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Chris LoCurto: You can scale your business the smart way, the right way and the healthy way. I’m going to give you those three keys to setting up your business to scale more on that 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 today. Uh, I’m a little excited, a little more pep in my step. I don’t know. I’ve always got good pep in my step I think. But, today is a little bit more and I am excited because we have officially launched the registration for our 2020 Next Level Leadership Live Event. I’m excited that that is now open. I cannot wait for that event to get here. Now moving on to today’s show, here’s the deal. Most business leaders, most business owners say that they want to grow and scale, but many do it without ever asking the most important question, which is, are we actually set up to scale in a healthy way? This is the biggest thing that whenever a company is talking to me about scaling or growing. There are so many mistakes made. There are so many folks that step out and get bad advice and they end up, you know, growing in ways that they shouldn’t have grown, not realizing how badly it’s affected their company.
So I want you to hear everything I say about this that I, because I, and I know you listen to every word that I say on every show, I’m sure you’re never not listening, right? This is really important stuff for you to hear. So most companies say that they want to scale. The problem is they’re not set up for it. So they start to scale or you know, they’ve bought the, the magic pill from one of the 10,000 companies out there selling one and they start moving in that direction and then they find out the hard way that they were not set up to successfully do it. So this show is about helping you to grow and scale the right way. But I can tell you this, it’s not going to be about what you think it is. One thing, if you, if you haven’t learned this about our company, we don’t sell magic pills, they don’t work.
There’s tons of them out there and there’s tons of people screaming from the mountain tops of how great their magic pill is. But folks, if you don’t understand all the things that are holding you back, no magic pills gonna help, all it’s gonna do is cause you a whole ton of heartaches, headaches, overwhelmed, stress, loss of money, all kinds of crap, right? And even if it makes you money for awhile, here’s what’s going to happen. If you’re not ready for scaling, if you’re not set up to scale successfully, then eventually you’re to sell for implode. And I can tell you every single time, every time we have a company that comes in for Strat plan, we talk to them about, hey, money is not that difficult to find. The difficult thing is discovering all the things that are holding you back from being able to hold onto that money or continue that growth.
And I always ask this question, if we doubled your income right now. So for those of you that are, uh, business leaders that are in over a p and l or business owners, if we doubled your income right now, what would happen to your business? And the answer is always the same. There’s only two answers. The number one answers always we would self implode because we wouldn’t be ready for that. The other answer is, Oh yeah, we could totally take that on. Well then if you are ready to double your income, then that leads us down another path. Why aren’t you doing it? What are all the things that are keeping you from going after that? So either way it points out great things. We’re not ready to scale correctly. So there are a lot of ways to try and scale a business. Now, some common traps that people fall into when they’re thinking about scaling or thinking through scaling.
The first one is leaders who think that they’re ready to scale, but they’re actually not. It’s very easy to have this pressure of growth. It’s very easy to have this pressure of scaling. And the whole time you’re actually not ready to skill. You don’t realize that part. You have this pressure that’s saying, I’ve got to do something without finding out what are all those things that you need to get done first. Next thing is leaders who are led by fear, so they never aim to scale their company. This happens all the time when you don’t, what’s the big deal behind the fear of scaling? You don’t have great perspective. You don’t have great information. You don’t have a great plan. You don’t have a great destination that you’re going to, you don’t know how to do it. The other thing is bad mindsets. Yes. Let me speak to these.
Some of you have these right now. One of those would be, I have to scale. I have no choice. It’s, it’s the thing, it’s you know, it’s Chris, you say it all the time, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. That’s very true. That is very true, but you have to do it the right way. Right? Another thing is competition, you’re constantly comparing yourself to other companies, to other leaders. And so that causes a leader to say, I have to go do this thing right now. Right? Or for some of you, you’re bored, so you’re bored. So you just go out there something new, right? Oh, I’ve got this other part nailed down. And the funny thing is every time I have a high d that’s like, Chris, I’m bored. I need to grow another business or I need to scale this one or I need to go after a great idea.
One of the things we discover is is that they believe they know their current business inside and out and it’s done. It’s as far as it can go. And we discovered they are like at 10% of their capacity of their abilities of growing the specific business that they currently have. Those specific moneymaker that if they really pour effort back into the one that they have, it’s like scaling a business because they can go ballistic with it. Boredom is a bad, bad motivating factor to scaling or growing a business. Another one is that people get some great idea. Folks. I cannot tell you how many people run after a great idea. I’ve got to get this implemented right now. The, you know the, the pressure of if I don’t do this right now, somebody else who’s going to do it or it’s going to go away or I’m not going to have the opportunity later on.
