who I am and not an ounce of judgment. So I was very comfortable there that had a really big impact on me, that's going to be worth it. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be even better on the other side. For me. It was just, it was just very refreshing. And I'm gonna say lifegiving for me, it really was, you know, I would go through next level life again, and probably again and probably again, because it's so powerful. I want you to ask yourself a question. Could you hear the sense of hope and freedom and their voice is just that I want you to know that could be you. Look, it's easy to get trapped in old habits, negative thought patterns and unhealthy relationships. It's gonna take some work but yes, there is hope for you. If you want to experience

Chris LoCurto 5:00
To the same kind of life transformation, this same kind of self awareness and freedom that they have. Or maybe you're just curious what the process would look like for you, then head on over to Chris accardo.com/next level life.

Chris LoCurto 5:18
Before the break, I mentioned that our business is focused on creating an environment where people feel safe, loved, supported, equipped, and nurtured. Well, not long ago, Heather and I started looking for property to create such a place now. To be honest, we actually started looking for property. Yeah, I don't think we set out to, we didn't find a place to nurture. But we set out to find land to build our home, right? Right after we got married. Yeah, we we didn't think about we knew we wanted to be on land, we figured we probably get like five acres that we would build a house and we had talked about, at the time we talked about, both of us have had health issues. For a long period of time, both of us have struggled, I'm still struggling through trying to get the lead out of my body, which is trying to get the lead out, which is an insanely long process and has such a bad effect on so many different things. A lot of struggles that you've experienced, I struggle with Lyme disease, and yeah, affects so much of your hormones and affects so much of you know how you might get sick off of the wrong things that fire it up, whatever it is. So with that we had this desire to get some land and actually grow our own food, right? Have a garden have chickens, you know, we wanted to be able to know where our food was coming from, because unfortunately, you don't know in the in the markets and now eat pretty darn good. We we do as much grass fed as we possibly can. pasture raised chickens, organic as much as we can possibly get it organic, which the word organic is now not even what it used to mean anymore. But we don't eat crap. So with that being said, our desire and you really jumped in early on looking for properties. And we had these conversations, and we focus a lot on God, we focus, you know, I mean, gosh, you guys have been hearing us for the longest time talk about how important God is to us. And for us, God is more important than anything else, including each other. For us, God is number one, and then we are number two for each other. Nobody else can get us into heaven.

Nobody else has our eternity in their hands except for God. And so hey, that's how we live our life. So as we started looking at properties, things just didn't feel right. Things just, we looked at a bunch of different options, you had pulled up a bunch of different options. And it was like, none of this feels right. And we got to one and we've been looking at how long. How long have you were you looking back during that time? I think we had been looking about nine months. By the time we got to the the one property that we were like, Okay, this is doable, right? I think we can make this work. You know, we spent some time in prayer. And we put a contract a contract, we decided to say, hey, we're gonna test this, we're not feeling like God's saying yes, but we're not feeling totally that he's saying no, it just doesn't fit. Nothing has felt right. Here's where to solve this. We're gonna put in this offer. And we're gonna put all of these little stipulations on there and see what happens.

Well, it immediately came back. This is so funny. We are sitting at the table in the event center at the office, and my computer's open, your computer's open, we're working and then all of a sudden you get this email and it's the deed. Yeah. And so the deed to the property that we put the bid on said absolutely no chickens, no goats. And so we were like, Okay, God, there it is. We're not supposed to have this property. It said all these things that we couldn't do, which the one against the things that we felt like we needed to do, right or desire to do. Yeah, so it was like, okay, and at the same time, same strange time. Not strange at all. There's no coincidence. As I'm looking at you and I go, Well, there's our answer. The preview pane of my email inbox popped in a property on Zillow email, and it had this property and I turned and I looked at it and I went, this is it and clicked it open. And you and I went through picture after picture after picture. We're like this, this is it. This is it. And I remember saying, hey, get our gal and have a call and you're like, you looked at it and you said it's got a contract says it's under contract. And I was like, oh, no, sorry. It's under I mean, once it goes to contract, chances of it

Chris LoCurto 10:00
Falling through, you know, oh my gosh, it's ridiculous now for it to be even showing it that it's under contract. It's done. And this is 55 acres in an area of Tennessee called leapers fork. There's just no way, right? And everything inside of me said have a call. So you reached out to our rockstar, real estate agent Gabrielle Dotson, a real Dotson who's just man. She's just a rockstar, she's killed it.

