How To INSTANTLY Connect With Someone & GAIN RESPECT! | Chris LoCurto

If I will be intentional, if I will focus on doing it right the first time, if I will focus on getting quality perspective, if I will focus on communicating really well, then this thing works out for everybody.

One of the number one problems that I had when you and I first connected was communication. To say it the least, I was not a great communicator. And I think, you know, as I bump into more and more people in the business realm or in just life in general, communication is at the center of most of the problems that we run into. How did you first become so passionate about communication and what's really holding people back?

So, yeah, it is. By far. It's the number one thing we find, like, with all the businesses that we work with, leaders, families, marriages, parenting, it doesn't matter what it is. Communication is the biggest area that's lacking. If you can fix the communication side, then there's a whole lot of things that can not necessarily just fall in place, but they're so much easier to do. I became super passionate about it when I was, gosh, 20 some years ago, about 20 years ago, I think, when I had a team member who was just killing it for me. I mean, she would just go bust things. I could give her direction. I had known about disc, personality styles, values, all that stuff. I had been studying it, working with it, but it hadn't been huge for me yet until I had this team member who I could tell her, go do this. Could you get this done? And she could go kill it. She'd come back. I don't know how she got it done. I just knew that it got done, everything was great. And then I promoted her to another level. And then I brought in another gal to take her spot. And I would say, hey, could you go make this thing happen? And she'd leave and come back five minutes later and go, what do you mean? The thing? Can you go do the thing? Can you make the thing happen? And she leave. Fifteen minutes later, she come back, she's like, I really don't understand what you're saying. And I'm like, the thing. Can you go make the thing? And I was confused because I'm like, this isn't anything that's that difficult. Yeah, I dealt with this for a couple of months until one time I just got really frustrated when she came back to me. We were at an event, and I'm like, hey, have the guys, you know, in the venue, big arena out in Texas. And I'm like, I'm gonna turn off these lights up top. She Left. And she came back. And she goes, they can't do it. I'm like, they can do it. Just tell them to go up to the lights and turn off the lights. And she came back. They can't do it. And I was like, okay, this is it. And I walked. Guys, the button on the back of those lights, go. Push it. I'm like, oh, okay. And I was so frustrated. And then all of a sudden, I felt like I just heard God say, read her profile. And so I grabbed her profile and I went through it, and I went, oh, you idiot. You're the problem. You keep thinking that she's the problem and that she can't get anything right. And the whole time, you're not even close to communicating in a way that she can receive it. The gal that I had before her, completely different. High I decent amount of D. This was a monster C with a lot of S. And I'm communicating to her like I was the last gal. And I was trying to figure out, why is this not working out. That became a massive catalyst for me. I went ballistic. I started learning everything I could about disc. About values. I started studying individuals. I learned it so much that it was within, I don't know, probably about a year or so I was teaching it. And then over the next couple of years, I just became an expert at it. And then I've been doing it now for 20, 21 years, something like that.

Which is crazy to me, because, you know, my shift was a direct result of you teaching that lesson at a, you know, a large event we were both at. And I remember coming back to you just taking off your headset. I'm like, I'm a broken business owner. Please help me God.

Right?

And kudos to you, man. One of the things I've always loved about you is your transparency and vulnerability. And you're like, this guy is hurting. Yeah, I'm gonna make some time for him. And that radically changed my life. It created the hunger to not only see myself different, but see other people different. So it sounds like the root cause of most communication problems. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but is this expectation factor. We expect people to communicate in whatever way in which we communicate. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. We communicate the way that we are used to communicating, no matter what, and then we expect that the other person understands what we're communicating. How do you not get what I'm saying? Right? So my personality style, whatever it is, I'm going to communicate to you in a way that I like to Be communicated to and then expect you get it. If you're just like me, no problem. We can communicate back and forth. You know, it'd be pretty darn good communication. Outside of that, which is a ton of people, it's probably going to be a big issue.

Yeah. I mean, if I'm not mistaken, I think one of the things you taught me when I was first learning disc is that about 40% of the population, if not a little more, are what we refer to as high S's.

Yeah.

As a 99D80 something, I myself, I created all kinds of havoc and nobody had the courage to come tell me I was screwing up, which was kind of scary. But.

