600 | Year-End Reflections: Turning Insights into Action for Next Year

Introduction (00:00:00)

You've hustled all year long. Now let's make that hard work pay off as we close out the year and set you up for a killer start to the next year. 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.

I am having a fabulous day because joining me today is Lyneé South, our VP of Leadership Development. Awesome. My daughter.

And we are going to be talking about closing out the year. This is such an important piece of what I do every single year. Now I have three businesses.

Got rid of one last year, but every single year I am closing out. Used to be four businesses, now it's three businesses.

And this is a time of year that's incredibly important for me to make sure that I close them out correctly, to make sure that things are done really well.

So Lyneé is joining us today and she is going to be digging in to find out why that's so important, how to do it all, that kind of fun stuff.

So welcome to the show, Lyneé. Thank you. You know, we hear so much from our clients that they just want some behind the scenes.

They want to know how we run our business, what kind of things we take into consideration when we're planning.

And so I just thought that this would be a great time to pull back that curtain, get in, dig in, ask some questions and really just pick your brain about what you do.

Introduction to Year-End Closeout Process (00:01:52)

How do you close your year and plan for the next year. So that's what we're going to be getting into today and I'm super excited be interviewing you this time.

Yeah, that sounds good. All right, well, let's take it away. Okay, so first off, can you walk us through why year end closeout is crucial for you and your businesses? Yeah, so there are, there's a lot.

The major things are so many business owners actually go through their year and they have no clue how they've done. They've not done a really good job reconciling their bank accounts. They're not preparing themselves for taxes.

They're probably paying somebody to do a bunch of work to try and get all this stuff pulled together. They don't know what's working, they don't know what's profitable, they don't know what's not profitable, they don't know what their expense ratios are.

They're just not prepared, they're not ready. And the reason why is because most of the time, a lot of business owners have not been trained to do their accounting properly.

They've not been trained on making sure that the business stays running as best as it possibly can financially. So for me, I want to know exactly where we are.

I want to know where we are, how we've done, what's worked, what's not worked, what's our profit looking like, what's, you know, the forecast for the next year or more. All of those things are important for me to be able to make decisions.

For me, I live in our accounting so that I can make decisions. You know, one of the things that we talk about in our business is profit is not our number one motivating factor.

Now, profit is definitely very important, but for us, it's our third motivating factor. I used to, in the. In times past, profit was super important.

And I'm just not that person. You know, I'm not the person that making money is going to be something that's more important than people.

It's definitely not going to be more important than God. So for us, God is our number one motivating factor. Helping people change their lives, their businesses, their families.

That's going to be number two for us. Profit is number three. We will not run a business that's not profitable. It's just ridiculous. Right?

So for me, it's really super important to make sure that we are being profitable, that we do know what's going on, because there's so many other aspects that we put ahead of that that are important to us.

So I need to know what's going on. Does all that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that digging into this is going to give our clients just such a great place to start, especially if there's pieces that they're not currently doing.

So, okay, so what are your primary goals that you aim to achieve with your annual process?

This annual process, I should say so primary goals.

I just mentioned a decent number of those. One of the top goals is to make sure that all of my accounting is correct. I am somebody who I don't use. While we have a fantastic CPA, I barely use them throughout the year.

I use them more of, hey, go through, make sure everything's right, close out the business. Why? Because I'm. I stay on top of this stuff on a consistent basis.

So I want to make sure everything is correct. I want to make sure everything is accurate. That's a big piece for me. I don't like mistakes when it comes to Finances.

I want to make sure everything is down to the penny and if there's a problem, I want to fix it. I want to find out why that, that is the way that it is. Again, being able to cast a good vision for the future is huge for me.

So I want to make sure that everything is accurate. I want to make sure that I know what we're going to be spending throughout the next year.

I want to make sure that my forecast is operating really well. I want to make sure that we're looking at our profit and setting new goals.

I want to make sure that we have all the different areas inside of the business that are reporting to us, whether it's on income or expenses, that all of those things are up to date.

We know what's going on. Because I'm going to do some major things at the end of the year.

I personally like to close out by spending as much into the future year as I possibly can. Prepaying things. We'll talk about that, I'm sure, multiple times.

But that's another big goal for me is can I prepay big stuff going into the next year? Now, I am not talking about wasting profits on stuff that I don't need.

I'm not. I'm not somebody who's just going to take our profits and go out there and buy stuff just because it would be nice to have something.

For me, I really like to look at big ticket items that we're going to pay for anyways. We always have the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event that comes in the spring.

There is an incredible amount of expense that goes with that event. So for me, I like to prepay that stuff. So we're not getting hit with those in the beginning of the year.

If we do, no big deal, we just pay for it in the beginning of the year. But this also helps me to accomplish some tax savings as well. Right.

Because I'm spending down that profit, you know, giving out profit, sharing different things that if we can make those things happen, those are goals that I would like to accomplish.

I like to take a look and see do we know how much money we're going to have to fit into future goals? You know, if we're looking to hire more people, I want to know that. So those are some of my bigger goals. But really I'm always spending the year.

I do what's called a 12-month rolling forecast. I'm forecasting. Every time a quarter drops off, I throw on that same quarter into the next year.

So we're always looking into the year, the new year. But this helps me to really solidify where we are. So when we turn that corner, we close out that fiscal year, I'm golden.

Everything is up to speed. We know what we're doing and, you know, we, we're able to run into the next year with clarity and vision. Yeah. Now that, that is helpful.

I am sure a lot of business owners are like, wanting to do, save as much as they can in taxes, so thank you.