Chris LoCurto 10:27
And two hours later she called you and said, hey, the contract fell through an hour ago. And man oh man, we just went to prayer. But here's the funny thing. Our prayer was not Oh, Lord, please let us have it. We started praying against it.

Chris LoCurto 10:45
God if this is not your will, we do not want it. And we prayed. And we prayed. And we prayed. And we prayed. And so we reached out and come to find out the owners were giving 24 more hours to the person who had the contract. Yeah, because they supposedly had a big wire coming in and all this stuff. And so we just kept praying, okay, if it's not for us, we don't want it. We don't want close this door, close the door, close the door. The next day, you got this thing from the Holy Spirit. I just felt the Lord say, hey, you need to I mean, out to this point, the only thing that we've seen on the property were the pictures, because we drove by the bed at like, seven o'clock at night. And it was like pitch black. We couldn't see anything. And so I just felt the Lord say, hey, you need to go out there. You need to go out to the property. So you know, you reached out reached out to you. And I was like, Hey, babe, I, you know, I feel like we need to go out there and see it. I went picked you up, drove on out here. We drove up the hill came to the top and we were just it was just so beautiful. And it's so funny. I said, Man, it would be funny if the owner was up here because the only thing up here at the time was a barn, a big barn. And they didn't live up here. But they just had the barn up here. And so we came up and sure enough, out walks this guy and I walked up to him. I said, Hey, are you Randy? And then I looked down at his jacket and a big patch says Randy gets us definitely ready. And we met the Amazing Randi Barton, who we are friends with.

We're in Bible study together with today. Just amazing. Him and Sandra Barton, just phenomenal people. But we talked with Randy and we said, hey, we just felt like we were God called us up here to take a look. And he was so sweet. He showed us around we had a chance to walk the property and to just spend time in prayer. You know, he didn't make mentioned he goes well, you know, I'm giving him till midnight tonight. And we're like, Hey, this is gonna sound strange, but we're actually praying against this. And I remember saying to him, like, Hey, we're actually praying that this is not for us. And he closed his door and it rarely goes well. It's 330 Right now, because we spent some time to wire

Unknown Speaker 13:02
because I don't think the new wire transfers this late or like, Don't get excited. Don't get excited.

Chris LoCurto 13:08
So we prayed. We walked around, we drove around. We went all around the property down to the pond, all that fun stuff. And then came back. Same thing, pray through the night, trusting God trusting God trusting God. And then the next morning. I remember I don't remember what it was. But you said, Thank you

Chris LoCurto 13:27
fuse the crap out of me. Now I sat him. I said, Hey, we got any. I had no clue what that meant. I just wanted to break out in song and dance. And any of you that remember the movie Annie, which I have never really seen the whole Annie when they got Annie they broke out in song and dance. So I've got this tech stuff we've got and I'm like, What in the world does that mean? And I'm like, confused, concerned. Who is Annie? What is that? He was some like, what does that mean? And you're like, we got the property. We got it. We got the property. We purchased it celebrated grew our relationship with Randy and Sandra and a bunch of other people as well.

Chris LoCurto 14:13
But as we came in, we walked around and even the very first time we came up here, we felt that this property was way more for more than just us. Yeah, I think there was this sense of peace here. When we, whenever we were up here, you know, we still had our place

Chris LoCurto 14:34
that we were living at and when we were there, we were like just let's go out to the property. We were wanting to be out here because it's so serene, and there is so much peace here and we just felt the Lord's presence when we were out here, you know, and we started to feel that, you know, maybe other people needed to have that serenity and that peace

Chris LoCurto 15:00
And that safe haven and that refuge to be able to come to. And really quickly, you know, the more time we spent in prayer we were feeling God was calling us to make this more than just our land. We we are firm believers, that you need to submit everything that you have to God, we believe there is. So for those of us that are believers, we are owned by God, we are to follow His will and His His purposes for our lives. And so we believe that we are to submit everything, our relationships, our finances, the things that we own everything to him, everything that's not submitted to him is still in the world. As far as we're concerned. What do I mean by that? If we have something, how do we use it for him? How do we use it to glorify Him? How do we use it for his own purposes. And as we spent time in prayer over this, we were looking for five acres, we got 11 times that amount.