Well, and that, that personality style is not the personality style that would come and tell you that you're screwing up. Right. Because they're, they want to keep the peace. They don't want to rough feathers and so. Well, I'll just go and try and figure this thing out. Which means that we're losing time, we're losing money, we're losing resources because the communication isn't solid. But yeah, so for me, what I always say, if you're going to win with communication, it's not about what you say, it's about what somebody receives. Right. It's if, if I can make sure that the person that is receiving the information is getting the best information in a way that they do receive or that they prefer to receive, then I can set them up for success. So if I'm speaking to you, usually I'll speak to you. Bullet points. Hey, how's it going? How are things? What's going on?

You know, the audience just watched it happen.

Short and sweet, you know, this is the way it is. But like, even right now, as you and I are talking, we're talking to the audience. So for me, I'm. I'm going to explain things longer. I'm going to spend a little bit more time. I'm going to make sure that the things I'm saying are, are clear. And if I'm speaking to somebody who's high S high C, especially high C, I'm going to ask does that make sense? Do you understand that? Now if I say that to you, if I'm like, dude, does that make sense? You're like, of course it makes sense. I'm not an idiot. I see is processing like crazy and they actually love knowing that it's okay for them to say, no, that doesn't make sense. Could you please re. Explain that or put it in a different way?

Well, you know, it's interesting. One of the things that I picked up again from learning so much from you is that everyone has a different processing speed. Like, you know, and, you know, my team would tell you in a heartbeat. In fact, you've worked your lot of your guys or a lot of your team is now working with my team behind the scenes on leadership growth, and. Which is phenomenal, by the way. But the second part of that is this, this, this concept of everybody has a pace and everybody needs to try to gravitate towards that pace. You know, you mentioned the hi C Earlier, one of my oldest, in fact, my oldest son. Obviously, I'm blessed to have kids that aren't biologically mine, but are all mine all the same. Right. Is an off the chart hi C. And it was funny when I first entered into that marriage and obviously we became a blended family, that is me marrying into with Karen, with boys, it become very instrumental in the fact that I could read Tyler because of all the training and things that I got, you know, working with you and then subsequent training there on it was just a really cool thing. So when the family would get upset with Tyler, I'm like, just give him a few minutes. Like, give him. Give him 10 minutes. Give him 15 minutes. He'll be back in just a minute. Just give him a couple minutes. You know, the other thing that I think is very interesting is this scenario and we're talking specifically about personality styles. We kind of jumped in there because that's obviously that's something that you've done so much in educating me on. But, you know, when it comes down to the C and the S's and stuff like that and the processing speed, there's also this need. Like each of the personality styles has a deliberate needs that seems to foster action. Talk a little about the maybe the different four personality styles for people who have never heard about it before, and then kind of how that need comes out of each one of them.

So if, when you look at the action side, in other words, and I'm assuming what you're saying is, is if I'm going to give you direction, there's a need that you have.

Y.

If you look at the high D, if I need the high D to go make something happen, what the high D needs is they need enough authority in their own mind that they have the ability to go pull the thing off. They do not want a lot of detail, right? Because too much detail bog them down and then they're going to get confused. And if the D has to Process through all of that information. It's actually going to jack them up in the process they need. So sound bites, short, sweet. The belief that they have the authority to pull the thing off and give me some space. I need a little bit of autonomy. Let me go do the thing that I need to do. The high I needs to believe that you believe in the high I. The high I need to see you believe they've got this, they can do this. That you are looking at them as being somebody who is capable of making this happen.

Along with that, you need to make sure that they have the details. Neither the D or the I are going to have enough details to make this thing happen. I mean, it's just not going to happen. But for the person themselves, if the high I believes you think they're going to go do a phenomenal job. They're super excited. Right. The high S needs to be somebody who's in a support role. They do not want to be the front person. They don't want to be. So if you're going to go ask them to do an action and that requires them going and being in front of people or something like that, man, that's just. That's not their thing. They need to know that they can come alongside somebody. You know, if. If this is an action I'm going to do, is it just me or is it going to be something that impacts other people? So if they feel like them doing something, you're asking them to go do something is going to cause other people problems. You're. You're in trouble. Right. So they need to understand if it's something they can do by themselves, they'll be pretty good, they'll be fine. But if it's going to impact other people, they need to know that it's going to be okay, that everybody's going to be all right with it, that it's not going to. Nobody's going to be upset. It's not going to make anything bad. The high C needs detail, period. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If you're going to the coffee. Coffee shop and pick me up a latte, the first thought is, you didn't even give me the name of the coffee shop. I don't know which coffee shop. Is it a chain? Is it, you know, how many. Which specific one? When you say a latte, are you talking what kind of, you know, all of these? Yeah, they've got to have detail. Right. Whatever it is. So what I always tell people and this is really tough for people to understand, but when you get there long enough, you get it. So if I say, you know, Stephen, I need you to go build a bridge. Done, you know, you don't even need to know what the bridge looks like. You're just going to go build it. If it's wrong, we'll figure it out.

