Chris Locurto: Entrepreneur, Leadership Coach, Life Strategy, Blogger

Use the time stamps below to get you to guide you better as a leader or individualLeadership is not for wimps. It’s tough. - 0:00How do you deal with a disruptive team member? - 1:31The problem with the leader's ability to lead. - 6:26What is the underlying problem? - 8:55Discussing the culture. - 14:30You're choosing your consequence by choosing this consequence. - 19:05How to deal with a controlling personality style? - 21:31How to get out of control. - 26:11How can you possibly tell me I shouldn’t have outbursts when I’m doing the right thing? - 27:55Self-sabotage and the victim mentality. - 32:20

Use the time stamps below to get you to guide you better as a leader or individualHow to stop gossip? - 0:00A litmus test of gossip. - 8:30How gossip weakens integrity. - 12:27Gossip and the importance of gossip. - 17:49Cultivating a culture of honesty, transparency, and truth without oppression. - 23:35Why I’m not trusting. - 28:37The difference between toxic culture and healthy culture. - 32:15The gossip filter test. - 38:07

Why is it tough to trust again?- 2:53The trust test.- 8:44Self-assess yourself and your relationships.-13:51It takes two people to trust.- 22:58Self-sabotage and self-protection.- 33:59How to build trust in the workplace.- 39:08

A lot of parents tend to avoid topics like money when teaching their kids. Some parents may have grown up in a household where talking about it was taboo, and that’s understandable. A lot of people struggle with finances, and so it’s natural to avoid it!Others may think that children are just too young to learn about investing, savings and spending, or maybe they believe the topic is too complicated to explain to young minds. Whatever the case, avoiding the topic does NOT set kids up for success in the long run, and it may actually be doing them more harm than good! So, where are we going with this?My point is, whether you choose to teach your kids about money or not, they will learn it from someone. And that brings us to our guest on the show today, Paige Cornetet. Paige grew up in a home that didn’t just explain “tough” concepts like money management to their children, they immersed them in it, as her latest book My Dad’s Class explains. The eldest of four, Paige is passionate about helping parents teach ch

One of the topics we get asked to deal with the most on this show is along the lines of strength, courage, and resilience. And it’s not strange, when you really stop to think about it!Plenty of things in this life can zap our strength, steal our courage, and drain our resources.Chances are that if you’re reading this, you’d admit that you could use more resilience. These are tough times, and we’ve no promise that tomorrow will be a bed of roses either. So, what are we talking about exactly? Resilience is our capacity to withstand difficult times and to recover quickly; it’s that old school toughness. It’s also a focused tenacity.It’s about how you can stay strong, courageous, and determined during trying times. And, in this episode, we’ll get into three ways for you to replenish your resilience. Just like digging a well, there are depths you’ve got to get down. I’m talking about the inner depths where you’ll find the resources you need to bounce back after getting pushed around. Can you picture yourself respo

This week, we’ll conclude our three part series called Cultivation. What are we cultivating? We’re cultivating leaders! And as we’ve seen, this is labor intensive, highly strategic, but also incredibly rewarding. In fact, leaders that we’ve seen get to this third phase of leadership are some of the happiest and most fulfilled that we know. Today, I want to share an inside secret as to why that is.Maybe you’ve finally got your team members being successful in their roles. Fantastic! And, you’ve been creating new leaders from those successful members… awesome!So, what’s next? Where’s all this going? Are we just making leaders in order to make leaders?Well, here are two “rules” of leadership that will help bring all of this into better focus.Rule #1: Good leaders create culture. This is part of a good leader's DNA, they create the culture of the business. They don’t allow culture to become whatever it wants to, they take careful action to get the culture they want.Rule #2: Culture creates the company.Why is cult

After 10 years of leading people through an in-depth, discovery process of themselves, our Next-Level Life event, I’ve discovered that a lot of people are hurting and discouraged.I’ve also found some great perspective that can help us to get unstuck and move forward!The problem is that it’s really easy to blame others, our circumstances, or past failures for not getting ahead in life. However, in most cases, it’s that we’re standing in our own way!That’s not an easy truth to swallow, but acknowledging that we are, at times, our own worst enemy is a step in the right direction. It helps us start addressing the wounds in our hearts.On today’s show, I’m joined once again by one of our team members, as we dive into how toxicity accumulates inside of us and weighs us down. But, what does it mean to be toxic?Toxins are basically poison. They kill or destroy health. It’s anti–life, health, and flourishing. Imagine a wound that we received in our mind, that gets infected and won’t go away. That wound has to be cleane

Relationships, time, and money. These are probably the three greatest personal assets that you’ll ever have the privilege (and the responsibility) of managing. When we don’t steward these things well, we end up experiencing difficulty and pain in life. That’s why we talk so much about healthy relationships around here. We dig into topics like setting healthy boundaries, where we get our worth, and surface level responses.Why? These tools help us to reframe our relationships (with ourselves and others) in a healthier way. But, what about having a healthy relationship with your time and money? Without a healthy view of our resources, these blessings can become a curse. What we don’t steward well can actually start to control and manipulate us. We start to get our worth from these things, and our sense of value and significance gets twisted.If we don’t rightly relate to our assets, then they will absolutely enslave us. We start to believe lies. Conflict and control creeps in. We fail to put boundaries, and then