Chris LoCurto 15:59
And it's like, we don't need this, we don't need this much. But we knew God put this in our hands and that this is something that he wanted us to have. And immediately we started feeling the we need to create a place. So we're talking about our, our little garden that we're going to grow and chickens like a garden and chickens and you really wanted a cow. That's, that's what, that's where we were. But then all of a sudden, we start looking around and we start seeing amazing opportunities. We start saying, wait a second, we have tons of room? What if we grew a huge market garden, and we started providing that which by the way, we just mapped out just that you just mapped out. phase number one is 5500 square feet. Food, yeah. So that we can provide for people to provide for people. And so we started recognizing that we could build stuff here. And you know, for us immediately, the discussion that we had was, what would it be like for folks that are coming through next level life to come and stay here? You know, you do next level life out here and people love they come to our offices. And it's not like a normal office. It's not a corporate office, you come in and people say, Man, this is like a home. It's like a house. And that's exactly how we wanted it built, right? That's what we want it to be like, but then they go stay in a hotel. And I remember you talking about oh my gosh, what if we could put some small houses out here and they can walk through and pick, you know, if they wanted to make something up for themselves, they could pick from the garden and they could go walk through and you know, when they're out there focusing on prayer and time and whatever, go stay in their own place out here. How much more healing, right what happened, there's something about being in God's creation and being out on land and just, you know, being able to hike through the property. And just having that solitude, you know, we don't get great

Chris LoCurto 18:00
internet reception appear, or

Unknown Speaker 18:06
don't work well up here, which is great. I mean, it's the perfect opportunity to just completely uncheck and spend time, you know, hiking through the property and walking down to the pond. And yeah, I wanted them to be able to can you imagine staying up here going through such a life changing two day event, and waking up and, and you have a basket of fresh produce, you know, on your doorstep where Catherine has gone and she's made fresh sourdough on corn muffins and, and you have your being taken care of Scotty that she makes her unborn. You're being taken care of. And you're being nurtured spiritually Aries fresh goat milk, yogurt. Yeah, is it just

Chris LoCurto 18:56
yeah, I could see that life happening here. So much more healing so much more, you know. And we already have phenomenal programs and processes that help people and heal people and all that kind of fun stuff. But this just adds a different element from a holistic right for a leadership team going through strap plan to be able to be out here as we take breaks and you know, walk through the woods or sit out over the pond and, you know, experience life together. One of the great things in strap plan is that time together as a leadership team, outside of the you know, when we're having dinner, you know, that time where we've got music playing and dinner and you know, and everybody's enjoying each other's company, it's such such growth during that time. And if they could not only have that experience, but then go stay here on the property as well not have to go back to hotel. That's the things that we're seeing. That's the thing that we're experiencing, and that's the thing that we believe God is leading us to do. So what did we start with? Well, one of the first things we started with was honeybees. And if you if you've watched that, so

Chris LoCurto 20:00
As we're preparing the growth of this place, and there is so much to do, and we are moving on building stuff out here that's kind of getting held up as things do, which is funky. But in God's time, it's all in God's timing. But then we started looking around going, Okay, well, we have to prepare this land, it's 55 acres, and only a couple of acres is actually cleared. And so after having spent a decent amount of money, just brush hogging, some areas that were cleared, Chris got an idea.

Chris LoCurto 20:37
We need goats that I think if I remember correctly, we saw something. I don't. We saw something where people were renting goats or maybe it's we talked to, I think we were down at Davis General. Davis general market. Yeah. And they were saying you could rent goats. Yes, that's truly are the side of the property because we were telling them what we were, you know, what we were doing trying to clear some of the land and, and they were like, Oh, well, you know, you can rent goats. And we're like, rent go, Wait a second. If we can rent goats to clear our land, what would it mean to just buy goats? You know, if we just bought goats? How difficult is this? It's so we literally and this is a business decision. We're like, Okay, this is gonna save us a lot of money of having to pay to bring the stuff down. So we start looking at goats, and I'm sure it was, it had to have been you. I don't remember how it happened. But somehow, we found that the highest butterfat content of milk comes from Nigerian dwarf goats. And so now we're like, Well, wait a second. Not only can we buy goats and put them on our land to clear the land naturally. Now we can also get milk from them and we can eat and you know, make you can she makes goat cheese, yogurts and all these things.