That's exactly my, that's an internal like mantra here.

We'll figure it out. The high C needs to know the big picture to be able to do the five foot view. So if I say go build a bridge, they actually need to understand what's the purpose of the bridge. Why are we doing this bridge? Why are you choosing these sites? They need to know, and this is not D's, I's and S's. It's tough for them to understand. They need to understand that what they're doing is going to fit into the big picture and that allows them to go, oh, now it makes sense why I'm doing this. So those are usually the things that the different personality styles need to be able to move forward in action.

Yeah, I love it, man, I love it. You know, I was just having this, this, this flashback of one of the trainings you did that I was with you probably five or six years ago. And it never dawned on me, you know, I used to get so frustrated. I had a couple of high C team members, one specifically, that seemed like they were, you know, we come out these big visions, we're going to do this, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be, I'm telling you right now, we can do this. And of course, you know, me being a bootstrap entrepreneur since day one, right. I'm always like, we'll figure it out, we'll get there. Right. I remember them sitting there and they're like, well, no, because this is going to happen and this is going to happen and this is going to happen and this is going to happen and this is coming to happen. And you know, about 60% of the things that they thought would happen, happened. But one of the things that you taught me specifically, and this is something I've carried through the organizations that I now own and operate on a regular basis, is if a high C comes to you with problems, you ask them to give you the solutions for that problem. And that was so pivotal to me because I never even thought to ask the question. Instead I felt like, you know, this is going back several years, you know, in this insecure moment. Well, they don't like My idea, which means they don't like me, which means they don't like that. Talk a little bit about how that breaks out because that was so pivotal for me specifically.

Yeah, it's such a fantastic example because this again shows us that communication will fail when it's about us. It is not about us. It's not about us. Right. So as long as I'm focused on me, I'm being selfish, I'm being self centered. I'm not setting people up for success. The moment I recognize my personality style. Right. So I'm entrepreneur. You know, you and I are both very visionary. We own multiple businesses. We've been able to from very young ages get out, make things happen. It doesn't matter if it's not right, we'll fix it. We can do anything. We can make anything work out. That's the way our mindset has been. That's the way that we've operated. The problem is there's only a certain percentage of that type of bootstrap entrepreneur on the planet. Right. Kind of the, you know, the. It's just a different mentality. Everybody else who's filling in a role. Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. We think, well, everybody probably wants to be an entrepreneur. Nope, they actually don't. Right. A lot of people love the season Ss love the support role. And believe it or not, you know this, I'm a very high S. Yeah, S is my highest category. S and I. And then I'm about a 40D and 25C. But the S's and the C's really prefer to be that support role. They want to be that behind the scenes. So when we go in with our personality style or our way of thinking or a way of accomplishing things. Plus you and I are both eyes, which we want to, we want to make everybody happy and we want them to be excited. We want to share our vision and we want them to be like just jumping up and cheering and shooting off fireworks. Yeah, they don't do that now. The eyes will. Other eyes will be like, man, that's awesome. That's great. But when you're talking to a room full of support people, S's and C's, something like that, then they're not actually thinking about, oh, I should actually support Steven in his vision. That's really cool. Let me let him get his vision out. Let me lean in his personality style. Let's give him a few minutes and pat him on the back and help him make him feel good and then go, hey, do you mind if I ask a couple of questions? Right. That's how it should be. So what happens is immediately in their minds, they see conflict. Steven's got this idea. It's ridiculous. There's no possible way that that could work because of this. This. And they start shooting holes in the vision, which is perfectly fine. The problem is how we approach this. Right. They should have leaned in your direction to share in the. In the excitement and then asked, is it okay if I shoot some holes in this thing? And then I'm going to come up with some ideas on how to fix this. The problem is they're doing the same thing you're doing.

