606 | Scaling Your Business Without Sacrificing Your Values

Introduction (00:00:00)

Scaling a business is one of the most exciting journeys you can take, but it's also one of the toughest. How do you grow without losing sight of what matters to you most? That is what's coming up next.

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

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are.

We're having a pretty darn good day here ourselves. Today, we're diving into the importance of aligning your business decisions with your core values.

So we're going to be talking about scaling and scaling successfully. We're not going to dive into how to scale the business right now. What we're going to talk about is this journey that you're trying to take of what does it look like to scale your business?

But one of the most important things is making sure that you don't lose sight of the most important things in your business or the most important aspects of your business to you, to your team.

So it's not just about growing your bottom line. It's about growing with integrity. It's about growing with purpose. So if you're a leader, if you're a business owner, then this roadmap is your roadmap to scaling without compromise.

Get Clear on Your "Why" for Scaling (00:01:28)

So we have some specific key points along the way.

The first and most important--

whenever I'm teaching somebody about scaling their business, whenever I'm teaching them, you know, about taking on a new product line, a new service line, whatever it is, there's always the most important thing, and the most important thing is why.

Before you ask yourself anything else, ask yourself, why do I want to scale? Now, most people believe that they should scale because there's all of these talking heads out there.

There's all of these side hustlers and other hustlers and all this kind of fun stuff that says that, you know, you've got to scale, you've got to grow, you've got to compete, you've got to dominate, all this kind of stuff, right?

So I'm going to ask you the question. If you're somebody who is in that category of, like, man, you just, that's the most important thing in your life.

Go dominate a market. Fantastic. Scale, go ballistic. Do whatever works. The reason why this is the most important question before you start is because that may not be why you want to scale.

So you might go after something because you're hearing somebody say, you've got to do it, you've got to do it this way. And listen, we help tons of companies scale, grow, make millions of more dollars.

We help a ton. We help small businesses that have one or two people to grow and expand. We help a ton. But it's not because we say you should do it.

It's not because we think you're not good enough. It's not because we think your business needs to be bigger. And it has to be because it just should be. All that's just crap. You have to have a solid why behind it?

Is it because you want to dominate the market? If it is, be honest with you. Maybe, maybe that's what you're looking for. Is it because you want to make more money?

You know, for us, one of the things we always want to do is we want to create more jobs. We'd love to do that, right? But sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. Is it something that is super mission driven right now?

If you've listened to me for any decent amount of time, you know that I say mission is your purpose for existence. So whatever your business's purpose for existence is, is the reason you want to scale because you want to fulfill that mission even more, right?

What about maybe you're focused on impacting lives more. We always, we always want to touch and change and, or help people change as many lives as we possibly can.

One of the ways you can help us to do that is to like this, to review it, to send this on to other folks. Our goal is to help as many people as we possibly can. That is part of our mission.

The first part of our mission is, is focused on God worshiping God. The second part of our mission is helping people to gain quality perspectives so they can change their lives, so they can change their business.

That's why we do what we do. That's why the show exists. So, for example, you know, I once, I worked with a client who initially wanted to scale so that they could keep up with competition.

At least that's what they were saying at the time. It's like, well, I've got to keep up with all this competition. There's so many people out there doing what I'm doing and I just need to keep up.

But when we dug in deeper, they realized that they're the true reason. The motivation of why they wanted to scale was because they actually wanted to build kind of a legacy of impact.

It wasn't so much staying up with the Joneses. It wasn't so much trying to stay in competition with other folks. They really enjoyed the impact that they were making and they wanted to grow that and make it bigger.

So that shifted, you know, their, their entire approach to growth. It wasn't, well, I've got to go and win over all these clients so the competition doesn't, I've got to go and, you know, market better than these guys over here.

I've got to go, you know, have a better salesperson who's selling our differentiator better than these guys are. Instead, it became how do we impact people the most? That's a completely different sell, by the way.