Today we continue our series called Cultivation. And what are we cultivating? Leaders.If you didn’t catch part one, you’ll want to go back and listen to episode 504 on Making Others Successful. It’s one of our favorite things to talk about around here!Why? “Your job as a leader is to make your team successful, and not the other way around.”Let me highlight one of the main points that we hit last time, because you’ve got to get this before you can move forward and really start to grow the leaders around you… Your greatest challenge and your greatest success as a leader will be making others great. Making them successful. Building them into something more than they are now.Let me say it another way, you’re in the construction business … the business of building others up and making them successful in their role on your team.Now, let me give you three keys to know when you’re being a successful builder of other people.When someone you serve grows out of selfishness and serves the good of others, you are a succes

Taking people through an in depth, two-day, transformative process was something of a side-project early on in our company’s development. Fast forward ten years and over 500 events later, and it’s easy to see that the Next-Level Life coaching event has become an integral part of what we do. On the business side, we coach leaders on how to get unstuck, gain perspective, and stay out of the Crazy Cycle that has them focusing on tasks instead of people and the bigger picture. But, have you ever experienced similar struggles in your personal life? Here’s what I mean.Maybe you’ve felt blocked by your circumstances, a knee-jerk reaction to things, or even past choices that you made. I think we’ve all been there at some point in our lives.It can be hard to get out of those deep ruts on your own, without the tools, perspective, and support of others. That’s why we created this event, and even improved it over the years. On today’s episode, we’ll pull back the curtain on our process, the people that have come through,

Leaders frequently struggle in very specific and vital areas of their business. To make matters worse, they tend to lack actionable clarity and they can often feel alone in their roles.Maybe you’ve been here too, stuck in the Crazy Cycle and unable to scale. Teams often lack the quality communication necessary to thrive, and they unknowingly harbor toxic work cultures.After helping thousands of people take on challenges like these in their businesses, we’ve learned a few things about leaders and their teams that you’ll find both surprising and helpful.Uncovering the gaps that exist in your business, between knowledge and implementation, is key to seeing the change that you desire. I can tell you that it takes persistence and a new perspective to discover those gaps, and that’s where we come in.This month, we have the awesome privilege of celebrating TEN YEARS of making a difference in leaders’ lives, leading them to perspective, and helping them to take their businesses to the Next-Level!In this episode, I’m

So many people who wrestle with perfectionism never get to excellence. Is that you? Well, maybe you’d say, no Chris, I’m a failure not a perfectionist. It’s ironic, but failure is closer to excellence than you might think, and perfection is actually farther away!Excellence is one of our core values, and it’s the goal that we shoot for all the time. But, as much as we talk about it, we don’t hit the mark every single time. At times, we do fail.Which brings up this question, asked by one of our clients recently. And maybe you’re struggling with the same question: Is excellence the same as perfection?Well, they can be easy to confuse … especially when you don’t understand failure. Which brings us to our topic today. We want to distinguish excellence from perfection.And, that means that we need to define failure first. On today’s episode, we’ll dig into what separates perfection from excellence, and see where failure comes into the mix. If you’re a perfectionist, this episode is for you. If you feel like you’re a

You’ve probably heard us talk about making others successful. It’s one of our core pursuits here. In fact, we just did a whole show on this a few weeks back, episode no. 504.Well, there’s a flip side to all of that: it’s when we throw obstacles in another person’s way. The sad thing is that most of us have probably done this at some point in our lives, and we’ve likely had it done to us as well. It sucks and it’s becoming more common all the time!Setting someone’s reality is a divisive way to trip others up and make them stumble.Another hot topic nowadays is gaslighting. That’s manipulating someone in order to make them question their own perspective or reality. And that’s really close to setting someone’s reality.Folks typically do stuff like this in times of conflict with others, or when feeling out of control.On the show today, how to keep your reality from being set by others, and maybe even more importantly, how to make sure you’re not doing the same thing to other people!Grace and peace, Chris

Ever feel like there’s not enough time or money? Maybe the bills are piling upYour tasks feel overwhelmingYou’re living paycheck to paycheckYou feel like you’re just getting byThe appointments are too many to keepIt’s easy to fall into the trap of scarcity thinking. We’ve probably all been there at one time or another. But, what do you do if it becomes a habit and then you feel stuck?A scarcity mindset is when you’re so obsessed with the lack of something — usually time or money — that you can't focus on anything else, no matter how hard you try. And, over time, that deficit starts to grow in your mind. The research says that it could also start to affect you in reality. What you think about too much can make a deep impact.This is a trained behavior, rooted in fear and anxiety. And it must be unlearned. It requires a focus shift, and on today’s show we’re going to talk about that shift in mindset. Before we dig in, however, let me ask you to self-assess. Where do you find a kind of persistent negative self-ta

