582 | Debt-Free Living: Peter’s Journey

Introduction to the Interview

On today's episode of The Chris LoCurto Show, we are talking to Peter Sawatzky, and we're going to be talking about the inspiring journey of Peter's path to financial freedom.

So get ready to learn about the mental and emotional benefits of living debt free. That is coming up next.

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

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. We're having a great day today. We've got a fantastic guest joining us.

Peter Sawatzky has recently achieved something that many people dream about. He is completely 100% debt free.

And we're going to hear about his journey, the challenges that he's faced, and the incredible mental and emotional benefits of living without debt.

So before I lose any of you out there that are going, oh, crud, I don't want to hear this story, listen, just stick with us, right? Just stick with us.

That is, I know that it's something that I have preached for many decades, and a lot of folks, they struggle with this concept.

Listen to this journey, hear how he got into debt, out of debt, all that kind of fun stuff, and hopefully this will be something that is inspiring to you. Now, I have known Peter for many years now. I have seen Peter grow in his business.

I've seen him grow personally. I've seen him grow as a leader. A lot of the decisions that he has made and discussions that we have had not only in business, but in life, and Peter loves to do ministry as well.

Just the growth I have seen has been phenomenal. So I'm really excited to dive into this journey that Peter has taken and again, once again, hopefully it'll help propel you both in your personal life and your business.

So please do me a favor. Welcome to the show, Peter Sawatzky. Peter, welcome. Thank you, Chris. I enjoy being here.

I've enjoyed listening to your podcasts and I've enjoyed just getting training from, from you guys, from the Mastermind. And it's been, it's been great.

Tell Us About Your Background and How You Got Into Debt

It has been so good to watch you experience what you have and the growth that you've experienced. But this is one of those things for me that is super exciting because debt, you know, I can't say it enough.

Debt robs you of your options and you're somebody— I know we've had some personal conversations of options that you're looking for in life, of being able to run your business, but still do ministry on the side stuff.

And what does that look like? And it means the world to see you get in this position where you have options back.

So, first off, if you would do me a favor, tell everybody about yourself. And also if you would tell about your journey of getting into debt. What did that look like? How'd that happen?

So my journey, just a little bit of a backstory. I come from a pretty broken down family.

My dad left when I was six or seven, and I had, when it came to money, I was learning from somebody who was a very, I would say, a person who loved to party, a person who loved to spend money. So.

And my dad would, when I was younger, if we would even find some money. And we, you know, we were, we were poor folks.

We truly were growing up in Mexico, not necessarily because of ministry or anything, but just, you know, that's where we were raised. Born and raised. To growing up there.

In some places, we were the poorest of the poor. But if we even would find some money, my dad would borrow it from us and he was going to give it back Saturday.

Saturday still has yet to come. And so that just, and I don't know. And there's something about learning how to deal with money.

And so just a long story short, growing up, you know, growing up mostly without a dad, I had some amazing father figures in my life, though in some places, I don't know exactly how I went down the path.

And one huge thing that I have also learned with the LoCurto group is personalities. And I'm a very high I. I'm a very high social person. I love. I love people. I love fun.

I'd be the person to, who probably might drive the furthest for any events, youth events. And some of those were good things. They weren't bad things.

You know, I'd be the one spending maybe the most money on going somewhere, and I might be the last one to leave. And just that propelling to, I guess, be maybe also being noticed.

And I didn't like to say no. And I've also learned that I didn't like to be said no to. It's just some of those things, like my personality, my Root Systems were influenced at an early age for not necessarily financially, in a very destructive path.

Truly, truly. Because if you have somebody that doesn't like to say no and doesn't like to be said no to put money in that equation, well, guess what?

That's the recipe for disaster. So I was definitely the spender. And so my wife and I just celebrated our 10th anniversary. And she came from a family that was completely opposite.

She was the saver, of course, she was more of a saver. And so in here. So about ten years ago, when we got married, I already had a bunch of debt and nothing, really, nothing to show for it.

So it's crazy. And so. And I was a schoolteacher for about seven years, and I truly enjoyed it, and I love people.

And in my faith with God, I don't know why I didn't see that I was having issues like in my christian walk, but it was just one thing led to the other.

And I think, for me, what started it was vehicles, okay? So I would try to upgrade, or if some need arose, I would have maybe. Here's the thing. I had options to borrow money. That was the problem.

I had access to different places, friends or whatever, that would borrow me money. And then with interest, of course, except one guy, he was a real christian man.

He didn't charge any interest. It's just crazy how for me, obviously, at the time, felt very good, but I would borrow money for one. This is kind of where it started, for one vehicle, and then maybe borrow extra, and then not.

You know what I mean? And it would just eventually, you start digging one hole to fill the next, and then next time, you dig a bit of a bigger hole, and then you have a little bit extra spare.

And it's like eventually, our honeymoon, I hate to say it now, our honeymoon was funded by the local store bank, you know, and different things, and in Mexico. And so my wife and I got married.

My wife is from Virginia. We got married, moved to Mexico, and our— the furniture for our house. The house was hardly furnished. Guess who. Guess where that money came from. A lot of that stuff.

And here's another thought. I love sales. I love selling. I love people, right? So I would sometimes, you know, sell vehicles. I took a few vehicles. I drove with a 1970 Chevy S10, one of those.

It was beautiful. Flare side Chevy. Took it all the way from Mexico to Canada by myself and sold it out there for money. And then the money that I got from it, guess what? I did not use it to pay debt.