Yeah.

They're thinking, Steven's going to put this thing in place and it's going to be conflict for me, and it's going to be a big problem. And, man, he's going to dump this on me and expect that I make all these things happen. So let me tell him how this thing is going to fail. And they're thinking selfishly on their side. So what we say is lean in each other's directions. I don't want you to become a high C. I don't want the high C to become a high D. Just lean when you go in. The best thing you can do in that situation is to say, guys, I'm super excited about something. I need to share this vision. And all I want you to do for the next couple of minutes, just be excited with me, even though think this is conflict. And then I want you to shoot holes in it. Yeah, but what. Because who's a better. Who's going to do a better job at shooting holes? The ID or the high C?

Oh, the C. All day long.

All day long. Because they see details. Right? So when you shoot holes. Here's the thing. Every time you shoot a hole, I want you to plug it, bring at least one to three ideas of how to solve that problem. Ready? Go. And then what we've done is, is that you got to be excited about the vision. You got to share it. They got to lean in your direction, even though they're really not excited about it, at least they act like they are for five minutes. And then the best thing that can possibly happen is they get to shoot holes in something you're not seeing all the way through. And then the combination makes it a thousand times better vision. Because now not only do you have a great idea, something that's going to maybe change lives or whatever, but now we can see where it's going to fail. And if They've done a great job. We now have the ideas of how to fix it as well.

Absolutely. No, I was thinking, of course, I've had. I don't know how many business examples. You've obviously helped me in my personal life, my business life, and everything. So I want to hit the communication from both sides. But before I jump in there, I had this instance where I discovered that permission was powerful. I didn't realize as a leader, it was my responsibility to even give the team permission to speak up. I didn't. I just thought it was, you know, because if I need to speak, I just speak. I don't. I don't think about it. Right.

But that way, too.

Yeah. And when the eyes and the S's and C's. I mean, the eyes are typically a little more like. Well, you know, it may not work exactly like that, but we can try, you know, kind of. Kind of that, where the S is like. And the. And the C's are like. Right. So all of that. But I discovered that the more times that I did go into an environment and say, guys, look, this is not completely fleshed out. This is something I'm sensing, something I'm feeling, an intuitive nature, because you and I, both very intuitive by nature anyway, in business and life in general, I have a feel for it. I used to freak my old CFO out because I would come in and know the numbers. Literally walk in the door, and he'd be like, he thought I had cameras in his office. Being 2020, I probably should have had, but that's beside the point. But I would come in and no numbers. But anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, permission is power. And I think for every leader out there who's been in my circumstance or my shoes, which is, I was a horrible leader. And I didn't know. I just didn't know what I didn't know. Give your team permission, give your spouse permission, give your loved ones permission to speak into your life. And had I done that earlier, I could have saved myself probably close to a million dollars in mistakes, honestly.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

So the other thing I want to position on is. And this is, again, I've learned so much from your friendship and mentorship for the last decade that there's so many different places I want to go with the conversation. But one of the places I want to go is the importance of understanding that no personality style is bad or good, and then what the maturity looks like in an immature version of that style and a mature version of that style. Because I have a feeling that both in the spouses and the business side, that you're going to have immature leaders and mature team members or immature team members and mature leaders. And, you know, trying to walk through that can be somewhat tricky sometimes.

Yeah. Back to what you were just talking about before that. For me, one of the biggest things we teach is gaining quality perspective. Now, perspective literally just means point of view, but what we do is we tend to operate from our point of view. So I'll give you an example. And I'm sorry, I don't have my good mic and computers.

We're building a new building and all that kind of fun stuff. And so live it.

Live it and love it. You earned it.

But strap plan. You've been through strap plan. One of the things that I'll do is I'll usually have a coffee canister. Now, it's usually black. And I'll put it on the table, and as I'm speaking about perspective, I'll say, hey, what color is this canister? And everybody will go, it's black. I'm like. I say, okay, what if. What if I told you it was blue? Every now and then, somebody go, I'd say, you're stupid.

That's a C.