It’s like FOMO, the fear of missing out when people are buying a house, when they’re buying a car, and by the way, salespeople know this about you. They know that you have this fear. That’s why they put the pressure of you’ve got to do this now or it won’t be here. Look at all the marketing that you’re seeing out there right now that if you go to buy something, it always says one left. Really, really everybody on the planet now has only an inventory of one item. This is a tactic that people are using right now. I’m not saying that every single time that is incorrect, but believe me, there’s not one left of every single thing on the planet that’s being sold out. They’re right on, on the Internet. So when you look at this, the concept is that fear of missing out. If you believe that you’ve got a great idea and you’re running after it like crazy, if it’s a quick fix to your business, then I can promise you you’re not ready.
You don’t have great perspective, you don’t have great plan, you don’t understand the things that are going to cause it to fail. So those are just some of the bad mindsets that leaders have or business owners have as they go into, um, you know, looking at growing and scaling their business. But here’s the deal. You do not have to fall into these categories. Now you can be a leader who scales your business the smart way, the right way, the healthy way. I’m going to give you these three keys to setting up your business to scale. And it doesn’t just have to be your business, it can be an area of your business as well. So if you’re a leader over a specific area that you want to scale or grow in, and this applies in all areas. So now before we really dig in, I want to put you at ease.
This is very tactical and I’m going to be giving you diagnostic questions and I don’t want you to think that you’re going to, you know, forget this or miss something. So we will have a download at the end of this episode. Now you’ll be able to use that as a tool to go back to all of the stuff that I’m going over. So I don’t want you to freak out because I’m going to hit you with a lot of tactical stuff. I know a lot of you are driving your car right now. I know that you’re probably busy right now. So if you’re in a situation right now where you don’t, you’re like, man, I want to write all this stuff down. Don’t worry about it. We’re going to give you a download at the end of the show. So I’ve got three major areas I wanna hit you with today.
This first part is the most important. You can’t even consider scaling until you get this first piece down. This is why so many people fail is because of this very first part focus on this. The thing you have to do is you have to know if you should be scaling, right? So some people simply have a, well, how fast can I grow mindset? And they start sprinting ahead not really knowing what they’re getting into. So if you are wanting to create a plan to scale, you have to answer these categories. These, these questions that I’ve got. The first thing is “How will I keep revenue flowing during my next growth phase?” A lot of people when they’re ready to scale, they believe that, hey, revenue’s good. So you know, things are going well, we got money on the bottom line. Uh, it’s time to scale.
You know, a lot, especially small businesses think this way. We’ve got, you know, 50,000 on the bottom line, a hundred, 150, 200,000 on the bottom line that that is, staying there. We’ve been doing really good and they are thinking, Hey, we need to grow this thing. We need to do something with this. Right? And so they don’t realize that scaling may really affect the way your revenue is currently flowing. The money making scheme that you have going on right now, the money maker in your business that you have right now. The first question you have to ask is how am I going to keep revenue flowing during this growth phase? How am I going to make sure revenue continues to happen? And not just believe that since we’ve been doing it, it’s going to happen. That is a big piece that leaders and business owners, that’s a big mistake that they make.
They believe that when we’ve been doing it, it’s going good. Um, there’s no problems that are going to happen. Oh, okay. Go take a look at the, uh, the, the bubble burst of all of the bank loans that, oh yeah, sure. This is all going to be fine. No guys, this stuff does happen. Things shift, things change, markets change, vendors change, clients change. There’s all kinds of stuff that can change in your next growth phase if you’re not prepared for it. So that’s the first thing you have to ask. How are we going to do it? How are we going to make sure that we keep revenue flowing? The second thing is, do I have the right leader to champion the process? Do I have the right champion in place? Let me just say it that way. Do I have the right champion in place as I go to grow or scale?