So that was like, Okay, this is a fun idea. So we went on the hunt. And we got goats. We got four darlings, and we got three bucks. And we've been having fun ever since. And this has just been phenomenal. We we fenced them in and put them in, and oh, my gosh, we've been able to see more of our land because of the work that those goats have done by tearing stuff down eating it, you know, and clearing stuff out. And the great thing is we just keep moving them along, and they just keep working their work, goats. But Praise Lord, we are our new team members. They're our new team members. They're our first actual team members on the ridge outside of unit. But we have successfully bred at least one so far with only one. We should have little ones here and little ones here in the future. March. Yeah. So we did that. We got honey bees if you've not seen the honey beat, honey bee episodes saga saga, it was so funny. We were just putting stuff out there about how having these bees and the struggles that we went through and they got attacked by wasps and all the stuff that we're posting some of these videos out there. Just because we're like, people, you know, we just want to show people what's going on. And we had people going, what's happened with the peace? Where are they what's we haven't seen anything new what's going on with the bees, what's happened and it was it was so fun to see that people see now the bees are doing good. These are good.

They're nice and toasty for winter, we had to combine our two hives because my queen stopped producing eggs. And so we had to combine the two of them. They both got both hives got attacked, and dropped the population considerably. So we had to put them together. All as well. You can see the saga on YouTube. He had the ridge. Yeah, what is experienced there is the ridge. So from there, I know that sounds like you know, what are they talking about? All of these pieces have been aspects of what we believe God's calling us to do with this land. As we've had the goats up here, people have started coming. We've had to start with team members have just I want to go see I want to bring my kids and it's been stunning to see the kids responses. Katie hertz on just show did not want to leave the property. He wanted to take one. Take one of the goats with him with him. And then we had homeschool kids out here and we've had people show up and it's been amazing. We're not even where we think we want to be with this place yet. And it's already having

Chris LoCurto 24:26
Yeah, the healing and the community that it's creating, you know, the ability for homeschool moms to come out here and for us to be able to explain the life of a bee and for the kids to learn and grow. experienced the goats experience the guineas. Oh, that's another thing.

Unknown Speaker 24:46
I guess that's the next that's the next phase. The next addition where the guineas

Unknown Speaker 24:52
so we're up here and what do we have and 55 acres of forest in the south in the South.

Chris LoCurto 25:00
Have ticks and chiggers and oh my gosh, the ticks love Heather and the triggers love me. Oh my gosh, I couldn't walk outside without coming back and having like 20 bites and they just it was terrible. So I did all kinds of research and could not find anything that really just got rid of chiggers except guinea hens, guinea hens, so chickens will eat ticks, but they don't eat the chiggers, but guineas, eat ticks and that what they do is all of the blades of grass or whatever the triggers are on, they wipe it with their beaks. And then they eat the triggers. So we immediately you went and research found some trigger or it's found some triggers found some guineas. We bought guineas, and we let them roam around. And within what a couple of weeks, probably three, four weeks. Yeah, I could actually walk outside in where they've been not beyond the not beyond that part. But where they've been and have no problems whatsoever. I mean, it's just been insane. Our the spider population has come down, the millipede population has come down all the bugs around where they've been. It's all dropped immensely, which is just fabulous. It's been great. So they're on the homestead and their workers as well. So we have, we have the goats that are naturally taking down all of the stuff that helps us to clear out the land and see what we've got. We have the the bees that are going to be providing for us. We have the goats that are going to be providing for us we have the guineas that not only have they literally destroyed a lot of the tick and sugar population around us, but they produce amazing eggs, which will start utilizing the land and the fertile Yes. Which is a good plus for the garden. Exactly, exactly. And then we added a couple peacocks. Oh, we did. Yeah. So we actually just for those are just ornaments, really, we got two peacocks, and they're just remember at their party, but we had to get power up here. We had water, which was great. But we have had a lot. This was such a long, painful, expensive process to get power up the hill. Had to get new bridges in had to get a lot of rock. just hammered out. We've had some great help on that.

Chris LoCurto 27:13
Just amazing process to get power up the hill, we finally got it. We started the process in February.