Hey leaders, we’ve got a power-packed new series coming at you!First up, your job as a leader is to make your team successful, and not the other way around. But, I’ll tell you a secret. If you’ll spend the time and invest the effort… if you’ll make your team successful … then THEY will eventually make YOU successful.A lot of companies aren’t thriving, because the leader is trying to be the big success story. Here’s a spoiler … being a leader … a true, mature, successful leader … involves a few critical elements. These will be incredibly challenging, but also very rewarding. In fact, one of your highest callings, and one of the most fulfilling aspects of your leadership role, will be connected with one of these three servant-based activities:1) Making other people successful, then2) Developing some of them into leaders3) And making those leaders into a teamIn today's episode, we’ll dig into the practice of just HOW to make your team successful.But, here’s what I can tell you at the outset, before we even get

Welcome to a brand new year! It’s 2023 and I’ve got some good perspective for you.Tough times are guaranteed to come. Not what you were looking for? Don’t despair, there’s good news that comes along with that. But, let’s evaluate for a moment. How did you feel when you read that part about tough times being guaranteed? If you’re like a lot of people, maybe your heart may have sunk a little bit. Maybe you started worrying.You might’ve even responded by saying, No Chris, the tough times are already here! Well, here’s the thing. It can become an automated response to go into panic mode or feel traumatized by even the smallest kind of distress. Nowadays, it’s “normal” to feel overwhelmed with even one more task getting added to your to-do list. It’s normal that just the slightest bit of stress steals your joy. But it doesn’t have to be that way! What if you could get the upper hand? What if you could start to undermine the crises that are undermining your quality of life?Undermining the crises of life begins with

What’s the difference between people-pleasing and having a real servant’s heart?Of course, no one wants to be taken advantage of. And it’s good to have healthy boundaries and not let others walk all over you. We talk a lot about that around here!On the other hand, how many times have you tried to do “the right thing”, and then had some kind of conflict in your heart about it afterwards? What were you really trying to accomplish?Yup, now you’ve got your finger on it! It all comes down to our inner motives.Scripture tells us not to be motivated by being seen or recognized by others for our good deeds. It tells us that we should be trying to please God rather than other people. Pretty simple.The problem is that some personality styles are more inclined to pleasing others, and will often move past healthy boundaries in order to feel better about themselves. Root Systems!And even if you’re not one of “those” personality styles, I’ll bet you’ve got some tiny triggers that are programmed into your thinking that can

Are you positioned to be promoted?As we approach a new year, most people begin 1) reflecting on the year that’s ending, and 2) wondering if they’re positioned to get ahead, to lead, or to grow in the year to come.We all know that there’s nothing magical about the calendar resetting to January first. But for many people, this time of year offers a brief pause to consider their lives, habits, and ambitions. Here’s the deal: you have to put your life together by yourself: thought by thought and action by action. It’s not what you’ve already done that defines you as much as what you’ll do next. To get ahead, move up, or go further, you can’t rest on your laurels, thinking I’ve finally arrived.Life doesn’t give prizes for “been there - done that.” We are creatures made to grow higher, dig deeper, and mature to a fruitful state. But, how do you know if you’re actually making progress?How can you determine if you’re even thinking in line with what success could or even should look like for you? Some people wrestle w

We’re so excited to celebrate 9 years of this podcast with you today!To commemorate this 500th episode, we’re going to talk about what YOU’VE said about this podcast, what YOU want to hear more of, and that’s not all…We’re also going to announce some of our giveaway winners! So, you’ll want to tune in.And, not just for the prizes. The information that you provided through our 500th Giveaway survey has been compiled and the results are in! You might be surprised by what we learned.On this episode, I’m joined by Joel Fortner and Aaron West, and together we’re taking a look at WHY your favorite themes are so important. Let me give you just two examples now.One of the most impactful topics over the last year was identifying the lies. Wow, this is so important. We spent several episodes on this, hitting it from different angles. Why?Most people are unaware of the lies that they’re believing, until they’re confronted with the truth. Even then, it can be hard to unlearn what they’ve programmed themselves to believe.

Do you like being told “no” to something that you want to do? Very few people like to hear that word. And a lot of people don’t like telling other people “no”, especially when they want to make those people happy.Why? Because this tiny word packs a powerful punch! To make matters worse, we usually think of it as a negative word, something to be avoided entirely.However, the truth about the word “no” is actually really freeing, for those who choose to embrace it. It can become a tool used to protect and empower.Think about it. It takes real courage to decline an opportunity or shut the door on a relationship. But, this could be the very thing that frees you up, empowers you to move on to more important things, and protects you from being taken advantage of. Someone once said, it’s the setting of limits that introduces us to liberty.Ironically, it’s the setting up of boundaries, whether for ourselves or for others, that creates the very space of freedom and liberty that we’re inwardly craving. On today’s podcas