That’s not just in the current place. That could be in the, in the new phase as well. People always think, oh well I’m the one who’s going to take on the new phase. Great. Who’s going to champion the current growth process that you have, the current moneymaking opportunity that you have? Right. So a lot of times leaders will immediately pull in or they don’t think they’re, they don’t realize how much energy it takes to create a new growth plan, a new scale, a new business, whatever it is, they don’t realize how much of their energy it’s gonna take. And so what happens is, is that they don’t leave a champion behind. Nobody’s really over the current process. Well, Chris, it’s been going well for five years. Yes, it has been going well because everything that’s currently in place, so whoever the champion is, whether it’s you or somebody else, because that person is leading the process is over the current moneymaking part of your business.
That’s why it’s been successful. So you cannot remove the champion and if you’re going to go after scaling a new area, you can’t do it without a champion. So that’s another question you have to ask. Do I have the right champion in place or champions to make sure that this goes successfully? Next question, how do I keep momentum in what got us here while also seizing a new opportunity? So it’s not enough to make sure that you’re going to keep the revenue flowing. You also have to make sure that the momentum keeps going as well. So if you’re just like, well, we’re good with the revenue because we have money on the bottom line. Okay, but remember you’ve been growing in that area, at least you should have been, right? So what’s gonna keep the momentum of not just the revenue, but the revenue growth?
How are we going to make sure we’re going to keep that percentage or even greater growth as we go forward? Because if you’ve got money on the bottom line now and you don’t keep the growth momentum going, then guess what? That money’s going to be gone pretty soon on that bottom line and you’re probably planning on using that for the scaling part of your business. So make sure that you keep the momentum going. Next question, question number four in this area, do I have a strong understanding of my true capacity of resources? This is big. This is where so many leaders fell. All of this stuff is, man, everything I’m hitting you with today, this is all the stuff that leaders do not think about. Here’s a big piece. Do I really understand the capacity of me, of my leadership, of the team, of the resources that we have and the resources can be money, time, uh, team members.
It can be anything. Building space. Do I really understand what our capacity is? Many times folks will go after a scaling project and see that they’ve got a team member who’s killing it. In an area and just think, wow, they’ve got room, they’ve got capacity. I could throw some stuff on them. And that person’s probably even excited that team members probably wanting to please you. And they’re like, Yep, I got this. And then all of a sudden they get massively overwhelmed because you didn’t know what it was going to take. You didn’t know what all was needed to get that scale and going and how much energy and resources it was going to take. And so then you start literally overwhelming your resources. You know, you open something up and all of a sudden the building space, your, and you don’t have enough space. You don’t have enough time, you don’t have enough money because it costs way more than you thought it would.
All of these pieces are things that can really affect you negatively. Uh, number five is my team motivated to take on new initiatives or we’ll grow over tax them. Leaders, business owners. Uh, I’m super excited that you’re excited about the growth of your business. I want you to grow. I have a business that helps you to grow your business, but please understand if you are crazy excited and your team is not because they already feel like they’re busy, they already feel like they are at capacity, they already feel like you know the, the level of stress that they have on them is, is plenty. Then guess what? You’re not leading a team into this new initiative. Let me say that again. If they’re already overtaxed or taxed or at capacity, they don’t even have to be overwhelmed. If they’re already at capacity and they’re not excited about this new initiative, then you may not be leading a team into your new initiative.
You may be going out to this thing and dragging some people in with you. So once you’ve gone through and answered these questions, these are, these are powerful questions that you need to be coming up with answers to. So as we go through this, I want to make sure you hear me correctly. You are not hearing me say don’t grow, don’t scale. I’m the guy who teaches you how to do it right. I want you to do it the right way. And again, there’s so many magic pills that are being sold out there that people are falling for. And I’m so glad that my clients, you know, because of the stuff that we do, they’re not falling for that crap. But we have a lot of people who come to us and become clients because they did fall for something like that. And now they’re learning how to deal with the right way.
So you’re not hearing me say don’t scale, don’t grow. That’s exactly the opposite of what I’m saying. What I’m saying is do it right the first time. Set yourself and your business and your team up for success so that everybody loves this process. Everybody’s on board and we scale without, you know, losing time with our family. We scale without being crazy stressed out. We scale without losing our health, our families, you know, life in general, which so much. We put so much into scaling and growing business that so many times the more important things absolutely take a backseat or even fail, in our lives. So this is something we want to make sure that we’re not doing. So once you’ve asked and answered the right questions, it’s time to do the second thing. And that is to get the right systems in place.