Chris LoCurto 27:21
We finally got the power one couple months ago. August. I was gonna say August. It was August. It took that long for us to get power up here. Well, we can't move forward on any of the building. Until we get this up here. We can't move forward on. Yeah, I mean, there's so many things that we had to get done. And then all right, we finally got this going. Let's go back to codes. Nope, this isn't ready. This isn't prepared. Nope, you got to change this. So we're in the process, right? Any of you out there who have built a home probably have ran into the same thing? You know, this is not all part of it. Yeah, this is this is not the first time we've experienced this, or I've experienced this. I know you've experienced that as well. With all of that said, some of the interesting things that have happened along the way, have been so prayer focused and so trusting. I've got great clients and friends that have reached out and said, you know, they they know the process, we've spent time together. We've talked through stuff, and I had a client just a couple weeks ago go, how are you doing this? How are you not taking control, because the truth is, I could control a whole lot of stuff and make a whole lot of things happen. And instead of controlling these things, and instead of jumping in and forcing things to happen, because here's what I've learned in my 51 years of life, almost 52 Is that when I control things, I'm removing God's input, I'm removing God's control. And the whole time he's saying to me, be diligent, let me make things happen. It's not just me saying it to every single human being right, be diligent, Trust me.

Trust that I'm the one who provided this place. Trust that I'm the one who made the email drop at the right time that I put your attention on this, that I'm the one while you're praying, saying close the doors, I'm going I'm not closing this door, I'm opening this door. Trust me that, you know, everything happened exactly the way that I wanted it to. And trust me that I'm going to make everything fall in line when I want. And so we've had some conversations where it's been work, you know, things have slowed down, which is actually there's a lot of great benefits when we got to the other side. When we were gonna start the building had everything happened. It was at the height of the lumber price increase. Well, praise God. He saved us from that. And there have been a couple other things that have happened since right. So interestingly, what we've experienced is things aren't going the way we would want it to. We have two options. Chris jumps in and takes control

Chris LoCurto 30:00
Don't start making things happen. Or we just sit back and we go, we're trust God, we be diligent, we keep moving forward with what we believe he's taught us to do. But we're going to trust God. And I think that's been great for a lot of folks to hear. How have you done that? And the answer simply is this. It's been time after time after time of seeing what happens when I take control.

Unknown Speaker 30:26
And time after time, after time of going, Nope. Trust, let go. Trust God, watch what he does, and then see what happens and see what the difference is, as well. Don't just wait for him to do it. You know, it's not, we're not sitting back going, Oh, my gosh, we're gonna wait for God to swoop in here and build a building. We're saying we're trusting the prot we're pushing where we can, we're asking questions. We're gaining perspective, we're doing what we can. But when we run into those roadblocks, we don't force our way through it. Right. Yeah. Because, again, you know, back to the whole original property, if we would have pushed that and forced that and didn't stop and trust, you know, we would have been there in a situation where we couldn't add animals where we couldn't do the things that, you know, we had wanted to do. And so we couldn't help, but we couldn't have other people show up and be a part of it and be part of the healing. And I mean, we could have obviously we could have, but it wouldn't be the things that we feel like God shown us here. So let me just stop there and ask you, because people, a lot of people have asked me, Chris, how are you? Have you done this? And what does it been like to, you know, trust and not take control? And it's been enlightening for them? I haven't asked you what has it been like for you, in this process of just trusting?

Chris LoCurto 31:42
I think for me, there's these moments of a hurry up, I'm ready, you know. And also, I think we've been walking this walk of stop, pray, stop, pray, when things don't go the way that we think they're supposed to go. It's been this stop and pray and stop and pray. And so many times I've seen it was like, Nope, don't turn right turn left. Ah, so that's why this didn't happen. You know, we've seen that over and over again. And every time I see that there's this confidence that's being built in me on being able to trust God more and to have a spouse and to have a partner who is strong in his faith. And, and I see that

Unknown Speaker 32:30
it's easier for me as a woman to trust, you know, to sit back and go, Okay, let's continue to pray. Yeah. I think one of the things I love because in the very beginning, when we were looking at properties, before we got to this, you had some frustrations of this isn't this isn't going right. And then when we hit the let's backup, pray, trust, I think the thing that I have loved watching, obviously, as your husband is you grow in that moment, but my gosh, what you have done with the kids, the conversations that you've had, since even just this specific situation of trust, no, you trust no, don't force that no conversations that you've had with the kids, whether it's things that they're doing, or their marriages or whatever, it has been a blessing to watch, you take this experience, and many, many others where you've trusted God and not forced it to happen. And help them to see, listen, if you walk this out, it's going to be better on the other side. And I think that's just so powerful for me, as your husband to watch that happen. Because we're crazy about the girls. We love them. We've got five and 10 grandkids,

Chris LoCurto 33:46
for son in laws. So we've got a great large family, and it's awesome to be able to be teaching them these aspects of faith. You know, and watching you walk that out. I think it's just been, I love it. It's just been a blessing for me.