Yes. It's funny as you say that a lot of, a lot of the business owners that we work with, when they're brand spanking new to us, a lot of times, yes, they want to take advantage of tax savings, but at the same time they're like, oh, I hate dealing with the accounting.

I can't stand to deal with the accounting. I don't want to deal with the accounting. And as the longer they're with us, the more that becomes something that I don't know if they ever enjoy it, but they really understand the power of it.

So, yeah, they get to a place where they're like, yeah, I want to make sure that I close this out properly as well. Yeah, that makes sense.

Financial Closeout and Planning (00:09:10)

Okay, so one of the questions we have is you've given us a little insight into what you're doing, but do you have specific reports or metrics that you're looking on the most that you spend a lot of- you dig in and you really want to rip them apart.

What, what are those? And can you share some of that with us? Yeah, so I. One, I'm always spending time in my budget. Now for us, I'm not the only one who's working in the finances.

So we have, you know, the sales areas that are always reporting to me, you know, helping me to know, here's what's coming in. You know, here's brand new sales, here's monthly recurring revenue.

Here's. Here's what the income should look like. You should always know what's coming in the door because again, this is what's going to help you to plan for the future, but it's also going to help you to see bumps on the road.

When I, when I first started running businesses decades ago, one of the things that caught me off guard was, you know, seasonal income.

Right where we would be doing events and we would have these months that would have just these fantastic amounts of revenue come in and then we would tank.

You know, there was a lot of my months throughout the year that would be in the red and I would have to budget incredibly well, to carry over all of my profit from my profitable months, spread that out throughout the year. So I became really good at it.

I mean it was one of those things where, you know, in my early years I became really good at budgeting well and then focused on dropping in other things that would carry revenue in some of those down months which brought the profits up and eventually it was.

It well balanced out the year, which is great. Those early years really helped me to focus heavily on forecasting what's going to happen, what's going to come.

So for me, I live in the budget. Like I say, I do 12-month rolling forecasts. What that means is, is that I'm always living off of a 12-month budget. Now when a quarter falls off, so let's say Q1, 2024 falls off, then I'm budgeting Q1 2025.

Right. That is something that's getting put in place. So Now I've got Q2 through 4 of '24 plus Q1 of '25. And as a quarter drops off, you just keep throwing another one on.

So that's- That to me is one of the most powerful ways for me to continue to see what's going to happen in the future.

A lot of people say, well I don't know revenue, you're going to know enough to be able to have an idea of what should be happening during that time frame. Right.

Especially if you make a lot of the same stuff, same widgets, same sell the same stuff, you're going to have somewhat of an idea. Make sure that you're being realistic.

You know, if you continue to grow at a certain pace every single year, well increase it in that following year. Second thing is, is that I live in the budget versus actuals as well. That is super important for me.

I'm always budgeting. I want to see what happens. So not only do we have multiple areas of income coming in, we have StratPlan, we have Next-Level Life, we have all of our coaching stuff.

We have all these different areas that's reporting income. We also have different areas of expenses. Events happen to be some of our biggest expenses as well. So we will have a January retreat, Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event.

We have the in person events that you guys are constantly doing out of people's businesses. We roll into July retreat. So all these different events throughout the year come with a lot of expense and some of them have no revenue tied to them. Right.

They're part of a program, they're part of a coaching program. So I'm always wanting to see what money came out, what money didn't? What money came in, what money didn't.

So I live in that budgets versus actuals. Every single month I will go through and take a look and see because one of the things is, you know, Catherine does a phenomenal job of giving us the expenses or planning out the expenses of these events.

So she might put in, I don't know, one month. She might be looking at the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event. She's like, hey, we got 20, $30,000 coming out of this month, okay?

So I'm planning and preparing for that. But what if only 15,000 comes out?

Well, I've seen many people make this massive mistake where they get to the end of their month and they've got 15,000 extra dollars on the bottom line because they didn't have an expense come through.

And they're like, hey, I'm taking that money home or I'm spending that money on something. Huge mistake that you can make.

So for me, I look at that and I will go back to the team member, whoever it is, and I'll go, hey, take a look at these expenses. You planned this. How come this hasn't come out yet?

And usually what we find on events is, oh, you know, it was charged on the last day of the month, so it's going to fall on the next month. Right? Well, I need to know that.

So I have to go back and tell them, move that over, make sure that that's jumping over into the next month so that we can reset our budget and our forecast. Right?

It's okay to do. You should be doing this. So budget versus actuals, the P & L, Profit & Loss statement, income statement is massive for me. I live in that, you know, on the different businesses I'm always going through, taking a look, where are we?

What are the expenses that are coming through? Balance sheet, we don't, we don't do debt.

So balance sheet, as far as debt isn't an issue for us, but there are times we are buying assets, we're paying for assets that are not showing up in the P & L, they're ending up on the balance sheet.

So I kind of like to see where are we? You know, where are things hiding that I'm not seeing in the P & L? What does that look like? What's our stability? What's our, you know, what's our net worth? What's our liquidity?

I always like seeing what we have to know. You know, what are the assets? What are they worth? All that kind of fun stuff. Cash flow statements is something that we spend.

I don't spend a lot of time on a cash flow statement. I know a lot of people just absolutely love them. It's good. But I'm getting all the information that I need from my P & L expense ratios.

That's another important thing to take a look at your percentages. One of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that you're going to find that most likely in most businesses.

I'm saying most. This doesn't mean that it's all. But you're probably going to find that your payroll is a large number, that that's a large percentage.

Your Cost of Goods, hopefully your Cost of Goods aren't a massive percentage of doing your business. But it's important to know what are your Cost of Goods, what are your overhead expenses, what are fixed expenses, variable expenses, you know, what are.