Guys, um, especially those of you that are really, dream oriented, for those of you that really love to go make things happen, here’s what you have to understand. The most successful businesses, the most successful leaders have great systems in place that help them to see a clear path to success that helped them to solve complex problems, that, uh, you know, don’t allow things to get bogged down when growth happens. So let me hit you with this, between the eyes. I want you to grow your business, but if you don’t do it the right way, you’re gonna tax the crap out of your current business by not having solid systems in place. Okay? It’s that important every single time we have a company come through that is one of the big pieces that we help them to solve is making sure that they put the right processes in place, the right systems.
So strong systems allow a leader to be more free. That’s what you’re looking for so that they can lead more effectively. So here are five key systems that need to be really strong in order for you to scale. The first thing is a strong system of accountability and support so that you can maximize your team’s potential over and over and over again, we teach people all the things that they need to do to get accountability into their business. The two biggest things that are affecting every single business I see negatively, right? It’s not money. It’s not having the right people in place. The two biggest issues, number one, lack of high quality communication. You hear me say it all the time. Number two, lack of accountability. Many of us that are leaders or business owners, I love to be in there and let me just remove me from that because I am huge on accountability.
Many leaders and business owners shy away from the accountability. Oh, I don’t want to have to focus on those. I want to do these things over here that are more fun, I want to do this stuff. Without strong accountability, without strong support, your will fall apart. Your team will not operate at the greatest productivity, so let me just speak to you logically. You’ve got to have accountability to hold people accountable to the things that make you successful. When you don’t have it, what you discover is you’re getting maybe 75% productivity, most likely 50% productivity because you have people going in wrong directions or you have people doing things incorrectly or you have people not doing things at all so you never get the productivity that you expect out of your team, out of your resources, out of your company because you don’t have accountability in place.
So you’ve got to have a strong system. Next is the number one issue, which is you have to have a system for communication to make sure details don’t get missed and the team stays on the same page. When you are removing energy, whenever you’re starting to move in another direction, whenever you’re starting to grow, whenever you’re starting to scale and you’re removing energy from one place, then you must make sure that the team stays on the same page. You have to make sure that the team keeps moving in the same unified direction. If you don’t, then what’s going to happen is what we call the shotgun approach, right? People are going to start moving in different directions. Communication is going to start to fall apart. People are going to care only about their thing because apparently whoever’s heading up the growth process, the scale process that they no longer care about us over here anymore because they’re having to put all the time and energy into that thing.
So things start to fall apart. Communication must be high, must be quality. Third thing, you need to have a system for your operations so that your company doesn’t get overwhelmed when growth happens. Let me just give you some examples on this. Um, when you start to grow, let’s say we, uh, we’re growing another division. We add another division. This is in align with our strap plan or you know, the strategy that we have moving forward, uh, this is gonna help us to grow. This is great. Everything aligns with our mission big time. This is fantastic. We go out and we start to hire, we start to add people to that team that’s gonna make that division grow. What, what do you think is going to get taxed inside of your business? Well, immediately we know HR is right, your human resources processes and you may not have a person in HR.
You don’t have to, that’s not, that’s not what I’m saying, but the process of human resources is immediately going to get taxed, which means that we’re going to tax every aspect of it, which is the onboarding, which is the leading the person to success or people which is the accounting by getting people in for payroll, which means that the money’s going to be, there’s all these trickle effects that happen from moving in, in that direction. But if we don’t take a look and see where we are capacity wise right now with our operations and we start to add that stuff, this can get overwhelmed. Another thing people don’t think about, they start to grow in a direction and they move a salesperson or try and add a portion of a sales person’s time to that new area. What immediately happens? The stuff that they’ve been focusing on starts to tank.
Oh well we got great momentum there. Everything’s happening. Well, nope, I can promise you you don’t keep that going. Well you’re going to tax that operation, that part of your operations as well. So you have to make sure you have a system for your operations to keep operating really well and to absorb any new growth from the new growth. Right? The new scaling. So if you’re gonna tax your systems, are they ready for it? Four thing, you have to have a system to empower your team members to carry out your desired culture. So as we grow and scale, anytime we grow in scale, even if you’re not scaling it in a different area, if you’re just growing and scaling the thing that you’ve got every single time, we are adding the opportunity for our culture to start moving in a negative direction. Guys, with a bad culture or not a great culture, I can promise you, you’re going to hate scaling.