I used it for doing other things. You know, we got married and stuff. And so it just really, really just started me off, especially when we were first married, off a really rotten path financially.

And then another thing was, you know, becoming a resident in the US. You know, I have a green. I'm a green card holder. But that process wasn't necessarily cheap.

And so it's like what I, you know, obviously, if you don't have the money for these things. And, and so the thing is, I didn't care. I, I didn't care where my money, like, as far as where it was going and stuff.

And so my story is that, you know, so ten years ago, we got married and then we lived in Mexico for two more years teaching school, and then we decided to move to the US. And that was, you know, eight years ago, worked at a few different places, and then we bought our own business five and a half years ago.

And, ah, the stories of business owners. And now my favorite saying is everybody wants to own their own business except those that have one.

That's one of my favorite sayings. And now it's like, oh, my goodness, it came with so much stress and stuff, but it has really kicked my butt and I have learned so much. It has, you know, and so, yeah, that's a little bit of a backstory.

Was anything else that you want me to touch on? Basically, biggest thing was not learning. Not learning anywhere.

And I would just want to encourage the dads, the moms out there, teach your kids, find ways to teach them how to handle money and financing, because I did it and I had to learn the hard way.

I think that, you know, it's amazing how common of a story, you know, with, obviously with different details of how folks grow up in this, this, you know, debt is good if you can utilize money.

You know, the old saying, use other people's money. And just this thought of, if you can do that, you can really become successful.

And then I, you know, you see one story of somebody who has been decently successful using debt, and you miss out on the 4 million stories of people that have just been destroyed, you know, in the process and how much it affects them.

And so it's interesting that, you know, I grew up very poor as well. We didn't have, I mean, there was times we were, we got the government cheese, we were washing clothes on the front porch in a little, you know, one of those old timey basins.

So when I turned 18, I got Visa, Mastercard, American Express, knew nothing about it, knew nothing about handling finances. My Visa and my Mastercard would come in the mail with a bill that I had to pay $25 on.

Mastercard didn't have a number. I mean, American Express didn't have a number. And so I thought, well, I'll just send $25. I didn't realize you had to pay the whole thing off every single month back in those days.

This is back in the early nineties the real early nineties. Like 91. No, no, I'm sorry. This was in the late eighties is what it was. And I had my American Express taken away in a movie store, a video store, because I hadn't paid it.

This guy goes out to take it. I'm like, what are you talking about you got to take my card? He goes, this person on the phone says, you haven't paid your bill.

I'm like, they never told me an amount. I was like, it was this amazing moment of just, oh, gosh, I I've already screwed up. You know, I'm 18, 19 years old at this point. I'm like, oh, I've already screwed up.

I got to fix this stuff. And so it is interesting how it just seems like this money thing, this. The ability to use and, you know, use debt to our advantage.

It just seems like it's always a smart thing. But you're sitting in a different seat now. You know, you. You, or I should say it this way, the seat you're sitting in now, you actually own the building you're in.

You know, everything that you're doing is yours. What does it feel like to have a debt free business now? So, if you don't mind, I want to just clarify just a few little things here.

So, you know, we know, obviously, we're leasing the building, and we're business debt free. We have. We. The only money that we owe right now is on our home, which is right now an RV, motorhome.

And that's only, you know, we only about. We owe about 75% off of it. And so it's like, you know, business debt becoming business debt free was so it was, you know, it was freeing.

But at the same time, just over the last few days, I've realized I have to be careful. For five and a half years, I was trying to prove that I'm not gonna fail at this.

I had a driving factor for me, and, you know, I can't fail. I can't fail. I can't fail. And. But, you know, it feels so freeing and even coming, leading up to it, knowing that this was, you know, and we actually.

So my wife and I, we had a. Our goal had sort of been, by our 10th wedding anniversary, to be. To be business debt free. Okay? And so that was our original goal.

But then, because I, you know, because of some decisions, even in business that we made, it was going to take us to at least till the end of the year instead of June.

It was going to take us till the end of the year. And then we were talking about, what would we be willing to do? What are we willing to do to make some of our original goals come true?

Like, what are we willing to do for a year? And for us, it was, hey, let's sell our house. We built some equity. It was just, had we not done that, we wouldn't have had to do it.

But it boosted us and we were able to hit that goal financially. But not just that is to simplify, to multiply, connect. I've been busting it for the last five and a half years and it's been insane.

But just leading up to it, knowing that I'm going to be debt free by the end of this year, I would sometimes, and just for clarification, my father in law, owner, financed the business.

And I will tell you, we had so many issues when the ownership change happened because he had every reason to think that I was going to run the business into the ground because I had owed him money for a few years and hardly ever paid anything off of it.

And he still, he was, he still, I guess he gave me a chance, but. And so I would remind him, only eight more payments, David! You know, it feels so good. It feels and—

And now especially, you know, and when I gave him that last check, and now it's just like, it feels freeing. I don't have this fear looming over me.

One thing is, you know, and if push, you know, we love what we do, you know, we never know what happens. As far as I love the people, we never know what's going to happen in today's economy.

But even now, knowing that if something were to happen, something were to happen somehow, which, Lord willing, hopefully it doesn't, but I could shut my doors and I could walk away and I don't owe a single, you know, and I don't, I don't, I don't have any payments, you know, and it just feels so freeing.