What if I turned it and my side was blue? And then you always see just what you did right there. Everybody goes, oh, I wasn't seeing it from your side. I only saw it from my side. Exactly. This is the problem. As long as we are only caring about our own perspective, it's never quality. But if I actually care to find out what you think, if I want to find out what you know, if I want to find out what you're, you know, what you're feeling about it, what you see, have you experienced anything? Then you give me information that I didn't have. Now I can totally toss it all away. But one thing you know about me, I am huge at what I call taxing the collective intelligence. I will. I have super smart people working for me. I'm paying them good money because they're smart. It's really stupid for me not to turn around and go, hey, what do y' all think about this? Right?

So I have a great tendency. While I'm very visionary, I am, you know, I've got a lot of plans, ideas, thoughts, things that could work out, things that I think are great. I have a tendency to go, hey, what do y' all think? Shoot holes at it. Tell me what's good. Tell me what'll work. Tell me What? I don't have the problem of somebody shooting down my vision, my dream for two reasons. One, I want quality perspective. And they may have perspective that I, I don't currently have. But then I also know that if I don't like their answer, well, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do, right? Because sometimes you'll ask the wrong person and their intent is actually to, they want to bring you down or you know, they're having a bad day or something and so their, their information just isn't good at that time. That doesn't mean that if they answer something in a way that you don't like it, that it's not good. I'm just talking about, you know, maybe they're having a bad day or something. Yeah. So that quality perspective is vital. Now to the side of maturity immaturity. I always say with personality styles, maturity has absolutely nothing to do with age. You can be a 70 year old, immature, high D, I, S or C when it comes to personality styles. And this is Chris Licurdeau's way, right? There's no defined scientific way about this. This is just the way I said. Immaturity is when you do not understand yourself, your own personality style, the way you think, the way you act, react, the way you give information, the way you receive information. So when you don't, when you really don't know that you're operating immaturely. Maturity is when you grow in understanding you. This is the way I act to situations. You know, it's the very stuff that you were talking about that you learned. You learned this, you went back, you started changing. So when you look at your oldest son, you know, how you act, react, how you give information, how you receive information, you've learned about other personality styles. You can look at him and go, y' all aren't getting it. Yeah. The problem isn't that he's not getting it. He just needs 20 more minutes. Give him 20 minutes, he'll get it. So just slow down. So maturity is when I understand me and I understand how I give information and receive information, then I can take that and start looking at each personality style and understand how they do. The more I grow in understanding other personality styles, it's one thing to know me. That's great, that's fantastic. It's not enough. Yeah, I'm dangerous if all I know is me, right?

That's right.

Once I understand other people.

It'S a very large track. Ho.

That's all good, dude.

Once I start learning other Personality. Personality styles. Then I can do exactly what you did with your oldest son. Hey, you have. You have to understand he needs more time. Just let him process. Ask him in 20 more minutes. Once I do that, I'm mature. One of the things that we talk about all the time is, you know, a high D or high. I will send out a meeting request. Hey, y' all come to this brainstorming session. Who are they sending it to? Their administrative people. Well, it's an administrative thing. I want everybody to come.

Are getting fired.

Yeah. So everybody gets in the meeting and they go, we want to make these things. How do we make them? Ready?

Go.

Google it. You know, everybody in the room, like we talked about, processing speed. Yeah. Has no clue. They need time. What are you talking about? Make this thing? Are you. Are you talking about the. Specifically the bottle? Are you talking about the color that go. So what we do is we don't recognize. It's very immature. The people that are coming into the meeting, if they're S's and C's, they can't brainstorm in the moment. But if I will recognize that and send them out a meeting request with tons of information. Two days before. Hey, guys, we're going to talk about water bottles. How do we make them? How do we make them our color? How do we make them a shape that works for, I don't know, specific cars that we. Whatever. The thing is, if I would give that information, then they can come to the meeting with three ideas of how we're going to do this. Then they can show up and actually give me quality information. But because I'm immature, I don't recognize what they need. So we get in a meeting, and now I'm just pissed because nobody has any good ideas and I'm paying all these people, and, man, they just must suck. I thought they were really smart. The truth is, two hours later, they'll have phenomenal ideas on how to make that bottle. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I'm thinking my level of maturity or immaturity is obviously, thank God, grown. I know I've still got a long way to go. But, you know, one of the things that I think that resonates with me about what you just said is my immature version of myself was one built on hurt insecurities from, you know, childhood mess and homelessness and all the junk that I've been through. On top of that, it was also built on not wanting having, like, a little bit of fear, not wanting people to know that I didn't know what I was Doing. I was winging it the whole time.