What are the ones that maybe, you know, you might have some bloated expenses inside of your P & L. Right. Being able to take a look and see is there ways that I can save money.

And I want to be cautious because a lot of times people will think, well, I need to go cut a ton of expenses. That's how I'm going to make money. Well, a lot of times you need to spend money to make money.

So you just have to be very balanced in how you do that. So those are the areas that I spend probably the most time in. I'd say the top ones, P & L, obviously, budget.

Obviously budgets versus actuals. Those are my top three that I spend the bulk of my time in.

Makes sense. I have one question that. So we are kind of all in this. We're working on in the same products and same types of things a lot.

But what would you say to a business owner that has maybe some different product lines or service lines, maybe a construction department and a service department?

Would you have the VP or whoever, the manager that's leading those different departments involved in the budgeting of those different departments?

Like what can you tell me, like, what would you recommend for somebody, somebody with a service business like that or business like that? That's a great question.

What I say is. So a lot of times people want to put somebody in charge or they don't want to put somebody in charge.

You know, sometimes it's funny how people view putting people into their finances. They either want them to have a lot of responsibility and maybe they don't have any authority, or maybe they're afraid that if they do add this person in there's going to be a problem.

Here's the way that I look at it. If you have somebody who is responsible for income and expense, you know, or even just a piece of that, so you know, you might have somebody who's responsible for sales.

Well, somebody who's over those sales needs to be involved some way, shape or form, even if it's just reporting what the future sales look like.

You know, they should be forecasting sales on a continuous basis. Right?

So they should definitely be involved from that aspect. We've got that with multiple people inside of our business. If it's expenses, then they should be involved in reporting, in forecasting what they believe those expenses are.

We have multiple people on those processes. The place where you, you really want to think through is if somebody is responsible for both income and expense.

So if you have somebody who is over what I would call a sub P & L or a sub Profit & Loss statement, that means they have a level of responsibility for the income.

They also have a level of responsibility for the expense, whatever that level is, then it is my preference that they are in charge, or not even necessarily in charge, but responsible for understanding that P & L statement.

Right? For being able to have accountability to the profit coming in. For being able to have accountability for the expenses that are going out. Now here's the deal.

If they can't control any of that, then they should not have any responsibility if they can't control it.

So sometimes you have somebody who's spending money on the expenses and this person who you're saying is responsible for this P & L, they can't control those expenses.

They have nothing to do with those expenses. Well then they can't have responsibility over the P & L. It just doesn't make any sense. Right, because they don't have the authority to change anything.

So it's not just enough for them to have responsibility, they also have to have authority over this. If they don't have both, then they're probably not going to be over a P & L. Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Yeah, it really does. No, that really, I think will help. So yes, I want people to be involved. I want people because I want people to have the responsibility to forecast.

That's a huge thing for me, forecast that income. I want to come back and go, why didn't this happen? I want to be able to have accountability in there.

But then I also want people forecasting those expenses because the more I can get somebody accurate with forecasting expenses, the greater that I get to make decisions.

Goal Setting and Reflection (00:20:39)

This is all vision to me, right as I'm taking those numbers, I'm looking into the future, going, oh, we've got this much profit in this month. We have this much profit in this month.

All of that is telling me a story of, hey, here's opportunities or ways for us to cut back. That's another great thing, is Catherine is somebody who. She'll look for a penny if she can find a way, you know, not to lower our quality, but the same quality for less expense.

Man, she'll do it, right? Love that. Love that. And yes. I'm like, hey, can we do this? She's like, yes, if we're saving money, yes. So I love that.

What I want to ask, what criteria do you use to measure success beyond your financial metrics? Customer satisfaction, customer retention. We have a.

We have phenomenal customer retention. I think that is huge to me when I know that our clients are happy, that our clients are continuing to do work with us.

Gosh, I don't even know. But our average client, the lifespan with us is, you know, I. I don't know, five, seven, three years or. Okay, I say maybe. I think it's about four years.

If I'm not mistaken, it might even be higher than that, I think, somewhere. Okay, okay, seven years, something like that. That, to me, tells me that we're being successful, right? That we're not just. We're not just bringing people in and they're.

They're staying for a short period of time, which means that they feel like they got the best that they could, you know, a month or two's worth of work, and they feel like they got the best that they could, and then they're gone.

They've moved on to something else. We have folks that are finding great value in what we're doing. They're staying, they're working through this stuff. They're growing.

One of the things that we do is client wins. You know, every time we do a retreat, we have these client wins. How are you winning? What is new? What is, you know, fantastic?

What is what has sucked and how have you handled it? Those are things that really help me to know that we are winning. Team members. The team member engagement, the team member retention. I mean, our team members.

I mean, my gosh, how many. We have people that have been with us forever, you know, for so many years. That, to me, is huge.

But the fact that team members are engaged, I love, you know, at this time in my life, I mean, you've seen me, you've seen Me work a whole lot of years at this time in my life.

It is fantastic to have team members that are well ahead of me that are bringing things to the table. Can we do this? What about this?

How about we make this thing happen where it used to be that I was the one going, hey guys, let's start looking at this. What about this idea?

Let's work through this. I almost rarely, I mean, you could answer this, but I rarely do that now. You guys are way ahead of me.

You guys are focusing on things, bringing things to the table, that kind of engagement where I get to be, I get to show up and be a part of it as to.

As opposed to being the person who is making it all happen. That to me is. That speaks of success as far as I'm concerned. That, I think is powerful.

I feel like our reputation, we have a really, really good reputation. I feel like that's pretty solid. Oh, something that speaks success to me is that, you know, things that you guys are working, we won't share it, we won't say it, even though I would love to.