You’ll hate it because you’re going to find yourself having to go back and fix every little problem that’s happening in the culture while you’re trying to grow a business. There’s many leaders out there in business owners that have been so frustrated because they move in a direction, but they didn’t show her up their culture. Make sure that there is a great system in place or make sure they empower their team members that complain like crazy. I’m trying to grow the business guys, but you guys keep allowing all this crap to happen. There’s all this gossip going. There’s all these things. Hey, leader, it’s your fault. You should’ve made sure that you had a system in place so that the culture didn’t tank, so don’t be pissed at everybody else because you’re trying to grow the business, but you didn’t put something in place, so make sure your team members can carry out your desired culture.
Number five, a system for your leadership development. Folks, if you never, if you never focus on growing or scaling, what in the world do you have in place for your leadership development? Guys, as somebody who teaches coaches, empowers, does everything that I do for a living. You may not know this. I spend tons of money on growing my team. I spend tons of money growing me while we have a mastermind groups, accountability groups, I’m in that stuff as well. I’m growing me on stuff with other high level groups as well. I pour into me, I pour into my team. You need to have a system for your leadership development. As more weight has to be carried around by more people, you have to be able to lead them. Something that I am known for, at least around here is I do not hire a single person, not one who doesn’t have a direct leader.
Now you might think, well of course hiring somebody means that they have a leader. No, it does not. It does not. Because many companies hire people, get them baptized by fire, throw him in a seat, expect them to do something and say, Hey, so-and-so’s your leader. But then they never get any lead-ing, nobody’s leading them to success. Your job as a leader, every single one of you is to make your team successful, not the other way around. When we begin scaling and growing stuff, we start hiring people who do not have direct leads or great leaders leading them to success. So even if they’ve got a technical leader over them, that leader doesn’t have the time to make that person successful. And then six months later we look up and wonder why they’re failing miserably or they’ve left because they have no desire to be in a place or they’re not being taken care of.
So those are the five key systems you’ve got to have in place so that you can scale really well. All right. Before we get to the third key in setting up your business to scale, I have something exciting to announce. We are officially live registration is open for our 2020 Next Level Leadership Live Event and I cannot wait. Being a leader who knows how to lead your team to success, scaling a business and growing your team’s productivity is no easy feat, so we will be helping leaders and businesses get these results on April 29th through May 1st I cannot wait to host the fifth annual next level leadership live event in Franklin, Tennessee in three days. You’ll learn how to scale your business the smart way, grow your revenue, build your team unity, create a solid culture and show your team how and where to focus to win so that they are winning.
The content at this event is designed to make sure you have a healthy, well-rounded business. It will help you find the solutions that actually work for your team, your growth and your business. Now there’s a lot more information and until September 30th you can get a great discount on your tickets. So learn more at chrislocurto.com/live event. Again, that’s chrislocurto.com/event or text as one word, live event. All of that together. All caps live events to the number 44222, again, that’s all caps LIVE EVENT as one word to the number 44222. All right. Now let’s get back to the most important key to scaling your business. The most important key. The third thing I want you to understand is you, are you at the place you need to be? And I mean personally as a leader, are you in a healthy place?
Guys, I want you to succeed. I want you to grow. I want you to make more money. I want your business to be phenomenal. But here’s what people do not realize. I’ve been doing this. I owned four businesses. I’ve been leading businesses for decades. I’ve been leading teams for decades. So I may have something to say about this. Stress keeps you from thinking clearly and holds you back from growth. So many leaders and business owners are overworked. They’re overwhelmed, they feel guilty about taking care of themselves and they neglect their health by burning the candle at both ends and they don’t realize how much this is affecting their physical health and they don’t realize how much this is affecting their family time and they feel guilty because they feel like they need to provide more for their family and then they feel guilty because the thing to do to provide more for their family is taking time away from their family.
They get stuck in this terrible cycle until they’re worn out or burnt out. Do not live here. Do not. And if you are, if you’re in that spot, you shouldn’t even be thinking about scaling right now. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. Okay, do it the right way. Let’s get you out of being overwhelmed. Let’s get you out of the crazy stress. Let’s get you out of that crap because if you’re not, then guess what? Any additional, adding new stuff, adding new growth, adding scaling, adding stuff that you’re not an expert at already to your plate because it seems like a really good idea is going to cause you to be way more overwhelmed, way more stressed out. Here’s the amazing thing. So here’s what I want you to hear. Every single one of you out there, let me, I’m going to shift a little bit different direction.