Right.

You know, by the time you and I met, I'd already built, like, a 10 or $15 million business. I had, like, I don't know, 20 or so team members at the time. And, you know, I never graduated from high school, so that was, you know, so I had that. And I think the reason I bring those things up is because I think that those types of things create impulsivity or impulsiveness. And I know that part of my growth pattern has gone, has been understanding not to be impulsive, but be intentional. And, you know, I learned that through a lot of the conversations that, you know, you and I used to have a ton of offline conversation. It wasn't nothing for me to pick up the phone crying, chris, I'm broken again. What's going on? Right? And you're like, dude, come on, suck it up. No, I'm just kidding. You weren't like that. No. You were very, very understanding. And I think it's because you and I share similar backgrounds. Not the same, but similar. You know, but in the maturity side, what I discovered is, you know, it's. It's not just intention, but it's also moves from this place of selfishness to selflessness. Like, you know, I'm doing what I. What I do now throughout all the businesses because I genuinely care about the team. You know, I hadn't made no bones about it, even said it earlier on the show, that I've got members of my leadership team taking part in many of the programs and services that you offer. One, because they change me and help elevate me. And two, I'm too close to the fire. Like, I'm too close. Right. So they need outside perspective. You know, we use the four phases of transformation, and the number one thing is gain perspective, which is something you taught me, Steve Myrick taught me and my grandfather taught me, which thank God you got to meet when I got married. You know, you look at all this together, and it really is a journey and a path. And one of the things that I think people get stuck on is, and because I did this, is I felt like I was all bad because I didn't have it figured out in the moment. Talk a little bit about the importance of understanding that the journey is just the journey.

Man, we don't have a long enough show.

When you get to a place of recognizing that it's not about you.

Opportunity opens up like crazy. When we focus on, like you were saying, you're a kid who learns to go you know, jumps into construction, and you can make things happen, and things are moving, and next thing you know, you're making money, and, oh, my gosh, more money is coming in and you're a kid. By the time that we met, you know, you had obviously matured. But like, you're saying, you're at this point of going, man, I don't know how I'm here. I know it's all pure effort. It's all pure inertia. It's just that I'm going to run through a brick wall. If the brick wall is there, it's coming down. Here I am now what do I do right? And so at that place, there is this, oh, my gosh, the world is looking at me. Everybody's judging me. I can't fail. I can't screw up. Chris, I got to keep going. What's the next thing to make me better? You know, how do I make sure that everybody thinks that I'm just this amazing guy? Well, obviously, you've been through incredible difficulty and tough times, and obviously, you know, we. The stuff that we do ain't easy. It is very tough. It's very difficult, and it breaks us down. The goal is how do we remove those fears, those struggles, and get to this place of going, wait a second. My worth is not in people judging me. My worth is not in people, you know, waiting to see me fail. That's not my worth. No, man, your worth is not in that. Your worth is in what God says about you. And then when you recognize that, then you can look at other people and go, oh, I can make them better. I can help them. Because it's not. I'm not struggling with me, that impulsivity comes out of a need to feel worthy. Well, I got to do this next thing. Because if I do that, then I'll be more worthy, or then I'll be happy. Or then if. Then right. When you're focused on you, it's always the if. Then there's a series on the show, I think, like three months ago, about willpower. Inside the. Inside your brain, in the prefrontal cortex, there's two major areas. One is reward. One is quality decision making for those people who do not have self control, for those people who cannot delay gratification. They're always focused on the reward. What can I do right now? That's the impulsivity. I need to do this because I need to feel better about myself. I need to whatever, fill in the blank. The person who goes, well, that's just ridiculous. If I will be intentional, if I will focus on doing it right the first time, if I will focus on getting quality perspective, if I will focus on communicating really well, then this thing works out for everybody. It's not about me. It's about how this helps other people. If it's about me, why in the world am I doing it right? This is a waste of time. So when you get to that place in life where you recognize and you know you've been through next level life, when you recognize where your worth truly comes from and that you're wasting time trying to get worth from man. Yeah. Then you can start looking at it through the lens of God and saying, okay, how do I help people instead of use people for my own means? How do I set people up for success instead of using them for me to become successful? That's when intentionality really digs in. That's when you care more about the people than the outcome of the thing. Because the thing really doesn't matter if the people don't. Right. If the people matter more, the thing will be phenomenal. So that's kind of the way that I look through all of that.