But things that you guys are working on, you know, new, new services, new products and things like that, the fact that we're, we're innovating, that means something to me.

That, that tells me that we are, that we're doing something. So those, I would say those are probably the biggest things. That's such a great question. I'm trying to think outside of that, but I would say those are probably the biggest things.

Yeah. And do you. Is that something that you actually reflect on during your closeout year process? Is that part of it or. I don't. And here's the reason why we reflect on it all year long. Yeah.

That is not something. Yeah. That we do things a little bit differently. A lot of companies will focus on a yearly year end thing. Team member, yearly reviews. They. They only look at things once a year.

We don't. You know, like I say, I do a 12-month rolling forecast. Why I don't want to wait till the end of the year to find out. Am I going to be a be okay next year?

I don't want to wait that long. I want to know what's going on. Right. I don't want to wait till the end of the year to find out whether or not our clients are happy with us.

I mean, you know, how many times are we surveying our clients and going, hey, what about you? You just launched the new KLP program and already we have so many clients that are just super excited about that.

Super happy about that. We're not waiting till the end of the year to find out should we do something different? We're constantly asking that question. So, yeah, I don't think there's anything.

I don't think there's. We just don't do that. We. We solve it ahead. We don't wait till the end of the year. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Okay, so as far as goal setting and reflection goes for next year, so it sounds like we're not doing a ton of reflecting at the end of the year for the next year. It's done real time. We reflect. I mean, think about even just our events.

We reflected the. The next business day. We. We dissect it. We figure out what went right, what went wrong. So, I mean, yeah, I agree. I think that we are reflecting all the time.

Is there anything specific besides finances that we're like, okay, what went right, what went wrong for the entire year? Anything that you can think of that we do. I think I do like to do.

So let me guess, let me throw this in there. I really do like to look at the expense ratios towards the end of the year.

I look at them throughout the year, but I do kind of like having a fiscal year view of the expense ratios, how much money did we spend on team members? How much money did we spend, you know, on marketing, how much money did we spend?

Again, those are things that we're going to look out throughout the whole year anyways. But I think that is something that, at the end of the year, as I'm thinking about it, that is something I do like to look at.

Is it changing goals? I think one of the things we do is we do have the team members come up with their goals for next year. Right. That's one of the things that we'll add that should actually be coming up very soon.

Things that you guys want to accomplish. Does it change goals? I think when I get to the end of the year. Okay, so here's, so here's an important piece, I believe, because at the end of the year, there's so much work going on.

There's so much pre paying. There's so many things that, you know, I'm, I'm doing towards that last period to close out the businesses. That does solidify more goals that we're setting towards the future.

So during the year, I might be looking at 20, 25 and saying, okay, I want to hire three more people. I want to, you know, put somebody in place over here.

You know, we're talking about a potential hire in the leadership team that, you know, we were discussing just the other day. Can that work? Can we make that happen?

So I feel like as I get towards the end of the year, the way that I close things out and the stuff that we've done throughout the year, I feel like the end of the year just kind of solidifies that a little bit more because as I go through prepay.

So let's say I'm looking at, oh, my gosh, we got a good amount of profit here towards the end of the year. Pay these things down. Well, what happens when I prepay, that gives me more revenue in those months that those things were scheduled for next year, Right?

So let's say I had, you know, 10,000 in January and, you know, 30,000 in March and whatever. If those dollars come out this year, then what that's done is that that's allowed me that revenue next year for me to make different decisions.

So it kind of solidifies, you know, if we're looking into that year going, hey, we're going to do A, B and C. Well, now I know I've got more money to do. So, you know, we're. We're in a better position.

I also, another thing is, is that a goal that it could change, is it could change my focus, right? I might be saying, I might have to turn to Joel and say, hey, brother, we got a- We got to pour some gasoline on a fire somewhere.

Here's where we are. Things aren't looking the way that we want them to. What are we going to change? What are we going to do differently? So it could adjust a goal that way, too, Right.

So again, as I look at something like the expense ratios, what's not working? If I'm looking at throughout the year and I'm seeing, oh, my gosh, we've put this money into this product or this service, and it's just really not working out.

We like it, we enjoy it, but it's not. It's not doing anything for us. Now maybe it's a time to. What do we do? Do we. Do we spend less time on it? Do we. Or do we add fuel to the fire and we're not giving it enough energy? Right.

So those are things that I will process through as well, just to more solidify the goals for 2025 the following year. But we don't. There's not really any goal planning at the end of the year.

You're asking good questions. I'm having to process through to make sure the answer is correct. We usually have those goals done before that. This just kind of solidified. I agree.

So we do things a little bit different than a lot of business owners, it sounds like. And so if you are not planning a rolling year like we do, what can you tell business owners?

Acquisitions: Physical and Human Resources (00:31:00)

Can you give them some insight on what they should be looking for when it comes to evaluating needs for physical assets or even future employees?

Key hires, what are things that. If we're closing out this year, if you're not doing that rolling budget, but we need to figure out what we're starting from now, where do we go for next year? Okay, so one thing we should throw in here is we StratPlan ourselves.

That's one of our processes, is that we will go through and, you know, we will do our own StratPlans. Sometimes we don't do full. We'll do areas or something like that.

We want to know what's working, what's not working, what do we need to adjust? You know, what can we change, how can we grow things? All that kind of fun stuff.

So one key thing is that if you don't know what's working, what's falling apart, where we need to adjust things, where we're having problems.

One of the things we say about strap plan is that process is it's helping you to see the things that are holding you back. You've got to discover the things that are holding you back.