Unknown Speaker 34:02
I don't know, I don't know what to say.

Unknown Speaker 34:06
I just think it's been it's just been another blessing of God. When He says trust me, and we do. It doesn't stop there. Again, it's one thing to say, Yeah, I trust him. But what are your actions speaking to those around you? And so it's been a great testimony, to be able to teach through those hard times or through the frustrations or through the disappointments because things aren't going the way that you envisioned. Being able to sit back and go, Yeah, but God's God's plan is all always better. You know, it's always better than you could envision. So when we come back, what does it look like to continue to walk in God's will and purposes in your life? We'll talk about that when we come back.

Chris LoCurto 34:58
Folks, if you've been listening to me, for me

Chris LoCurto 35:00
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Chris LoCurto 35:55
So as we're discussing the ridge, we're up here, we're enjoying this, we love this place, we can't stand leaving this place. We've got so many great plans and vision that we believe we have from God. But this is also cut in to our time. This is this process of setting this up to continue our business. It's funny, we're setting up a homestead that is preparing a way for us to add our business to it so that we can have greater impact. We're not stopping anything that we're doing. We're not changing anything. Well, there's actually one little thing that we've changed and that is you. We have actually pulled you back from some of the stuff inside of the business so that you can prepare the way be more focused on the things up here. I still am in heavily focused in the business, but I get one day if I can make it happen. I've got one dedicated day a week that I can put into getting things going up here and making things happen. A lot of times that works out sometimes it doesn't work and it just kinda depends on what we got going on. But we're preparing this way to do this. Well. There's one thing about me that I don't know if a lot of people know this, but I know a decent amount of our clients do if we can do with excellence. I'm just not gonna do it. I don't do it. No, that doesn't apply to every single thing. You know if I can't butter my bread, yes. Excellent. Why to the homestead?

Chris LoCurto 37:35
totally love that at the bottom of the hill. We're learning as we go.

Chris LoCurto 37:44
And a lot of stuff have not been excellent. But praise God, we still have all our animals we're doing. We're doing a good. Yeah, that's, well, we don't have all of our

Chris LoCurto 37:55
families. We did lose some was some stuff that we did not know. But ya know, that's a that is a great point. We have had the bee saga, which was just craziness. We did lose some guineas not knowing that they can't see at nighttime. What the beauty about that though, is that's part of life. I mean, you can't just there's so many people out there that actually don't do or don't move on God's right word or what they're feeling they're being called to do, because they don't have all the answers because they don't I mean, that's so true. Look at Moses, right? Just do God. God's gonna provide the water, God's gonna give you the education, you're gonna stumble, you're gonna fall you may be close to drowning, but it's okay. Just get in the water and try and swim. Right? I think of the what's his name? Noah, what's Yes, from the notebook from the nobody getting the water. In the water. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so getting the water. We have. So I should rephrase what I mean. If I'm going to do something that affects people, if I'm going to do something that's for clients, if I'm going to do something that is what we what we expect to be life change or life, you know, perspective gathering or whatever, and if it's going to affect people, and we can't do with excellence. I don't want to do it. We have gone into this, this process up here at the ridge. haven't said well, we call it the rich.

Chris LoCurto 39:25
Now that's so funny. It's called the ridge because it's a big horseshoe shaped ridge. We have down in the middle is our pond and we have this big ridge that goes all the way around. And then in the back of the

Chris LoCurto 39:42
top. I don't know what you would call that the big curved part. We have pastureland back there as well. So it actually squares out back there. But it's a big horseshoe shaped ridge. That's why we call it the rich. So we have gotten into this thing with we don't know. We're gonna research as much as we possibly can.

Unknown Speaker 40:00
But we're going to move forward. We're not going to we're not going to wait for it to be perfect. Again, that's another trusting that God will provide. Yeah. Right. Because he says, Ask, and I will give you, if you if you are lacking wisdom, ask and I'll give it to you. So what does 2022 look like for the ridge? Well, we were trying to get this ecosystem in place and stabilized, we literally just added one of the most exciting things for us as Sunday, or this past week, we, we've added for pregnant use, which, for those of you that may not know what a u is, it's not a why oh, you

Unknown Speaker 40:41
we don't have for pregnant Heather's seat.