That's the word. Freeing is what it is. And leading up to it as well as now. Yeah, we get stuck in this, this belief, you know, I've tried to help so many business owners for decades to understand this concept of running a business debt free.

And it's funny how people are always, you know, they always know better than you do, you know, even though this is what I do for a living.

Ah, I just don't understand their personal situation.

And it's always because they've gone through these years of prosperity, you know, they have these years of the businesses operating well, they have these years where the economy is doing well, and then we would go through something like 2008, and then I would have people coming to me going, what do I do?

I'm like, well, you know, we're. Now you're in a different situation.

You don't have the prosperity to help you get debt free. So we're going to work out the best way we possibly can. But it's like it takes something like that happening to shock the daylights out of them.

And then as we continue on, and you just have, you know, 2010, you have, you know, obviously, COVID, you have these things that start hitting.

It starts waking people up to going, maybe I'm not bulletproof when it comes to being, you know, having debt. Maybe.

Maybe, you know, just because money is flowing in doesn't mean that the economy can't shift in 24 hours and things change.

And so there is a massive freedom of not owing anything on your business and knowing that when COVID hit, one of the great things for us was we were in a position to continue to pay all of our people.

We never laid anybody off. We never dropped hours. We never did anything like that. We took care of our folks for a long time, but we were able to have all of our team shift and adjust to help all of our clients in ways of being able to think through.

How could they adjust for COVID and make things happen differently?

It would suck if the people who are teaching business owners how to run their business had to close their doors because we had, you know, we were loaded up with debt or something or, you know, couldn't afford to do it.

So, man, there is such an amazing freedom, and it's. I could speak to this, but I'd love for you to just give, you know, 30 seconds on this.

How has this changed your stress levels, being debt free?

Like I said earlier, I was never one to really be that stressed out over finances, but my wife, I think, is a lot more like her security, you know? And it's like.

So for me personally, maybe it's more than I. Than I realize, but like I said, I did not have. I don't know why I did get that healthy, that stress level, that really freaked me out.

And so I don't know if that has really. It's definitely been better for my wife. And it's, you know, when you just. Because, you know, it's just. It's not looming over your head, you know, and it's, you know, for instance, the business is finally ours.

You know, we did it. It's not like we haven't achieved. I mean, we are at a place in a timeline, at a much healthier place. And so stress levels.

And like I said, I should have had more stress than I did. And so, yeah, it's interesting. It's crazy how people are so different in that. Right.

So what are some key decisions that you made to tackle the debt?

So some of the things that happened, and they were not my decisions from the beginning. They were not my decisions, but so I—

Earlier, I just briefly, I mentioned something about the struggles that we had with purchasing the business of my father in law. And at first, you know, some of that, you know, we just were not.

We were just not at a good spot relationally. And so we asked to somebody else, somebody, a friend, a brother, somebody that I looked up to.

They looked up to, we asked somebody to be a mediator and helping achieve some. Getting somewhere, you know, helping make the contract, the contract of, you know, as far as how much, like, all the money stuff, etcetera.

And then what we also did is I had personal debt, so my father in law had actually paid my personal debt in different places for me. I paid him interest. It was benefiting him some, but he had paid my personal debts, and now I just owed him money.

So now, obviously, I'm buying his business. So we're combining. And so let's just say X amount. Now the business is worth X amount, but now the business is worth X amount.

In other words, we had to just pay extra, and now it's just all combined. But what made some decisions that happened? Some things that happened. Washington, we discuss, well, what are going to be some consequences if I don't pay?

And here's the thing. I had not been faithfully paying my debt with my father in law before. And I don't know why. It was stupid, you know, it's just pathetic if you don't care enough anyway.

And so it was this. This was the thing. If the payment amount was not paid by the fifth of each month, I think $300 was going to go back on the principle. It's not a lot of money, but still, it's going to start hurting you if you don't.

If you're not careful. If we haven't made our payment by the 15th or 17th of the month, the business defaults back to him. I'm his son in law. I'm his son in law. Okay.

You know, and there were times, Chris, that it would have been easier. It's like, have it, have it. I don't even want it anymore because we were struggling and we were busting so hard. But we didn't.

We stuck to it, and I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be a failure. That was a big drive. But some of the decisions, I was forced to make these decisions, and they have taught me so much.

They have taught me, and it's like sometimes you learn things the hard way, and financially, I have learned a lot of things the hard way, and I hope that people don't have to learn like I did, but it was that pay or lose, you know?

And so I had to. I had to have that consequence. And guess what? Sometimes you know what it meant? Sometimes it meant. So we had a, we call it the float, the register.

Like our register in the store starts off with X amount of dollars, right? Sometimes I would have to take from that float money and take it to the bank. So my checks were going to be okay, but I'm not going to miss my payment.

Sometimes, like, I might have had my, I might have had my automatic, I had my payment set automatically to go into his bank account.

Sometimes I have to stop it and then drive a check over to him on that fifth day because I need more time. I needed that. Just that. Whatever. Just a few days for the money to come in. But the decisions were, we're doing this.

We can't. There's no option. No is not an option here. We've got to do this. When you look back on those times now, I mean, it's just, it becomes more clear how difficult it was right in the moment.

It's painful, but now looking back on accumulated times of having to do that, it's just like, yeah, such a painful process.

So, how did debt limit how you ran your business or how you made decisions?