If you understand, and I cannot say this enough, and sometimes people just don't get this. There's no magic pill out there that's going to cause you to go make lots of money and be happy.

All right? Your issue isn't making money. And we know this because whenever we have, we sit down with a company and we say, if we doubled your revenue tomorrow, what would that do to your business?

Well, any leader who's worth their weight, you know, in gold will say, that will probably tank our business. Really? Why is that? Because we're not prepared to handle that much revenue increase. Great.

That's fantastic. Let's find out why not. Let's try. So the funny thing is, it's kind of like a. It's a trick question, right?

Because if you said, oh, my gosh, we could totally handle double the revenue, well, then you have a problem with how much money you're spending on team members. You have a problem with how much money you're spending on other things. Right.

If you could take on that revenue quickly, then you're probably overspending right now in areas that you shouldn't be so let's fix that.

But usually that's not the problem. The problem is, is that we don't. We have problems that we haven't solved yet. We have to solve those problems. This is.

So I'm going here first to say, let's get to the place where we can solve your business issues first before we take a look at growth, before we take a look at, you know, acquiring new assets and all that kind of stuff.

So if we can solve those things, let's throw money at that, fix the problem, solve the problems, move forward. Super important. Okay, with that being said, what does it look like to plan for assets?

We in, in point main, in our, the business, we don't acquire a lot of physical assets. We don't have a lot of physical assets. I mean, computers, you know, stuff for events, things like that.

The Ridge, we have a lot of physical assets. The Ridge that has the farm on it and all that kind of stuff. We have a lot of assets.

So when I'm looking to acquire physical assets, the number one question is, is this a need or a want? If it is a want, then I'm really going to pull back and ask 14 billion questions if it is.

And the reason why is because a want means that I'm probably going to go spend money on something that's not a need.

How in the world am I going to want to pay for it? And how is it going to make me back the money that I've paid for that thing? Right. So a lot of times people will spend money on that desire and it's a bad idea.

You know, it may be a bad choice because they could have poured that money somewhere else into the business. I'm not saying that it always is.

I'm just saying for me, I am a calculated risk taker. So I'll look at those assets and I'll ask myself the question, will these assets make me money?

Will they pay for themselves or am I in a position where I don't need it to. I have tons of profit. Might as well, you know, spend some money on something because it's fun. I'm still doing all these other goals.

I'm going to solve those other goals way in advance of spending money on something that I don't need right now. So that's something that I really processed through now.

What about things that I do need then? The questions are still a lot the same. Why do I need it? What is it going to do for me? How am I going to make money on this thing?

You know, we we just, we just bought a new asset at the farm, which, by the way, you know, obviously this is my main business.

This is what I do. But I do get to spend time working on the farm with the team and everything.

And one of the assets we just bought was a new milk cow because we realized with the setup that we had that would bring in good money, people are wanting more of what we have to offer, and we haven't been able to do it.

And so by being able to supply that, that increases our revenue.

That allows us to spend money more probably towards salary than anything. So it's just a. It was a great idea. This makes sense, right? So the way that I'm looking at that is, is if I'm going to spend this money, one, do I have to buy something brand spanking new?

I don't usually. I. I'm funny on that. You know, my, my days, my old Dave Ramsey days, there's a lot of stuff that I won't necessarily buy new, but I'm not going to buy something that's old and it's going to fall apart, you know, and I had to fix it.

But then there's times I'm like, you know, absolutely, I want to get something brand new. What's that going to cost me? How long is it going to take to replace that cost?

You know, we figured out, you know, looking at the cal- that it's a short period of time before it pays for itself, and then it's affording us the opportunity for more salary. So that's the way that I process through.

I want to. I want to take a risk that makes sense. I don't want to get there at the end of the day and go, well, this is stupid. With all of that being said, we have made great decisions in life.

We have made great business financial decisions. So we also have the opportunity to make some decisions that we just spend money on, right? Personal money, things that we just want in life.

There's things that we've done. You know, I will say that going through the farm, we don't look at this as a revenue producer. We look at this as something that takes care of us first, takes care of poimain second, and then we open things up to the public.

So our goal is to make money there. But that's. We don't look at that business the same as we look at this business. Does all make sense. It all makes sense in my head. Totally. Yeah. No, no, it makes sense. And it is a long process of figuring out.

I love that you brought in the wants versus needs too, because there's sometimes that we can really talk ourselves into those needs, especially if, you know, if it's the up and coming thing or it's cutting edge or, you know, and how does that fit into our business?

And, well, it still can be a want, even though it really, really helps with the, you know, Anyway, I just love having that perspective as well.

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Reflection on Culture and Company Vision (00:39:41)

Okay, so I wanted to know, how do you assess whether the company culture is evolving as you want it to?

We're kind of taking a right turn here with the end of the year. Like, do we look at how the culture is in our business and anything about our business visions and our goals that align with continuing to get our culture in the right direction?

That's a great question. It's interesting that you asked that with the end of year in mind. I would not have thought to ask that question. That's not a question.

I would have thought, do we look at the culture in the moment you ask it? I think my answer is, yes, we do. That goes back to the team member focus. Right. How is the team doing inside of the culture?

So we have the. We have an end of the year party that we do to celebrate what's going on. This gives us the opportunity for the team to put together wins.

Amazing things that we've experienced, amazing stories, amazing testimonies, and we get to spend that time together talking through those things.

And that really does help us to see how we're doing, how we're winning again. We look at this kind of stuff throughout the year.

But there is a. There is an impact to it when you're closing out a year, right. There is an impact of going, you know, we made, I don't know, you know, a hundred bison ribeyes this year, right?