If you're trying to sell me on how different your, your product is, your services, than one of your competitors, that's a different sell than selling me on the impact you can make in my personal life or my, my business or in my team.

It's a different sale. I know you would think it would be exactly the same, but it's not, right. Those are two different types of sales.

And the great thing about somebody like me is you're definitely going to win me over a heck of a lot more by showing me how you can impact my team, my life, my business, you know, my, my vendors, my clients, whatever it is that will help me make a better decision on whether or not I follow your products and services, right?

This is what they were looking for. So key insight, when you know your why, every decision becomes clearer and more aligned with your purpose. Let me say that again.

When you know your why, every single decision you make becomes clear and more aligned with the reason your business exists. That's power. That's what really helps you to grow and scale. Well, because now you're not making desperate decisions based on competition.

You're not making desperate decisions based on dominating markets. If your why is, you know, the one I want to make an impact, right?

And if it is one of those, then every decision is based on that and not other things, right? So you, you see the, the key insight here.

When you know your why, then all of your decision making becomes based around that why and how it fits into your mission.

Identify and Commit to Your Core Values (00:07:34)

So number two, number two thing you need to do if you're gonna scale and not lose the aspects of your business, your team, whatever it is that you desire most.

Well, number two is that you have to identify and you have to commit to your core values. Folks, your core values absolutely can act as the North Star for your team, for your business.

They literally act as guide your decision making, especially, especially in high pressure moments.

How many times and maybe you've never done this, I can't tell you how many times we've done this where we've had a high pressure moment on having to make a decision and somebody on the team goes, does that align with our core values?

Does that align with our mission statement? Does that align with our vision? Right. When you have core values, when you have this, these are the most important things to us.

This is what we focus on. Then it makes it incredibly easier for you to say no to something or to say yes to something because you know it. Especially when the pressure is on.

There have been times we've had clients, well, not clients, but potential clients, that as we've learned more about them, it's like, nope, I do not want to take this on. I don't want to work with that client.

I don't want to work with that company. I don't want to work with, you know, what they're putting out. I don't. Because it goes against our core values. So think about that.

We have had opportunities to make money by helping people, but because it didn't align with our core values, we turned it down. That's important to me. Why?

Because I still have to go stand before God. I don't want to be somebody who's helping people do something that I don't feel is moral, that I don't feel, you know, that I might feel is taking advantage of other people.

We've had to fire a few clients over the years.

Not a lot, but probably about three or four we've had to fire because, nope, we're not willing to work with them the way that they either do business or the way that they're treating the team members, their clients, whatever it is, this goes against our core values.

Now, praise God, the large percentage, 99% of the clients that we work with aren't like that.

They're people who are looking to make impacts to, you know, treat people well, to treat their team members well, to treat their clients well.

And so that is one of the things I love about what we do. The people that are drawn to us are the people that aren't in it solely for the money. They're not out there to cheat people left and right. So you've got to know what your core values are.

So, for example, one of my clients had a core value of excellence, but they had a big time growth opportunity that came super fast. You've probably experienced this or, you know somebody who has.

And the first thought was, man, if we just cut some corners, we could take advantage of this growth opportunity. And they really had to talk through that they really had to work through it. Asked us some questions, hey, what do you think about this?

And our answer was, was simple. Stay focused on what you value. If you cut corners now, then what do you think that's going to do to your business? How do you think that's going to affect those new clients?

How do you think it's going to affect your current clients, those that have been loyal and have been with you for a long time? So that's our advice. And the great thing is, instead of cutting corners, they double down on quality.

And it made it slow, you know, a much slower growth. But it paid off in the long run because it protected their brand's reputation and protecting the reputation, which, think about it, when you cut corners, what's going to happen?

Your reputation is going to start to tank because you want, by cutting corners, you're going to create problems, you're going to create issues, you're going to create upset clients, you're going to create upset new clients.