Let me add something here. First of all, with my wife being a saver and a me a spender, I'm the one. And here's another thing. I love change. I love finding new ways to do something.

I love getting new machinery and stuff. So some of these habits truly had to be broken. It's like, oh, no, I can't just run after. And I want to make my people happy. I want to make my staff happy.

I want to have the last, I want to have good equipment for them. So one thing, it wasn't good. It wasn't healthy on our marriage. These struggles of, oh, we, should we buy this or should we not buy this?

You know, it's like, that's where I'm so, so, so grateful for the Mastermind group that I—that I joined, because now it's not my wife, who's holding people accountable. Okay.

Now it's other businessmen, and I will, and I'm going to respect a lot of what they have to say. And I've been part of the Mastermind group for. For a little while.

And for instance, I had the notion, you know, we're still deep and we're in debt, and I want to buy a pretzel rolling machine, which is a lot of money. Okay. Like, we're talking, you know, and for a long time, it's like, ah, it was such a clouded thing.

We need to get this. We need to get this. We need to get this. And then eventually, oh, we need a, we need a, we need an indoor freezer. We have an outdoor walking in freezer, and we need it.

It's just that it has to be a mindset changed, and it's not easy to get it, but once you start getting close enough to smelling that, you're almost debt free.

Those things don't look so attractive anymore. They don't. Because, like, oh, it's gonna. It's gonna set me back further. If I do this, I will not hit it. And also, just with you guys, y'all's teachings on visions.

Okay, what's my vision? When do I, you know, what. What do I want? You know? And so it just really, really. But as far as the limits were just. I had limits. I needed to be limited myself.

My thought pattern, that was my, I would say my biggest limit challenge because I don't like to be limited. Right. And so that's why. How do the deb—

Debit, you know, as far as some of the limit stuff is just such, it's such a mind boggling thing of when you're not careful, you don't even think about it. Just run, Rudolph, run with.

Yeah, when you have debt, it still seems like you have so many options because you can just keep going further in debt. You have that buying power. Yeah.

Which is so different than when you have, you know, when you're using cash. I mean, it's. They have done so many studies of showing how people will just continue to spend more money.

You know, it's like, it's like how they sell cars nowadays. They don't sell cars on the price of a car. They sell a car on how much can you afford for a payment every month. Yeah.

And it's always going to be stretched beyond that, you know, and it's like, well, can I fit it into my, my monthly payment?

So people don't care that they spend insane amounts of money above what the price of a car is, as long as it fits into their payment.

It's, you know, the rentals of apartments and that the amount of money that people will spend on an apartment nowadays. And I own condos.

I mean, I rent condos out, but I mean, there's some stuff that, you know, I look at it and I go, man, I. I should be charging a heck of a lot more money because people will pay insane amounts. Why? Because it fits into their monthly budget?

Yeah, it fits. Or it does not fit for me. I. My saying would be, oh, it'll work out. Yeah, you know, it'll work out. And I am so grateful to God that pretty much everything worked out.

But all my stars, it's like, don't rely on. It'll work out because what if it doesn't, right? You know, ask. I'll ask to ask some of the homeless people on the streets, you know?

You know, and some of them like, hey, it just didn't work out. Yeah, there's a reason why we get there, you know, I mean, I'm just saying, it's like, it will not always work out if we just keep doing stupid.

Yeah, that's it. You keep compounding. If you were to buy all the equipment that you wanted, that, and again, we say it's a need when really it's a want, it's a desire.

We don't need a lot of the stuff that we have. But what it does is that it effectively takes away opportunities.

Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high quality communication to make sure that you are absolutely winning in the every aspect of your life.

It all starts with having great communication. The best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with, whether it be at work, whether it be at home.

The best way to do that is to go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team to get it for your family members.

Today, as you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate. Go to chrislocurto.com/store today.

So are you now, now that you're debt free:

Are you looking at next steps or opportunities differently?

Yeah. Yes. One huge, huge thing, again, learned it from.

Learned a lot of it from you guys, capacity. The word capacity has taken on such a new meaning, and it's not about just, you know, debt is a huge thing.

Finances is obviously, you know, it's the leader of the ring. But it's also, do we have. Do we have time for this? You know, opportunities.

I love opportunities. And trust me, in the first two years, we made more changes than my in laws did in 15 here at the bakery. Okay, so I love opportunities, but at the same time, you know, capacity, absolutely.

You know, financials, finances, time, or talents. Do I have the staff? I cannot overwhelm my staff just because I personally would like to do this venture. So finances is a huge thing.

It's like, you know what? That $40,000 pretzel machine, we just. With some of the experimentation that we did recently, to be honest, I don't think you would have actually worked out.

Can you imagine that? You know, as far as it would not, our pretzel quality would have gotten downhill. Like, that's just one thing, was one part of what we do.

And so it's like, all of a sudden, you realize that, huh? I can actually make this process a lot easier by spending a fraction of the money and just get your head out of the sand and look at, okay, what are my opportunities?

What do I truly have to do? It's just advice, man. Yes. Taxing people's advice is just so good. Yeah.

Did faith play a role?

You're a believer. Did you have a tendency to separate your faith from business or.

Because a lot of people do. There's a ton of people who don't understand that God is very much. You know, God created commerce. He's very much a part of what your business is.

How did that affect you? For me, I was not afraid to be. I was never afraid to go into debt, really.

But when you understand more, when you start understanding more, okay, I need to steward well what God has given me, and that was a big push for me also to join the Mastermind program is all this money was flowing through my hands.