We cooked up 100 bison ribeyes. Well, why is that important? Because that means there was this number of Next-Level Lives that happened.

There was this number of StratPlans, there's this number of families that got touched, businesses that got touched this, this.

So do we assess the culture? I think one of the things we do is we kind of take the temperature of how the team is.

Because what you'll find is, is that an individual, a team member, a group of people can make it through the year.

But funny thing is, I think every individual kind of looks inside themselves introspectively at the end of the year to see how they're doing, how do they feel about how their year has gone, Right.

So I think it kind of gives us that ability to, to, you know, test the waters. How is everybody doing? We've had conversations all year long. We've, you know, we had carry reviews, we've had all the things that we do.

But I think it's also just a good time to personally just see how people are doing and make sure that everything is going the way that we want it to.

The culture looks the way, you know, we define culture as actions and attitudes. Right. Is everybody doing the right thing? Do they have the right attitudes? Are we seeing the right stuff?

If so, that kind of gives us a thumbs up. Hey, things are going well or, you know, I'm trying to think, in the past, have we ever had times where we've had to adjust things? Nothing is coming to mind.

But I do believe that we do take that temperature at the end of the year just to see if things are going the way that we want it to go.

I do love that you brought up the end of year celebration that we have because we talk about that we talk about by creating the culture, is celebrating and just spending time together and we break bread. We have a great, great intimate party.

And it is just a really great time for us to spend together. I mean, everybody flies in from, you know, all over the US and we get to just spend some time together.

And you also do some forecast, some vision sharing for the next year. Do you want to just kind of talk about that and what kind of things, how you incorporate sharing your vision into a time of celebration?

We'd love to hear about that. Yeah. So it's an amazing thing. So many people think, you know, that the team is the team that's getting you to the place where you want to go.

We just don't think that way. We think of the team as family. We think of the team as. We're all doing this together. It's not a. This is Chris's thing. This is a we thing.

New newcomers to the team will get corrected when they say, hey, Chris, your thing over here. And I'm like, our. Like, what our thing? This isn't Chris's thing. This is our thing. Hey, you're doing this thing.

We. We're doing this right. Because it's vitally important for people to understand you're not just here for J-O-B. If you're. If you're coming for a J-O-B, you're at the wrong place. This is just not it.

This is. The people that are working on this, this team are passionate about what we do. They love what we're accomplishing. They love changing lives. Right. If you don't, you just can't. You don't make it here long enough. Right.

That has to be a big motivating factor. Well, part of that is constantly casting a vision for where we're headed, what we're doing, what's happening. You know, we're finally.

We got our. The building up at The Ridge finished. We're. We've had multiple Next-Level Lives. Love to say that our first Next-Level Life also had a baptism in it, which was pretty darn fantastic. Love that.

Fantastic person who came up for that. So really excited about that. We've had multiple StratPlans. We had StratPlans up here before we were. The building was even done. We had great.

That are like, we don't care. We want to be up there. We want to be sitting outside. We did. We did most of a StratPlan sitting around the fire pit for three days, which was fantastic.

These are things that the team wants to know. They want to know, they want to understand. They want to see why are we doing this? What's the plan? Where's the. You know, and for us, it's.

Where's the God vision behind this? You know, Heather and I have had this belief that God is directing us to certain things up here to prepare for us to move the rest of the business up here, get.

Eventually get the events up here. So again, we're doing Next-Level action StratPlans up here, but we want to get the. The Next-Level Mastermind retreats up here. We don't know if we'll ever get the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event up here.

We would love to. We're still trying to figure that one out. But our hope is that within the next year the retreats are up here. That ever all that stuff is happening and people are experiencing this place.

And the thing that people say over and over and over again is it's so peaceful. It's so peaceful. Well, why is that important to our team at the end of the year celebration?

Because our team needs to hear, here's what's happening, here's what's going on, here's why we're doing this, here's how it's impacting this and that and, you know, everything else.

And I just shared with you guys just the other day that we had a young guy came up because one of the things that the farm does and Heather leads all of that stuff is that we sell raw milk up here within the Tennessee guidelines, we sell raw milk and it's so insanely healthy because of the way that we do it.

There's no, this is not, obviously not an ad, but I'm just saying that there's no antibiotics, no seed oils, no vaccines, no corn, no soy, nothing genetically, all this super healthy stuff.

Well, I was, I was upstairs and a young guy showed up and I just had called out some, hey, do you know what you're doing? You. You know, because he was coming to get some milk and everything.

I didn't know if he was new or not. I don't run that kind of stuff. But I'm just saw somebody here. So I jump in and try and make sure that, you know, he's taken care of. And he's like, oh yeah, everything is good.

And he started talking to me and I knew he wasn't from here. I believed he was from Mexico, but I believed he was also from.

You know, it's been a lot of time in California and I was talking to him and sure enough, he was only a couple hours away from where I grew up. And we just started talking about things.

He's like, man, this milk has healed my children's stomachs. You know, he's got a two and a half year old and I think a four or five year old, and he goes, it's healed their stomachs and we're working on us with it right now.

That is not the first time we've heard that. We've heard that multiple times. Why is that important? Because our team needs to hear. People are getting their lives changed. They're getting their lives changed to Next-Level Life.

They're getting their lives changed in StratPlan. They're getting their lives changed in the Mastermind program, the KLP program. They're getting their lives changed physically with the products that, that are supplied at the, at the ridge.

All of those things really tell you we are helping people. Right. It isn't about the almighty dollar. It isn't about going and just, you know, racking up toys and stuff and all that. It's about changing people's lives.

So we're constantly sharing the vision, hey, guys, here's what we're doing over here. Here's what we're doing here. You know, all these different things, how it's working out. You guys will.