Every leader who’s listening to me right now, if you’re stressed out, you’re not hearing me say a, I’m saying if you’re overwhelmed, don’t go after scaling. What you’re not hearing me say is, hey, you’re not going to be able to scale. You’re not going to be able to grow. You’re not going to be able to do any of that stuff. So let me be very clear on what I’m trying to communicate to you. There is a reason why killing the leadership crazy cycle is the first lesson that we have all of our leaders go through when they join our programs, because leaders have not been trained the right way to lead. Leaders have not been trained what should be on their plate. Leaders have not been trained properly how to delegate and get stuff off of them that they shouldn’t be focused on. Leaders haven’t been taught all the things that are holding them back that’s keeping them from leading their team to success and so many of them think, well, if I’m not doing all these tasks, Chris, I don’t have the importance.
I don’t have the, you know, I’m not needed for my business. You’re absolutely incorrect. Being stressed out as a leader is negatively affecting every bit of your leadership. Being overwhelmed as a leader is negatively affecting your growth. It’s negatively affecting your scaling. Being stressed out, overwhelmed as leader overtaxed is absolutely affecting your family, your personal life, no doubt about it. There’s no doubt about it. Here’s the great thing. You just need the tools. You just need the right information. If you get the right information, not the magic pills that people are selling out there. Guys, don’t go by a magic pill to grow your business. When you’re overwhelmed, learn all the things that are causing you to be overwhelmed by somebody who can actually teach you and learn the tools to get out of the overwhelm, right? Make sure that you surround yourself with great leadership development.
Make sure that you surround yourself with great accountability. So those are the things that I want for you. That’s why my business is set up the way that it is, right? So don’t go scaling your business, growing your business, if you’re stressed out and overwhelmed, if your leaders are, are stressed out and overwhelmed. Okay? So there you go. So to focus on you, the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to get your time back. So many leaders believe their identity is in the number of tasks that they do in a day. It is not. It never will be. It never was. It isn’t right now. Your identity as a leader is how well you lead every individual in your organization to success. If you’re a leader of leaders, if you have leaders under you, then it’s how you lead your leaders to leading their people to success.
So the first thing that we’ve got to do is get your time back. We’ve got a bunch of stuff out there about killing your leadership crazy cycle as well. And obviously we, you know, in our programs we teach this kind of stuff, but that’s gotta be the first thing. If you’re stressed out, then not having time is going to affect you negatively. Second thing is you have to gain more clarity to perform at your highest capacity. So folks believe that, 90% of success is just showing up. I’m going to say that that’s not actually true, right? Because many folks show up every single day and they’re so worn out or they’re not healthy or they don’t realize how badly they’re taxing their health. They’re taxing their mind, they’re taxing, you know, stressing themselves out. They don’t understand how much this is affecting them physically and mentally.
How many of you out there right now, right now struggle from time to time with brain fog? How many of you out there right now struggle from time to time remembering what you did today? How many of you out there struggle with the stress of being able to make it through your week? You’re so really ready for the the weekend. I’m not saying that you don’t love what you do, but physically, mentally you’re drained. You’ve got to get more clarity on performing at your highest capacity. You have to understand how to get to your highest capacity, so getting this information and understanding that you do not have to operate this way, you literally don’t discover the things that are actually affecting you negatively that are affecting your health, that are affecting you physically. Right? Third thing is you need to boost your mental energy. How do you do this?
It’s not caffeine. It’s not just, you know, putting in things, well, maybe I just need to eat a bunch of carbs. Maybe more coffee is going to help my mental energy. Guys, it’s not. It absolutely isn’t. Instead, it’s understanding the things that are taxing your mental energy. It’s understanding that, that the amount of cortisol that you dump into your stomach when you are stressed out, and by the way, here’s something that most people don’t know. Do you know that stress, no matter what kind of stress it is, affects you the same as the stress of like being chased by a lion, your fight or flight mode, the mode that dumps cortisol into your stomach so that you have energy to actually deal with something that really truly is stressful. Your body responds that same exact way when you’re stressed out with a deadline, when you’re stressed out with not having a tough conversation with that team member who’s screwing up, when you’re stressed out about feeling that you have to grow your business, when you’re stressed out about feeling like you’re not providing for your family well enough, all of those things have the same effect on your brain and your body as if you were actually in a very life threatening situation.