How can I steward it? Well, because you look at the amount of money, it's like, where did this go at the end of the year? It's like, what in the world?

And obviously, we have a lot of payroll expense and stuff like that, but. So, for me, at first, the first, I would say once I started taking that part more serious of like, all right, I actually.

I want to steward well, what God has entrusted me, that means my time, that means my money, that means my talents. So it wasn't enough of an issue for the longest time.

But we need to take it serious, you know? And it's like the verse in proverbs that, you know, that the borrower is a slave to the lender. It is so true. I was a slave.

And here's the thing. If, you know, hadn't it been for those high things, I would still be a slave for those high. And I, like, I better do this or else, you know, so faith, it should have been higher.

And so that's once I started looking at, hey, you know what? How can a steward. Well, and also accountability and all that. The parable of where the person was entrusted with, doesn't matter how much you're entrusted, be faithful in it.

That is the biggest and most important thing. What happened to the one who didn't was taken away. And all right, God, how can I steward this? Well, that was a big thing.

So what were some of the biggest challenges, obviously, that what you just explained, but what, thinking through it,

What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced as you were paying off of debt?

My wants, my desire for change, my desire for innovations, my desire for better, for more, not being able to.

Some of the biggest challenges were simply my, those things myself, man, I, like, I would say I was my biggest, I was my biggest enemy in this because even while we were paying off debt, we have added so much equipment, amazing equipment.

That has been fantastic. So some of the biggest challenges were, I would definitely say myself, and here's the thing, Chris. If I would have even just limited myself more, if I would have been more satisfied, I could have been.

We could have been business debt free earlier, you know, we could have. Exactly. But that was just the thing. Some of the biggest challenges, and for us, COVID, it was crazy.

COVID actually boosted our business. We didn't know what was going to hit us, but it made us busier than ever. I guess people stress eat cake and stuff, you know? So, yes, they do.

Definitely, definitely. Biggest challenge is just, we're my own. And if I wish I would have understood my personality better, I wish I would have gone through—

 You know, last September, October, I went through, you guys, the Root System, like the Next-Level Life.

And it just showed me. Yeah. And it just showed me how, with my personality, how it's like, why it got me into such a mess, because like I said earlier, I didn't like the word no.

And it's like, and I don't want to tell people no. Oh, you. And sometimes I might even ask my team oh, is there something that you guys need? Oh, guess what?

We all need something, don't we, as far as equipment or whatever. So change, that was a, that was a problem for me, you know, just running with things. Yeah.

And you have an abundance mindset, right. I mean, you know, like you said, things are going to work out. It doesn't mean that back in those days that concept was accurate.

It's just you had been successful, you know, you had been able to do well, but now you're sitting on the other side. You know, I've never had any debt. I've never had debt in my businesses.

It's never been, you know, I got it debt free back in the early two thousands and it's just never been a part of business for me. So I've always had these, these opportunities I could do, you know, essentially whatever I wanted to.

But there's these, you know, as you shared before, people pleaser, you know, desire to do more, desire to, you know, make somebody's job easier, all that kind of stuff.

And you've, you're recently debt free, but have you had enough time to start to calculate what your opportunity, you know, what your capacity is going to be cash flow wise and, you know, team member wise and are you looking into the future and going, oh my gosh, because I'm not paying off these debt payments.

I'm not having to stay tight on certain things. If I just stockpile for a while, if I stockpile, I can make any decision I want to in the business. Has that hit you yet? Not yet. It's not been long enough.

But one huge thing that becoming debt free has done is now I have freed up x amount of money to pay more to and we hired somebody to take kind of be my right arm when it comes to office things. A lot of the tasks that I do.

And originally when we bought the business, our goal, our dream was that hopefully in some years we could be able to be, you know, it could help us fund some ministry things if God calls us for ministry things and be able to spend better time with family.

Well, the five years, you know, they were so, so hard on us and now, you know, we are finally able to just, you know, I'm finally able to take off if I need, maybe for a week if I need, you know, and there's some things I still do myself, but just we have come to so much of a better place.

God has blessed us with amazing, amazing people, you know, and to where we are finally reaping some rewards that were so hard to achieve, you know, and, and being, having the, you know, having that extra cash flow already there just, you know, it's, you know, whatever that, you know, it's.

It's already paying off by being able to maybe hire, maybe hire more, you know, pay our employees better, hire people that can do my job better, you know?

And so we're reaping that side. Not necessarily yet. And we definitely want to get more on track of, like, planning. I have never been a planner, Chris. I am.

Even when I was teaching school, I would fly by the seat of my pants, and it's like some of those things. It's like, oh, my goodness. I sometimes still have night—

Not nightmares, but I have dreams about not planning. You know, it's like, oh, I'm in school with my students, and, oh, we don't really know what we're doing, but that's how I ran my business for who knows how long.

But I'm sick of it. That's why it's like. And that's. It's just that vision where there is no vision that people perished. Right. And so, and I am so, and I'm glad, though, and I'm truly, truly wanting the cash flow to actually tell me where we're going.

You know, not just, we'll find a way. It'll work. No. Okay. What are we going to do, you know? And so that's. That's the idea exactly.

Did you guys have a support system as you went through this?

A support system? So here's a funny one.

We, we first moved to the US after a while. My brother in law, he paid for Dave Ramsey's financial leadership. Okay, well, guess what? Fantastic stuff. Absolutely.