I'm sure you'll be sharing on, you know, the KLP updates of the new program that we've launched so that everybody can see that and go, this is why I show up every day. This is why I do this.

This is why I bust my butt every day, is because this is the result. So we just think that's vitally important. It's fun to share numbers of what we've accomplished, but vision is.

And I think everybody's happy to see the things that we. Our numbers are usually things like number of bisons that we made our bison steaks, ribeyes.

But I think by far the thing that people love the most is where are we going? What is this doing? How's this impacting people? So I think that's vitally important. Yeah.

No, I mean, I love putting. I put together the little slideshow, so it's always nice to have that little sneak peek ahead of time.

And it's like always the number of bison ribeyes blows my mind. I'm like, you almost slipped and said how many bisons we eat. And I really think that's true.

How many bisons? We need to start calculating. We probably do at least a few a year, so. Yeah. But okay, so I would like to ask something maybe a little more personal. What do you do personally to start your new year off strong?

Do you take some time to reflect for yourself? Take some time off? What do you guys do or try to do? We try to always do a family ski vacation.

Get you and the family up and Mykelle and her family, we try to get together and do a ski vacation together. That's. I think that's super important. You know, I'm 54. You know, I've. I don't know how many seasons I have left.

Right. That's a, that's an important thing because I don't live in a. I don't live in a ski town anymore. That's an important thing.

An important thing for me because I've dealt with so many health issues for so long, the lead and everything that I've, you know, for those that they don't know, I've had to deal with lead issues for many, many years trying to get this lead out.

No, I didn't eat paychips as a kid. One of the things I do is I come into.

It's funny, I saw this thing the other day that says, we have a candy holiday coming up, we have a pies and cake holiday coming up, and then we have a cookies holiday coming up, and we call it the flu season.

Listen, you have no clue the detriment that sugar is having on your next year. That is one of the things that I try to do is I try to stay healthy as I'm coming into the end of the year, so that as I go into the beginning of the year that I'm doing healthy things.

I'm. I'm making healthy choices. I'm not a New Year's resolution kind of guy. I may make life decisions, you know, make changes for life. Don't wait until the new year and then do something for two or three weeks and then bug out of it.

Yeah, I think I'm trying. I do try to look at, you know, what am I going to accomplish? I like to have my own personal, you know, goals and things of like, what am I going to accomplish in my marriage?

You know, my walk with God is vitally important. What am I going to accomplish with our family, physical stuff, all that. So I think that's something that, for me, I just.

I really focus on those areas. Yeah, I'm just. I'm just not a New Year's resolution guy. I like to be making life changes. I like to be checking my life throughout the year. What should I be doing here?

What should I be accomplishing and make those decisions? Yeah, that makes sense. And I love that. I think that we should all be learning from that and doing that, checking in.

What does our body feel like today? I mean, not just January 1st, because that's a really bad time to take your temperature. Right. We want to be doing that all the time.

Advice for Other Business Owners (00:52:57)

So that's great. Okay, so what advice would you give to business owners who may feel overwhelmed by hearing what we've talked about today and this closeout process and where should they start if they have done none of this and their accounting, you know, just what would you recommend a very simple first step to be or steps.

First steps is, for me, would be get somebody who walks alongside you to help you get here. Right. Somebody who helps you to understand not just the importance of it. Right.

Because I think a lot of people can't even really communicate why it's so important. Hopefully we've done that today of why you must be focusing on these things, but somebody who can teach you how to do it.

So many leaders feel overwhelmed like crazy, period. And so listening to something like this, it's just like, oh, for the love. How am I going to get that done? Right?

Here's what you need to know. The very things that we have talked about today are things that keep me from feeling overwhelmed. These are things. So when do. When does Chris LoCurto feel overwhelmed? I just talked about myself in the third person.

When do I feel overwhelmed? When I'm not prepared? When I. When I'm not staying on top of things. When, like, let's say maybe I've gone a couple of months and I might be behind.

And this happens very rarely, but it has happened in the past. I will. Boy, I don't like it because now I. I feel like I'm not able to make my best quality decisions. I. I don't have my, you know, my vision glasses on, being able to see what's going to happen.

So the overwhelmingness, most likely a lot of it is coming from the lack of understanding what's going on in your finances, understanding where you are in the business, not knowing whether you need to push as hard as you do or if you're going to all of a sudden discover that you're way behind and you've got a lot of debt or issues expenses that you're going to have to cover, and it's going to be painful when you do it.

So I think a first step is one, make the decision. Be self aware. Be self aware of where you are with your accounting right now. Be self aware of where you are with your finances.

It is okay to go. I'm sucking. It's okay to go. I really don't know. I'm kind of a little blind. It is okay. That's the more important thing. Don't worry about anybody judging you on any of that.

That's not the important. Judgment is a waste of time. Where are you? And then get alongside somebody who can help you to solve these things, teach you how to do it, guide you, direct you.

Because when somebody can walk you through that process, then what happens is a lot of that overwhelm comes off. You know, one of the things we, we jokingly say about StratPlan is, hey, we're going to put some more stuff on you to get a whole lot of stuff off of you.

You know, we're going to make. It's going to be a little bit more difficult. It is so true. This could be a little bit more difficult on the front side.

But my gosh, you're going to feel so relieved because a lot of this stuff is going to come off of you and you're going to be able to manage it and manage other, you know, leaders and things and processes and projects instead of feeling like all of this is on your shoulders.

So I would say that's the, that's, that's the first step. I don't think there is an easy step. I don't, there's no easy step. You just gotta do it. You gotta.