Unknown Speaker 40:47
We have been blessed. And I gotta tell you, as somebody who has been called a shepherd for years, and you being one of those people that has been an advocate for how we do stuff and how it is so healing and life changing.

Unknown Speaker 41:06
Having sheep has been, it's been a desire, it was humbling to get them here to actually see, you know, I mean, if you think about it, nine years ago, was when pomade started, you know, almost we're coming up on on our nine year anniversary. And the word Point Main, to shepherd the sheep, to shepherd that loss flock to provide and take care of, and we're out here on the ridge. And we feel the Lord is giving us this vision to take care of his sheep to provide a safe haven and a refuge and a place for them to have healing. And the sheep arrive. It just was a moment of i There were no words for me. It was very profound. It was humbling. It's interesting, because we have clients who

Unknown Speaker 42:03
I'll never forget, Henry's look bad. I love Henry's luck in a strat plan. He made the comment one time he said, before I lead this team here, the only team I'd ever lead was a team of mules and everybody laughed, and I go, he's serious. That's, that's legit. That's, that's where he came from. And God pushed him from from doing that into running this business that you know, is is phenomenal and amazing and all that kind of stuff. You know, listening to a Henry listening to clients that have said, and my godson is one of those people as well, who've said, you know, having shepherded first taught me a lot about leading people. It's been interesting to see people who have gone, man when I had to take care of these animals for a long period of time. And then I had to take care of people, there was so much I learned from that process. So we're going the other direction,

Unknown Speaker 43:00
where we have been shepherding people for a long time. And not this isn't just a me thing. This is a whole team. Everybody, you have done a phenomenal job of shepherding people, Joe, everybody, I could go through the whole team, right, that have done a phenomenal job of taking care of people, leading people, feeding people providing for them, going after those that are struggling, whatever it is. So that was a profound piece for us to bring those sheep here and praise God. We're sure at least three of them are pregnant, but hopefully all four of them are and we're just gonna grow that flock and and then they will actually become our lawn mowers, which is great. That'll be fun. And we have the weed whacker we got the weed whackers we got a lawn mowers we got the chicken chigger eaters, the fertilizer fertilizers. That's right. Yeah, good. Well, then you've got chickens coming next, chickens coming. I love it. It's so funny because we are creating this process. And if you if you can get this vision in your head, I hope that you can we're going to build this place. The vision that we have from God we believe that God is telling us to do is to build this place where people can come and be in God's nature, be in God's creation and experience God's creation while they're experiencing life change while they're experiencing leadership, change, business change, whatever it is, yeah, we want the ridge to become a place where healing happens. Exactly. That's exactly it.

Unknown Speaker 44:35
And so that is coming. The next thing is hopefully we will get everything passed through so that we can build our lodge. Yeah, and hopefully we'll journal Yeah, or we'll vlog

Unknown Speaker 44:50
this process and take you guys along with us. And so you know, be on the lookout watch for those videos there. Sometimes it takes me a little while to take

Unknown Speaker 45:00
get to him. But, you know, we want to share this process with you guys. Absolutely. And, you know, listen, I know this may sound, I don't know how this sounds, I hope you're hearing our hearts, our hearts is not to just build a place. And we could do that anywhere we believe we're following what God is telling us to do to impact lives, yours, our teams, ours, our kids, the homeschool moms and their kids. And it's just something that we believe God is saying move in this direction. It's almost like feel the dreams, build it, and they will come. So and share the story and share the story. I mean, so much of it is going to be the trial and errors and, and it's not all going to be rainbows and blue skies, you know. And so to be able to share the story, and share God's glory, you know, that how he's working and moving? Yeah. And you know, what does that look like in your life? What does that look like to walk out in your business and your life as life ebbs and flows? And you have ups and downs and left turns and right turns? are you stopping and listening? And what is the vision that God's sharing? And are you willing to lay it all down? Oh, gosh, that's such a great point. And are you sharing the story to your family to your team, in the process?