But when your brother in law tells you kind of how to deal with your money, that's not very, that's not very good. And eventually, especially after we bought the business. So family was not really a support system because I couldn't handle them.

Okay. I couldn't take it from them. I know they would have tried. And my friends, I would have even told my brother in law to shut up about my money stuff. I literally told him, I don't want to hear it because I wasn't ready to hear it.

I needed to hear it from people that walk through similar things, you know, the people that are in the grind as well.

And now I don't mind. I love talking to my brother in law about some stuff, like, it has changed, but my biggest support. So back then, the Dave Ramsey stuff, it took us somewhere, but not where we needed to be.

Because guess what? I wasn't ready, Chris, and I just truly wasn't ready to do some of that stuff.

The biggest, biggest thing also just is to surround yourself with people that will call you out on your stuff like that will actually think that's a ridiculous idea if you want to purchase something.

So the Mastermind group, and for those that don't know what the Mastermind group is, it's business owners like myself. We get together on a call, maybe Tuesday morning, whatever it is, and we talk about things, talk about where do I want to go?

And am I actually getting where I want to be. First of all, that support group was really good for my marriage, like I said earlier, because now all of a sudden, my wife doesn't have to feel like she needs to do that job.

Does that make sense? So, yeah, biggest thing has been that part. Just other business owners speaking life, speaking boundaries into my life or something like that.

Yeah, I will definitely say I am a firm believer. Everybody, if ready, should go through financial peace university. Dave Ramsey's financial peace University. It is in my mind, it's one of those things that it's ridiculous not to.

And I will tell you, back in my early days, coming out of e-trade, I thought I, you know, I came out of the financial institution.

I thought I knew everything. And the simple, the simplistic aspects of financial peace university, the things that I hadn't learned to, and it was just powerful.

But I think everybody must go through that. But I also want to hit, you know, you've mentioned multiple times the mastermind, our Next-Level Mastermind group is what you're referring to.

And we set this thing up as an accountability group. You know, we don't, we don't really promote it as an accountability group because unfortunately, some people have a bad, you know, idea of what accountability is.

But you've, you know, just as you've experienced, it's exactly like you've shared.

It's a brain trust of people who are coming alongside of you and pushing on you and helping you and guiding and directing, and you get, you're doing the same thing to them when they're walking through something that you can see and, you know, you can guide and direct them on that.

And that power of having, you know, we try to do things alone, especially as business owners.

And I cannot stress this enough, so many business owners become business owners because they can't stand working for a terrible boss. You know, they've had a terrible leader before, and they're like, forget this, I'm going to do it on my own.

And they don't realize that just because they had a bad boss or two doesn't mean that there isn't phenomenal resources in support of people around you, you know, putting people around you.

And like you said, your wife is glad that she didn't have to do it, because now you're in a group full of people who've been in your shoes or understand because they're walking the same path that you're walking. You know, they're running a business.

They're dealing with these decisions where so many folks, you know, we always say, you know, if you've got that cousin or, you know, you know, that family member who's never run a business, for some reason, they have every idea on how you're supposed to run your business.

You know, all of their ideas are going to work, and they've never actually been in your shoes, and they don't know what it's like.

So it's just so powerful to have a group of people that understand that have been in your shoes, that know what you're experiencing, all that kind of stuff. So I love hearing that.

And I know, you know, the group you're in is a phenomenal group.

So did you have any setbacks? Did you have any unexpected expenses? Did you have anything that came up during this time? If so, how'd you handle it?

I did. I did. And some of the things, you know, for instance, we, if I would have, you know, one thing, if I would have been satisfied with trying to, you know, stay on track more with what we started out with, it would have been easier.

But we were like, hey, we should add a coffee shop, you know? And so a coffee shop we added, because it was just obviously a good idea, right? No. And then obviously it costs a lot more money than what we expected.

So guess what I did? I dipped back into my father in law's pockets. We needed to buy our car. And then when we needed to buy the car, I'm like, okay, we want to be debt free by such and such time.

How can I do this? And so I actually did my math on my spreadsheet. All right, what's our plan? When do we truly want to be business debt free? So we bought a car for the exact amount.

In other words, I had the loan that I got one last loan from him then of like, okay. And I literally calculated out to the penny for the check from them so that we could still hit that goal, which the goal then was to be debt free by the end of the year.

So at least we kind of caved. And we're like, okay, fine, that's okay, I guess, until the end of the year. And so it's. But.

And that's why it was so amazing to be able to hit that goal of like, hey, we're actually debt free on our 10th, by our 10th wedding anniversary. But, yeah, so what I did, I dipped back into his pockets, but at least. At least it was all right.

Okay. All right. I cannot buy the car, maybe that I might want. This is what we need. But. So some of those setbacks. And here's the thing. I guess I was just really blessed with having somebody who believed enough at me.

I don't know. I don't know why he did it. I truly don't know why he sold the business to us in the first place. But setbacks, definitely.

And the biggest thing is, I think what I had more was blessings of God, and I don't want to take that for granted and the favor of God. For me, God has showed me that he is faithful and that he is trustworthy.

That's been a huge, huge thing. So setbacks, I guess I'm grateful that there haven't been a whole lot of setbacks, but that there have been more God moments. That is something that I wish more people would recognize.

I think so many folks still separate out, like I said earlier, their business from their relationship with God. And that's just a massive mistake. You know, he wants to be able to.