Self awareness is probably the most easy step. Just be aware, where are you, what are you accepting of, what are you denying, you know, and then make a decision. You're not gonna do this anymore, right? Not a New Year's resolution, a life change.

You want to constantly be understanding even if you're not the person who has to do the finances. I happen to, I don't do a lot of the finance, I don't do the expenses, all that kind of stuff. I'm going through the reports, seeing what's happening.

I will take all of the budgeting information, income expenses and I will put it in a budget for me so that I'm always constantly watching that.

So I don't do all the finances, I do the high end stuff that keeps me completely aware of where we are. Yep, Shameless plug here. If you need somebody to help you walk alongside you, clients call us, we will do that.

That's what the coaching staff is here for, so that we can walk through and just be there and help guide you and hold you accountable. So anyway, shameless plug.

Shameless plug. The thing is that the one thing I do love about it continuing on with the shameless plug is that we aren't again, our focus isn't, hey, let's dangle this, you know, super pill out here that's going to cause you to make tons of money.

We already know that. We will, we will help you get to way more money if we solve the problems inside of the business.

So all those people who are selling that magic pill, get away from them. That there is no magic pill.

And if, even if you did, as I was saying earlier, let's say you did go ballistic by adding a ton of revenue, what is going to happen is it's going to self implode your business, you're going to find way more problems, way more struggles.

And that's why our clients have been with us for so many years, because they've solved the problems.

And then money comes, right? Money is not the difficult part, really. People think it is. When you solve the problems, you can handle the money and you handle it really well where you don't overwhelm yourself. So I think it's a fantastic plug.

Conclusion (00:58:44)

So, okay, we are going to wrap up here, but I just have to ask, do you have any last minute things, like anything you want to share with the listeners that I didn't ask that has been vital to you and your business journey?

Anything like that? Yeah. You know, as you asked the last question, what's rolling through my mind is the inability to be vulnerable. You heard me just say a little while ago, do not worry about judgment.

Don't worry about that crap. Listen to me. The reason why I teach this stuff, the reason why I've been successful, the reason why I am where I am, is because I got sick and tired of worrying about people's opinions, and I got sick and tired of worrying about judgment.

And I was able to get vulnerable to ask a ton of questions. I am somebody who gains quality perspective nonstop. I'm always asking questions. I don't have the problem of walking up to somebody going, hey, can I ask you about this?

What are your thoughts on this? You know, sometimes I'll do it to a fault. You know your husband Kevin, who I love so dearly? I know he's somebody who researches the daylight side of things.

And so I'm the kind of guy, I would just go, Kevin already knows the answer to this. I'm not going to waste my time. And he will have researched it 10,000 times better than I have.

I'll be like, Kevin, what about this? And he's like, here's this, this, this. And once in a great while, I'll go, hey, Kevin, what about this? And he's like, you could probably google that.

I'm like, oh, shoot, I could have done. I guess that was a really easy question. I could have googled that.

I would rather be that guy that every once in a great while I ask a question I could have just got the answer to, to make sure that I'm asking the people that are further along than me, more experts than I am, more well read than I am.

I want quality information. I want information so I can change my life. Yeah. If you are afraid of being vulnerable, one of the things we teach in StratPlan especially with leadership teams is I will not be vulnerable.

If I can't trust you with my vulnerability, then I won't be vulnerable with you. Right. You have to be able to be with people you can trust with that vulnerability.

So it's vitally important to find people that you can trust that you can be vulnerable with. Finances is one of those areas that people struggle with all the time.

We are the right place to go. We don't care. We're not sitting there going, how much did you make? Oh, my gosh, you should have done better. Oh, that's not good enough.

We're not here for that. We're here to lift you up and go, hey, let us help you with this piece. This piece. You got that going really well. What about this piece over here? That's our goal.

You're not going to get there. If you can't be vulnerable enough to ask questions, ask for help, you do not have to have all the answers.

I am literally, literally running a business that has answers, and we are consistently seeking other mentors, other people, other things. Right.

I have multiple mentors in my life on areas that I just don't know enough that I need more information on.

Right. That I need to grow in this area. I need to grow in this area. So if you find, you know, being part of being self aware, if you find yourself struggling with. Man, I'm, I. I don't feel comfortable. I don't, you know, I'm. I'm insecure.

Let's say that I'm insecure about discussing financial stuff or getting a coach or something like that. Crush that. Find out why.

It's usually because you probably had, you know, a cousin somewhere, your brother or a parent who gave you all of their advice, and they know nothing of what they're talking about.

They've never run a business and they don't understand the situation you're in and you've gotten bad advice or bad judgment or all that kind of stuff.

Get away from that, Move away from that. Find people who are there that have the heart of a teacher that want to love on you and help you through a process that could care less about judging you, that want to help you get better.

So I think that's probably the most important thing. That's what. That's definitely one of the biggest things I did when I was young was just. I just got over it.

I was sick and tired of having to worry about people's opinions. Yeah, no, that's great. Such a good tip to give us because that's where we grow. When we can become vulnerable, that's where the growth happens.

We're allowing somebody else to just be there with us, sit in it or, you know, hopefully not sitting in it, but like just work through it and somebody that's been there has more wisdom, so.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you have no problem asking questions. You've been somebody who's been a big time question asker. Your, your whole question asker. What does that sound, it sounds funny.

Anyways, you ask a lot of questions. It's just so. Well, I think that's going to do it for today. I think we could go on but we, we've got to wrap it up somewhere so at some point we will start overwhelming people.

I know there's a lot of information, but thank you, Nae for-- Lyneé, who I affectionately called Nae. Thank you for joining me on the show here today. I appreciate that. Yes, love being here.

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