Now, it doesn’t seem to make sense to us because it’s like, well, those are different situations. If I’m being chased by a lion, yeah, I get that. Yeah, but your body doesn’t respond differently according to different stress situations. It literally responds the same way, and when you’re dumping a buttload of cortisol into your stomach, guess what you’re doing? You’re destroying your bacteria in your stomach on a continuous basis, you’re destroying the Serotonin in your stomach, which 80/90% of the serotonin that’s up in your brain, you know the happy hormone, the happy drug for you. Now, 80/90% of that is made in your stomach. Now here you go. We’ve got a lot of information on this to help you to understand this. I know you’re not hearing this in leadership stuff. What are you hearing? How you need to go hustle to make all this money by selling more stuff, and I’ll listen.
I’m not against the hustle. People just aren’t teaching the hustle the correct way. The next thing is you need to improve your physical health. Guys, think about it this way. It’s, it’s not that difficult. If you compare what it’s like, if you’re training for a 5k a 10k, A half marathon, you know, if you, if you’re gonna go run one of those, right, you’re going to need to have the physical stamina to make it through. You’ve got to be able to make it to the end. At least that’s the goal, right? If you just do the same physical stuff you’re doing right now and then make a decision that you’re going, you know, from couch to half marathon and you don’t actually change anything, then guess what? You’re not going to have the stamina to make it through your day to day life.
You need to be in good physical health. I’m not saying you got to go run half marathons. What I’m saying is by putting an emphasis on being physically in shape, um, again, I’m not saying you’ve got to go out there and start pumping weight five times a week, all that stuff. That is not what I’m saying. So let me say it kind of in the reverse. Where you are physically can absolutely affect your ability to lead, to get stuff done, to scale and grow, to spend time with your family, with your kids, with your spouse, who by the way, is supposed to be the most important person on the planet to you, with your kids who are supposed to be the next most important human beings after your spouse, right? To spend time with the most important thing which is God and growing that relationship.
If you’re not physically healthy, then guess what happens? You slog through the day and you cannot wait to get home and get on that couch. I get it. I’ve been there. I understand that. But I can tell you ma, when I am in better physical shape, I’m able to run through my day better. I’m able to get through my, my business better. I’m able to lead people better. I have so much more energy, physically to be able to handle growth, to be able to handle scaling, to be, to not have to get through the day and you know, can’t wait to go plop myself down, just rest awhile. So fourth thing is you’ve got to improve that physical health. Fifth thing, you have to stay balanced in your work and personal life. Now, there is no true amount of balance when it comes to work and personal life.
There is no such thing as true balance. It’s not going to be, you know, you know, for every leader they spend this much time at work. They spend this much time with the family, this, but there is no true balance. But what really happens is you get out of balance. So leaders, business owners, anybody, everybody listening. Here’s what I want you to understand as great as work is, and as great as it is to put food on our table and take great vacations and drive fun cars and do whatever it is that we do, none of us are getting to heaven and God’s going to go, I am so impressed with your bottom line. Wow, that was amazing. That is not what he’s going to say. So for those of you with families, hear me. Your family is more important than your business. That does not mean woo.
I don’t have to work any screw business. That’s not what I’m saying. You gotta Bust Your Butt. You have to work hard. I choose to worship God with my work by how I love His kids, by how I take care of His kids and set them up for success. Which is you. I worship God with what I do. But what do you hear me say on the beginning of every single show? Work is what you do. Your business is what you do. It’s not who you are. It’s a piece of who you are and in God’s eyes, the family that you take on, that he has blessed you with is more important, so you must have balance. Now with that being said, if the ox is in the ditch and what I mean by that, for those of you that may not understand that, saying if there’s something going on and you know there’s a problem at work, you’ve got to get things done.
You get it done, you solve the problem, but the ox should not be in the ditch for the next three years, okay? There should not be an emergency. Every time you turn around, you should be able to solve this stuff, do a great job, and then spend the right time with your family. They’re your responsibility. They are your responsibility. Let me say this a third time. They’re your responsibility and especially your responsibility to God. So stay balanced, Leader. Do not go after growth and scaling. If you aren’t doing a great job leading the family that you have, okay? Taking care of the spouse that you have. All right? So if you are, if you’re doing all of these five things that I’m telling you about for you individually, then you’re in a healthy place as a leader and you have the keys to get ready to scale.