He wants you to be obedient to him. He wants you to follow his ways, his teachings. And then there's so many blessings when you include him into what you're doing.

You know, God originally created us to be partners with him. You know, if you go back to the garden, God created partners. That's our job. Our job is to be a partner with him.

We screwed that up, you know, back then. And unfortunately, we don't get a lot of people who guide us and direct us in that, you know, going forward, you know, our business, we talk about it a lot, you know, that's in our prayers.

You know, we talk about, Lord, help us to. To partner with you because your way is going to be the right way. I don't want to keep going and doing my thing and ask you to bless it.

Forget that. Find out what you want, because it's already going to be blessed. And so if we will partner with God, it just. It affects everything. So, looking to the future, do you have any plans that you may not have gotten here yet?

Do you have any plans on how to avoid falling back into debt?

Yes. Biggest thing is surrounding myself with people who help me to stay on a better path and who keep me in check, who kind of help me think through things.

Right now, the biggest part aspect is that Mastermind group, and I am so grateful that it's not an AA meeting where I'd be like, "my name is Peter, I have money problems"

It's not like that at all. It's people talking about what works for them and what doesn't work.

So my biggest plan is, you know, by surrounding myself with the people that I want to be like, yeah, it's, you know, I've shared this a few times, but one of the things I love, you know, as we coach and guide and direct on business, on personal stuff, you know, there's no, everything we teach is not industry specific.

You know, it's business, it's leadership. It's learning how to do things. It doesn't have to be a specific thing to your business. Never. It is.

So we have people all over the place and all different types of industries and everything, but one of the things I love is I get to swap out coaching stuff with some of our clients, folks that have different techniques or different skills and abilities that I don't have on things.

We've got guys that are Jeffrey Weaver and his team on running heavy equipment and some of the stuff that we're doing up at The Ridge and learning how to do that all over the place.

There's all these little things where we get. We get to help each other out. We get to lean in each other's direction. And, you know, it. It's just. It's amazing when you have that around you.

And again, I mention that because I hate how many business owners and leaders want to go it alone. They don't want advice. They don't want support. You know, they want to.

They think that they have to be able to make all their own decisions, which you do with a group of people around you. But it's just phenomenal having that kind of input that helps you.

So now that you're debt free, one of the things you said is you've never really been a planner, but I'm wondering if that's changed.

Do you have goals moving forward? Have any of the goals you've had moving forward changed? What does that look like now that you're debt free?

So my capacity has changed a lot, I would say, as far as what I can do myself when it comes to how much my time is now actually freed up to do the back, you know, the back end things, the behind the scene things.

I was so busy. So here's, first of all, Chris, I did not buy a business. I bought my job. And if you look at, you know, the book, the e myth, it was such an amazing book for me to read.

So the biggest thing was, you know, we have finally, finally turn it into a business to where I am not so busy in the grind, and now I can actually take time.

We just recently settled into your new living conditions to simplify with our family. And just now, my goal is to actually. Yes. Okay.

All these years, I never even knew the cost of my products because I was just working so hard, busting it, and didn't take time for what truly mattered. And so now, yes, absolutely. I want to be able to set goals and where we get, where.

Where do we want to go? And in decisions, where do I want to be in five years from now? And some things I'm not necessarily, like, oh, my.

Oh, I know exactly where I'll be in ten years from now. I wish I knew more of that sort of stuff. But. But, yeah, definitely, you know, creating a budget, you know, planning for the future.

And I'm glad, I'm grateful that I don't have to do this alone and that I have got you guys to chat with, say, hey, this is. What do I do with this?

You know, and. And I don't have to walk this alone. That is what's truly amazing. And so, yeah, I'm pretty sure some people from the locodo group would be like, yes, Peter, we will help you do this and stay accountable to this.

And that is. And here's the thing. I talked to Joel a while ago. You know, I could be saving all this.

You know, I could be saving this money from the accountability stuff, like from the Mastermind group, whatever. If I would just apply what I know. Sure, right? Are you going to actually do it?

And so now that's the thing. I'm going to ask people to help me get to where I'm more of a planner. And, hey, I'm actually using my calendar more than I used to. In other words, what I was saying, that's a step, man.

That's a huge step to actually start using my calendar even, you know? So, yes, working on it. That's definitely a plan in the works.

And I think one of the things that's so tough for people to understand, we always say, you know, you're not getting to the next destination, and you're done.

Now that you're debt free, your business career is not over with. You're not just stuck where you are. This is where it is. This is just one level that you have to grow. And you have 700 levels in front of you.

And it's a matter of how do you get the best, you know, support surrounding accountability and decision making to hit those levels. Otherwise, so many people, they just peter out.

They get to a spot and they go, oh, you know, well, I know everything. And you're a decently high D.

I don't remember what your D is on your DISC profile, but especially with IDs, they get to a place where it's like, well, I know this business, I know everything about it. And they don't.

They know 20%, but they know that 20% insanely well. And so it's like, well, I'm bored, you know, this is as far as I could go. And then we help them to see you've got a long way to go if you look at your business this way.

And I think that's one of the things I really stress to the folks that are listening to this, is don't think that, you know, solving one piece of the puzzle means that you're at the end. That's it.

I don't get to do you now have the opportunity to do so many things, not only business wise, but personally? And again, we've talked about, you and I have talked about this in the past at retreats of how you want to go back and do missions work.