You're going to probably tick off some of your older clients that have been with you for a long time. So by doubling down on quality and making sure that was their focus, yes, they grew slower, but it protected their brand.

And as far as I'm concerned, in the long run, they grew better and grew more because they didn't then have to go back and solve a ton of problems and a ton of issues.

So what is the key insight here? Scaling should never, should never come at the cost of what you stand for. Right?

What you stand for needs to be what you stand for that you continue to stand for, not that you stood for it once and then you folded because you saw an opportunity that brought you more money or brought you more growth. Right?

Again, if I go back to the side hustlers out there or the ones that are teaching it, one of the things that you will see is that there's a lot of compromise in their message.

They just don't say it. They don't say, hey, you're going to compromise this for this. They kind of do.

They'll say things like, you got to get up at the, you know, at 4:00 in the morning, you got to be doing this and this and this and this and going to bed at midnight. And they don't say, you know, what they're saying is, hey, you're going to compromise your time.

You know, you're going to bust your butt so that you can make this happen.

What they don't say is, is the folks that stay in this end up compromising family, you know, family time, raising their kids properly, you know, proper relationship with their spouse, family members, being able to handle problems as they come up.

Those are lots of things that you don't hear. So our goal is to not compromise.

You will never hear me say, don't get out there and bust your butt. I am always somebody who was like, you have got this amount of time in your day, you bust it, and when the ox is in the ditch, bust it to get the ox out of the ditch.

What does that mean? You may have to work overtime, many hours. This may take on a few weeks, this may take on a few months to solve a problem.

But what we don't do is we don't set that as our common goal, our common day, right? Every day is going to be that we're working 20 hours a day with a family.

You know, maybe you don't have a family, maybe you don't have stuff, you know, people that you're attached to. There. There sure are some caveats to this, but most of the people listening to the show, that's.

That's not their situation. That's not your situation. So, you know, caveats aside, remember, spending less time with your kids for a long period of time is not worth the money or the growth that you're going to make if you prioritize correctly.

Let's make God the most important thing in your life. And then your spouse, the second most important thing, and then your kids the third most important thing, and then your business.

Take a look at Ephesians. Read through Ephesians, see how God wants you to prioritize things. If you will do that, then I can promise you, because God does, that he will bless you.

There are things that he will do with your business that you didn't even have a hand in. But he's got to be the most important thing.

Stay True to Your Values When the Pressure’s On (00:14:56)

Number three, stay true to your values. When the pressure is on, and you are very aware the pressure is going to be on, it's.

It's super easy to stay aligned when things are going well. It's super easy to, you know, remember your core values, to speak about your core values when everything is going well.

The big challenge here is when stress, when deadlines, when big opportunities, when big problems come knocking, then it makes it really difficult to stay true to what we value. Those are opportunities for us to cave in certain situations.

You know, I praise God that over the years, there have been times something has come up and as we start to talk through it, somebody goes, hold on a second, if we do this, is this going to compromise something?

And. And it's like, well, how do you see? What do you see? And they'll lay something out. And it's like, yep, you are spot on. Stop. Throw this part out.

You know, throw this, throw this direction out. We're not doing it. What direction will align with our values, our mission, our vision, all that kind of fun stuff, right?

So I once had a client whose business was literally scaling super fast, I mean, really fast, and they kind of felt this pressure to prioritize profit over people.

I hate to say this, but unfortunately it's not uncommon. When things are growing rapidly, you have a tendency to go, let's put our arms around as much opportunity as we possibly can.

But when you're prioritizing the money over people, and I've seen this happen so many times, then what happens is you communicate to the people that they are not important.

I've seen the same thing with a company when the economy turned down, geez, you know, 2008, 2009, something like that, where everything was about the people, people, people, people.

Until the economy started to turn. And then it was like, the money is the most important thing and you people better solve this.

I've seen both sides of this, right? But the company that leaned into their people first value, making sure that they took care of their people and they invested in their team, what was the result?