So then lead away, get after it, go make it happen. You are the leader, do it. You can do it from a healthy place. You can make sure all the right questions have good answers and all the necessary systems are strong and in place. So lead, take action. You can do it. You can scale your business the right way. You’re ready, right? So here’s the deal, every one of these pieces, especially that third one there, these are all really important to me and they’re really important to me that I’m spending this much time explaining this to you guys because there’s a ton of so-called leadership coaches or businesses out there that want to teach you how to scale and grow. But they do it in a way that causes you to take unnecessary risks that caused you to burn out, that causes you to hurt leaders, hurt your team members, you know, do things.
Sure money comes in the door, but the after effects of it really screw up the business. They, you know, a lot of folks, I’ve seen them, they, we have a ton of people that come to us after having gone through this type of stuff. So everything I teach goes against that. Right? What do you hear me say? We teach the things that are holding you back. We help you to discover the things that are holding you back so you could go do this stuff in a healthy way. You’re not going to hear me tell you to go after something when I know for a fact that it’s actually gonna cause you more pain in the long run. I’d rather you focus on getting ready and then let’s go after it because money is way easier than you think. Funding more businesses actually way easier than you think.
Not being prepared for it, being overwhelmed, having it over tax you. Having it over tax, your team members, losing great team members because they’re overwhelmed, losing great leaders because they’re overwhelmed, losing profit, losing energy, losing your family. Those are the things that happen when you don’t do business right. It’s not worth it. Learn the right way. Learn the stuff I’m teaching you. Learn all of these pieces so that you can do all of this successfully. We do. We do that. Here are clients who follow us. Do that here. They understand because they are learning all of these pieces here. And I can tell you one of the greatest things for me guys. Oh, I’m trying not to cry on the show. I’ve never cried on the show before. So, uh, let me tell you, one of the greatest things for me is when our clients that have been implementing this stuff for a long time but have been doing this stuff, when they come to me and they’re like, Chris, you’re not going to believe this.
But the other day, my 14 year old looked at me and said, you’re so much calmer. You just seem so much happier. You know, when an eight year old is listening to me in their car with their parents and they’re because of what their parents are learning and how it’s affecting their parents. When folks come back from, you know, implementing the stuff from the events that we teach and they’re like, Chris, I know you don’t know this, but this is what happened. And you know, here’s the things we get to do with our family now because we’ve stored these things up or we’re having this success. Man, let me tell you, I love it every single time, and we hear it all the time. People telling us the wins from their business, but you know it’s even better than that is those stories from those kids.
The times that I hear people saying, my kid noticed that I’m happier, my kid notice that I’m less stressful. And the great thing is if the business is growing and I’m less stressful, so I care about your business, I care about you. Bottom line, I care about your team, I care about you. All right? So instead of going after people who just want to make money off of selling you something that’s gonna hurt you in the long run, learn from people who care as much about you as they do your bottom line. Now listen for a review of what we’ve covered today, we have a free download for you and that’s at chrislocurto.com/344 so again that’s chrislocurto.com/344 and it’s a great resource to go back to and continue to assess if you are set up to scale correctly. Now if you want to know how to scale correctly, if you want to learn how to grow your business, if you want to learn how to lead your people better, if you want to be ready, if you want to get out of overwhelm, all of this stuff, join us.
Join us at the next level leadership live event. It is the event that will teach you how to have more confidence in your leadership. It is the event that is going to give you the information that you need to move the needle in your business. So if you want to join us, go to https://chrislocurto.com/events and get $200 off your tickets right now to the 2020 next level leadership live event today. That’s chrislocurto.com/events now, here’s what I know. There is a 0% chance anyone will come to this event and not be able to say, I got what I needed to improve my business and leadership as soon as I got home. That is why we are giving everyone a money back guarantee. If you come to the event and don’t think you’re giving good solutions and the real tools to make your business and team better, you get your money back. So folks, I hope to see you there this spring at the next level leadership live event. Thank you for joining me today. I hope it has served you well. I encourage you to subscribe, rate, and share this podcast to help more people join our community and as always, take this information to change your leadership, Change Your Business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.