You know, keep the business running and keep setting it up for more and more success so that you guys can step away from time to time and do some missions work and stuff, that's a phenomenal opportunity.

That's a phenomenal place to be. If God says, okay, I need you to go now and go do this. So as we're wrapping this up, and once again, I appreciate you coming on the show and doing this.

It's just, it's so profound. And for me, I love it. It excites me to, you know, watch somebody in the program just killing it.

But there's a lot of folks out there that are listening to this and they're, there's probably decent number of people that are listening to this and going, ah, I'm good. I'm good with my debt.

Or there might be some folks that are struggling. They've experienced some of the things that you've experienced, or they know that, man, it's just robbing them other options.

What kind of, what message do you have, what encouragement do you have to those folks who are listening to make the decision to get out of debt and to look for that hope in their life?

So I have some things, some truly, truly things that I wish I would have done. Biggest thing, some of the things, take your debt serious. Make the freaking payment. Especially if you're in debt with family or friends.

Care enough about the relationship to, you know, to write down a plan with consequences if you don't pay the debt. Like, just do it.

Find a way because you care about the relationship. So just, like, just find a way to actually care about it and don't spend money on things just because others are or because you'd want to. So big thing.

Also surround yourself with the people that want to go the same direction as you. If you have to move, that's fine. We moved from Mexico to the US, and part of it was to get away from the rat race of just the high pressure.

So get away from the pressure to live higher than what you can afford. And, you know what? Drive a minivan if you've got to, instead of an SUV or whatever it takes, you know, leave the fancy, expensive, all that stuff.

Like, do what's realistic. What does it matter what others think of what you do or other people's success? So just care. Yeah. So careful taking a look at the people that surround you. You can choose to have, you know, like, you.

You've chosen to be surrounded by people moving in the same direction, people that are looking to better themselves.

Or you can surround yourself with a bunch of people who want to live in the moment and don't want to set themselves up for the future and don't want to set themselves up for, you know, when things tank or go the wrong direction.

So that's such an important thing for people to hear. Surround yourself with the right people. Surround yourself with the people going in the direction you want to go in.

If your life is important, that you go in the direction of spending everything you got and living for every moment right now. Well, okay, you know, we'll see you when things go bad. But, you know, it just doesn't have to be that way.

And again, that's one of the things I love, is how many folks that are in our programs, as things get tough, they're able to make it through. You know, they're able to get through because they're making great decisions.

So, Peter, you have done a phenomenal job. I love the decisions you've made. I love. I love your perspective. You and I come from different perspectives. You know, for you, it was that, you know, it'll all work out.

And for me, as a younger guy, it was the, oh, crap, better do something about this right now.

And I just love that you've, you've come to this place of making not only great decisions for your finances, but, you know, your wife's stress levels and your team, the.

How solid your business now is for your team, that you can take care of them if things go wrong, if things go bad, but you also get to plan for the future.

You know, I can't stress enough. $40,000 pretzel machine would have never gotten. I would have never guessed. I would have thought, what is that thing, like 2000? I don't know. I don't have a clue how much pretzel machine costs.

But the difference in how that's going to affect your business by you being in a place that you evaluated, you taxed the collective intelligence of your Mastermind team, you evaluated the situation, and that money is not leaving your business.

It's going to be utilized in a different way. That's just so powerful. So thanks again. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being a great inspiration, and thanks for sharing your testimony. Yeah.

And I'd like to just add, and just add a huge thank you to the LoCurto team. And in my time of sometimes I was worried about paying for stuff as far as even with the program, you guys, I know you guys care.

And what I truly, truly love about the LoCurto team, it's leading people. It's not about. And that's just the interesting thing, Chris. You guys don't even have to focus on so much finances. Finances.

It's more about leading yourself, your team. And you have supported me when I, for instance, like the Next-Level Life, we found a way that we could make it work. And so I'm just grateful to you guys for, for proving that it's not all about the money.

It's about equipping you. It's about equipping me, you know, individually, you know? And so, thank you, guys, truly. And I know, I don't know how many times you have clients on your podcast, but I just want to take this time to say thank you, guys.

I really do. I appreciate it. It is. Our focus is on loving God first and then loving our people second. Profit is our third motivating factor.

It is not our number one. So thank you for sharing that, by far. Thank you for the honor of allowing, trusting us and allowing us to speak into your life and your business and all that that means the world to us.

So thanks again, brother. I really appreciate having you on. Likewise. Take care. Well, folks, I hope this was inspiring for you.

I hope this is something that if, gosh, if you're even struggling through this conversation, if you're struggling through the thoughts of whether or not you get debt free, if you're struggling through thinking that, you know, you've got it figured out or any of that, understand, none of this is an indictment of where you are.

None of this is guilt, shame, or fear of where you are. All of this, everything we do here is intended to help you. It's intended to help you make better decisions. It's intended to help you get into a better place.

This isn't a discussion of saying we're right, you're wrong. It's not a discussion of you should feel bad about yourself for where you are. Every bit of this is, let us help you from where you are right now.

Let us speak into your lives. Let us help you for where you are right now because we can adjust the future. We can help with that. We can help you get there.

So hopefully, this has been truly inspiring to you. Well, that is all the time that we have for today. I really appreciate you listening to the show. If this helps you out, do us a favor. Help us to reach more people.

Go and leave a comment, leave a review. Do something that helps us to reach more people so we can change their lives as well.

As always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.