The greatest thing was they increased loyalty, which increased productivity. The other company that was hammering their team, you guys better fix this. You better do something about this. Loyalty tanked like you would not believe.

In fact, unfortunately, some people started to turn on that, that business owner. It wasn't pretty. So listen, if you want your team to pull things off, invest in your team.

If you want your team to be more productive, treat them with dignity, help them to understand they are valuable, they are one of your core values. Invest in your team and you'll be amazed at what they can get done even when things turn bad.

So literally in this situation, we're talking about things, you know, this first company with growth. Well, if you prioritize your team, they will be productive with the growth.

So trust me, it'll work out. Right? So key insight here is sticking to your values during tough times keeps you from making decisions you'll regret.

And I happen to know a lot of you out there that are following this show, hate, regret, personality styles that listen to this show, you hate regret.

So don't make the decisions that are going to make it difficult for you and cause you to feel regret down the road.

Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event 2025 (00:18:48)

So here's the thing. You're a business leader. You're a business owner. You're deeply passionate about what you do. You're love your work, you love your team, you love your mission.

But guys, sometimes it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Sometimes you feel like everything depends on you.

That no matter what systems you have in place, the moment you step away, things start to slip. So if you're nodding your head with me because you know that you've experienced this, then I want you to come to the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event.

It's exactly what you need. Now, this isn't just another leadership event. It's a transformative three day experience. And it's happening April 2nd through the 4th.

Now our goal is to equip you with practical, sustainable tools so you can confidently lead without feeling overwhelmed. Now let's face it, trying to lead your team, grow your business and stay fully present for your family and personal life can feel nearly impossible.

And it's absolutely exhausting. But here's the deal. You're not alone. I work with leaders every single day who express the same frustrations. They want their business to run smoothly, but the thought of stepping away is overwhelming.

Leadership doesn't have to feel this way. It doesn't have to be a constant drain on your time and energy. And at the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event, I'm going to show you exactly how to break out of this cycle.

So why should you take the time to join us? Well, here's some of the things that you're going to gain from this experience. First thing, lead smarter, not harder.

This event is built on strategies that help you lead smarter, not harder. You don't have to be the busiest person in your business to achieve real growth.

In fact, I see so many leaders burning out simply because they're over involved. One of the best outcomes I hear from attendees is that they walk away empowered to let their team succeed without micromanaging them.

Second thing, reclaim your life outside of work, folks. Here, we don't just talk about life balance.

We're going to help you create it. So imagine a life where you're fully present at home and in your business. This is where you learn to lead without sacrificing your personal life.

Third thing, join a community of leaders who understand.

Every single leader out there listening to this, every business owner listening to me right now has that family member, has that friend who's told you exactly what's wrong with your business and all the things that you need to do and they've never run a team or they've never run a business.

The people that you're going to meet at the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event, they're facing the same challenges. Some are further along, some are behind.

Everybody in the room understands exactly what you are going through. This event fosters a genuine community where you'll find encouragement, fresh ideas, and maybe even lifelong friendships.

Fourth, actionable takeaways you can implement right away. So this isn't just an event where you walk away with inspiration and no clear steps.

There's a ton of events out there that you will be super motivated for 30 days, but you still don't have anything to implement. That is not the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event.

Here you'll leave with practical, actionable steps you can start implementing on day one. Turning insights into immediate progress. I know what some of you might be thinking.

I'd love to go, but there's way too much on my plate and if I leave my business, then my business might suffer.

But if we're being honest, running at the pace you're currently running just isn't sustainable. Trying to do everything yourself leads to burnout. And when that happens, it doesn't just affect a few days, it impacts your long term success and well being.

So you owe it to yourself and to your business to invest in your leadership. Take this opportunity to break free from the constant stress. Invest these three days with us and I promise you'll gain so much more than you'll miss.

Join us for the Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event happening April 2nd through the 4th, 2025. Registration is open now, so secure your spot.