Unknown Speaker 46:23
What you just said, so I've alluded to this, I've shared a little bit, but a lot of folks ask us, How are you doing this? With your faith? How are you doing? And how did you get here? And how are you trusting and how are you believing? And I think the thing that hopefully you're hearing us say is our goal is not to build an empire to ourselves. Our goal is not to put ourselves on pedestals cred we rip ourselves down off of pedestals, if ever, we see that our goal is what is God telling us because there's a bajillion times more blessing when we follow Him, than when we go after the things that we desire. For us, we have lived this life, plenty of going after our own desires. And it doesn't mean that we can't have desires, it doesn't mean that we can't enjoy life and do things that we want to do. We have, you and I have discovered and a lot of our team and family members as well have discovered that when we are making God more important than anything else. When we follow his vision, there is so much blessing that comes behind it. When we're obedient to Him in His will and His purposes in his ways. There's so much more blessings behind it. So

Unknown Speaker 47:42
it's not Chris and Heather going playing farmer. It is what is the next phase of God impacting his children? And how are we a part of that? Yeah, and what are we doing with that? Yeah, you know, it reminds me of the story of Jesus walking along the shore and you know, Peter running up to him and, and he's like, Peter, do you love me? He's like, Yes, Lord course I do. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. And I feel like we're sitting here and what is the second time he says this? Now keep in mind, this is in the Greek what is the second time he asked him? What does he say? He says, point may know my shaver job. And so we're sitting here and we're looking at you know, God has given us gifts and talents to help his his children by doing what we do. And now we're looking at how can we continue to feed his sheep? How can we build a space to feed his sheep? To help them heal? And we feel that the ridge is that next shot, doing this with you? I love this journey with you. I love having my life partner who's who's so into what God is, is guiding us to do. I love our team. I love our team that is so excited about this. And Katie was out here this morning and and just you know, being a part of this. I love how much

Unknown Speaker 49:12
Oh, it's a tear. Oh, baby.

Unknown Speaker 49:17
Yeah, it is so incredible. It's so blessed. So back to the blessing piece. Listen, make God more important. Focus on what God wants guys. It doesn't mean he's gonna change your business. It doesn't mean he's gonna tell you can't do what you're doing. There's so many folks that go well, if I put God first does that mean he's gonna stop me doing this thing that I've been doing for 20 years now? The crazy thing is the stuff that I do. He is brought me through all of these things to be able to teach the things that I teach, right that the for our team to do that. So the amazing thing is is that he will guide you on on how to do it his way. He'll guide you with blessing me. He may he may just absolutely call you right out of it. Nope. Take care.

Unknown Speaker 50:00
right turn, he has had me take multiple right turns and left turns in life. The point that I'm making is, is make him more important than anything else. And you will be amazed at how many blessings come along when you're lining up with his will.

Unknown Speaker 50:12
When it's your vision, and it's your will, and it's your purposes, it's going to be what you can produce. Right? When it's his, it's you going along for the ride, and he produces, and He blesses, and he puts in your hands, and he sends the right people, and he sends the right clients and the right team members and, and the folks that need help. And then he does amazing things. You know, we've mentioned the next level of scholarship, he sends clients along that have had their lives changed and say, I want to seed into what you guys are doing for other people. And we are blown away by how much people have sown into helping people who can't afford to get their lives changed. That is a true shepherd

Unknown Speaker 51:00
that is pointing that is pointing that is poor me know his sheep. So hopefully you've enjoyed this, this journey on this story of of how we are here and what the ridge is and what the purpose is and what the intention is. We ask that you pray, pray for us. Pray for God's will and pray that we are hearing from him pray for wisdom for us. Pray for protection that you know we don't you know, we do a good job setting this place up and taking care of things so that people can get here and get their lives changed and be impacted. So we asked for your prayers lift us up as we walked this walk that we stay faithful and obedient to God and putting him first and focused on his will. So any last input that you would like to give my love? No, I'm still trying to wipe away the die though. All right. I know. I know. It's so fun. It's so fun. We're so blessed. And guys, listen, you're why we do what we do. You're the reason that we do well, God's the reason that we do what we do. We do it for you. We do it to impact your life. We hope that this is helping you We hope this is changing your lives. We hope this is having an impact on your family. We hope this is inspiring you to seek more of His will and His vision for your life. And yeah, that's why we do it. So help us help us to let other people know share this stuff like this stuff. Leave us reviews help us so that we can reach more people in life if we are helping you then help us to help others that's I feel like there's a Tom Cruise moment help me help you.

Unknown Speaker 52:40
Was that really knowing him in Cuba Gooding Jr help me help you. Oh, Jerry Jerry Maguire dare you funny.

Unknown Speaker 52:50
Wow. He was Gooding Jr. Alright folks. Well, hopefully this has helped you today. As always, we want you to take this information, change leadership, change business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.