You'll be learning from me, my team, and alongside other dedicated leaders who are ready to take things to the next level. I've seen this event transform lives and businesses and I'm confident it can do the same for you.

So don't wait until burnout forces you to make a change.

Head on over to chrislocurto.com/liveevents. That's chrislocurto.com/liveevents to learn more and secure your spot. I am personally looking forward to to seeing you there.

Learn to Say "No" to the Wrong Opportunities (00:23:51)

All right, number four. Learn to say this incredibly important word. No. You can do it. I promise you can say that word.

Learn to say no to the wrong opportunities. Not every single opportunity is worth taking. No matter how tempting it may seem.

I can tell you it is just this. I don't know. I don't know what to file this under, but I have helped so many businesses to stop looking at every opportunity or every good opportunity as something that they had to go after.

We have got in a closet, like five page, big, huge sheets, you know, the sheets that you can hang up on the wall and write them.

We have got tons of opportunities that we can do through this business and those things have been sitting in a closet for years. Why? Because we don't go after every good idea.

We just don't. You have to understand this, that not every good idea can be gone after. The more things you say yes to, the more things you say no to. And when you're saying yes to more good opportunities, you're saying no to your resources.

Let me say that again. When you say yes to every good opportunity that comes along or something that everybody thinks is, we have to jump on this, it's smart.

What you end up doing is saying no to your money, the capacity of your team, the capacity of your brick and mortar, the capacity of tools, software, whatever it is. The more you say yes to stuff, the more you say no to your resources.

Now, if you're sitting in a place where you have plenty of resources, we should have another conversation because that means we're not utilizing those resources.

But if you're sitting in that place, fantastic, let's use up those resources. Let's get them in a good quality position where we have great capacity.

You know, everybody is firing on all cylinders. We're not over, you know, we're not task saturated in our leadership team.

Everybody's operating on all cylinders. We're rocking, we're rolling. The issue is when you utilize those resources beyond your capacity and that's when you start to see things really fall apart.

I, I know a business owner that I worked with way back when that was offered a, a very high revenue client that didn't align with their mission. Again, you've heard me say this about me. And turning that down was incredibly difficult.

But the thing that they did by doing so. So this was my suggestion to them. If you take this client on, you already know how difficult this client's going to be.

You already know the problems this client's probably going to bring to you. You know the stress that this client's going to bring to you.

If you take this client, how much is it going to negatively impact you, your team, your culture, and maybe even your resources outside of your team and culture.

And as they processed through it, they're like, oh my gosh, this has the potential to be disastrous. And so my question was, okay, so here's, here's the next question.

The amount of money you're planning on charging that client, is it enough for what they're going to potentially do to your business? And the answer was no way. Okay, would this client come if you could charge them enough? No, they wouldn't.

There's your answer, right?

Because the truth is, is if you know, you can charge the client an insane amount of money and they still want to come and they're going to be a pain in the butt, but it was worth, you know, the infusion into your business, then that's something to consider.

But that's like 1% of the time that might be 0.001% of the time. Most of the time that you sit back and think about how detrimental could this be to my business.

The money is never worth it, even if you increase the price, right? There are clients that, my gosh, you would have to be. I would have to be sending my entire team on like a month long cruise to take all the clients.

So it would have to be a lot of money, right? Because they just bring so much negativity and so much crap. So things for you to think about, you don't want, you know, those long term headaches, you don't want that negative impact on your culture.

So key insight, saying no strategically is one of the most powerful tools for staying true to your values.

Build Systems That Keep You Aligned (00:28:35)

Number five, build systems that keep you aligned. Now, you cannot rely on gut feelings alone to maintain your alignment as you scale. I know a lot of us rely on that.

For me, I'm somebody who, I like to rely on my gut feelings. But I also love having systems in place.

So you need some of those systems and processes in place. So for example, one business I worked with implemented regular values checks, right?

They would have meetings with their leadership team and the team itself got to assess decisions they were making.

So they would throw out all these decisions that may be decisions they had made recently or, or decisions that they're looking at making and just regularly ask the question, hey, does this fit or go against our core values?

And by doing so, it kept the team very mission focused. Instead of what we would call a mission drift where you're, you're drifting away from your purpose, you're drifting away from your mission.

And allowed them to stay focused on exactly what they believed their purpose was.

Now by doing so, this really made it easier in the moment of making decisions because they did this check every now and then, you know, as they did it, eventually it got to where barely any decisions ever even looked like they were going against the core values because it was staying top of mind.

So by doing that on a consistent basis, it wasn't like every week, I think it was like every month or so. Maybe it's every couple of months.

You know what that did is it allowed them to, in the moment, decision making, make sure that they focused on their core values. So key insight here is embedding your values into your daily operations ensures they guide you even during rapid growth.

That's it. I keep coming back to that because that is super important. When things grow fast, people tend to ditch their core values or forget about them. You know, it's like the selective hearing.

Oh, you know, that used to be super important to us. But right now a whole lot of money is coming in the door. Listen, you've got to stay focused on what you value the most.

If you want to scale. Well, if you want to scale. If you don't focus on core values, a negative side effect is you may have a short term increase in and then a long term decrease.

Action Steps (00:31:10)

So here's some action steps I want you to take how you can, you can start scaling your business without sacrificing your values.

First, define your core values. So write down your top three to five values.

You may even have more than that. Great. You know, if it's 30, they're probably not core.

But write down three to five, seven, eight, whatever it is, and reflect on how they influence your decision making, your team's decision making, your leadership team's decision making. Right.

Number two, audit the past decisions that you've made. Look at times when you, you did or did not align with your values. What were the results?

How did they end up? That's one of the things that we will do in StratPlan a lot as we go through how some things impacted the business over a certain number of years.

And you get to see which decisions were great decisions and you get to see which decisions were bad decisions.

Number three, create a values filter. Right? So develop just a simple process to evaluate decisions against your values.

Right? It's not that difficult. You can, you can just ask the question every time you get together as a leadership team or with your team. Just put something together that you know, it could be a couple of questions.

Number one being, hey, does this align with or go against our values? So put some sort of values filter in place.

Number four, communicate your values. Folks, none of this matters if you are not making sure your team knows, understands values and lives by the core values that your team, your business has every single day.

If they are not bought into your core values, none of this is gonna matter, right? Unless you just want to be the bottleneck for your entire company or your entire team, right?

So you've got to make sure that they know them, they understand them, they believe in them, they live by them.

Number five, review regularly. So set aside time quarterly to ensure your growth strategies stay aligned with your core values.

So you may be hot and heavy right into a strategy that you're operating in. You need to still because things can creep, you can get mission creep, right? You can get all kinds of stuff moving away.

You can get stuff, you know, creeping away from your core values. Every quarter, come back and take a hard look at that and ask the question, are we still in alignment with what we value the most?

Additional Resources (00:33:44)

So, additional resources I want you to focus on podcast episode 206, which is The Three Keys to Scaling your Business with Excellence.

So that will help you to focus on how to scale. We discuss really important things on where to put your energy, you know, where, how to focus on your strategy and why many scaling efforts, you know, or new service lines, they why they fail miserably.

So that's an important episode for you to listen to as well while you're focusing on scaling.

So folks, scaling your business doesn't have to come at the expense of your values. And you may not have even thought about it that way.

The truth is, when you grow with integrity, then you build something way more sustainable and seriously way more fulfilling than something that puts a lot of money to the bottom line, stresses everybody out, freaks everybody out, causes you to, you know, go back on some of your values.

So, so make sure that you are staying aligned. Make values driven decisions, stay focused on that. Build a business and seriously, your life as well.

Build a life the way that you've always wanted to do. Well folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I hope this has helped you immensely.

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