Yeah. You know, it's. It's so interesting. You know, it was, it's. That exact process that you just outlined is exactly, exactly how I discovered what I, what I consider to be one of life's greatest truths, which is, you know, everybody's searching for purpose. I'm trying to find my purpose. Where's my purpose? What's my passion? Where am I going? What's my meaning? What's my significance? You know, it was that, that process that you just outlined that taught me that the greatest purpose in life is serving the person you used to be. You know, it had me thinking that, you know, as both of us are people of faith, right? We both love God desperately because we, we've been taught to depend on him. And he's proven himself over and over again. But on top of that, you know, there's this element of suffering that the world happens, has in a variety of different things. You know, sometimes it's poverty, sometimes it's abuse, sometimes it's sexual abuse, sometimes it's alienation. I mean, there's a host of different things that can harm us physically and even our depths of our soul. But then I discovered something through that same process is, I think, and this is. I'm just kind of spitballing here, but I think that God allows a certain level of suffering in each person's life to help understand the empathy and the sympathy and the wisdom needed to actually go back and help that very same person maybe three years earlier or six years earlier or five years earlier. Because God doesn't think in 20 terms of years. He thinks in terms of generations. And that's how I kind of discovered that whole concept is going through that process, which is incredibly powerful.

Yeah. We teach the root system. I'm. I grew. I was born in Sonoma, raised in Lake Tahoe. I always have gone back to both. And I fell in love with the wine process. I love. I really enjoy wine, but I love the growing. Something God put on my heart decades ago to sit out there. I'd go in the off seasons and sit with the winemakers and the owners and just learn about this process. And it really blew me away how much the intention. If you're going to put a great wine in this bottle, which this is my water, not.

Of course, if it was wine, this might be a funner conversation.

We can bring everybody into that other half of the conversation.

That's right. So if I'm going to put a good wine in this bottle, before I can make a great wine, I have to make a great grape.

There is a wine grower in Burgundy who says if you give grapes all the sun and all the water that they want, they will become lazy couch potatoes. It is the same thing with us. God uses suffering. Man. We are ridiculous as Christians to think. Think that tough times and difficult times are bad and to try and pray our way out of it. You know, I used to do that, and then I stopped and I'm like, instead of praying that God stops, I pray. Teach me what you want me to know as fast as possible. Don't take me out of the problem. You obviously want me here. You obviously know I'm here. You're allowing this to happen. What could I possibly learn? But as fast as I can, Lord, yeah, stay here in this, but don't stop the process. Right. So as Christians, we are. We're ridiculous that we do not recognize that the suffering. And it's not just Christians, it's people as a whole. That suffering, if we allow it to be a teacher, if we allow it to be something that grows us, makes us a better person. So, like you were pointing to the me that is Chris Liquor right now. If I will continue to use the bad times that are coming, the pain that is happening, the difficult situations that are happening to learn and grow from, then the me three years from now will be phenomenal. Right. What do you and I do for a Living, we literally turn around because of all of the experiences, the pain, the difficulties, and having learned how to fix those things. Well, people always tell me all the time, you know, they're.

They're.

They're surprised to find out that I have failures in my past. I'm like, are you serious? Yeah. My whole business is built on my failures and God teaching me how to solve those and move forward. So now I teach other people how to do that. Right. So when you do get to that place where suffering is, okay, so you don't want it, you don't desire it, but my gosh, in the perfecting process that God is doing, when that pain comes, I better be learning instead of crying. I better be learning instead of complaining about it. And then once I learned it, I need to turn to Stephen and goes, dude, you got to learn this thing, man. This is amazing. This is something that God taught me.

Yeah. It's funny that we started off with the grape, essentially, at the beginning of the show. Communication. This is what communication does. This is what most people get wrong. You know, how I know I made mistakes, but now we're saying, okay, this is how the communication communicates. Communication starts inside of you long before it comes outside of you. Right. I want to take a little bit of time we got left with the show, and if you don't mind, I want to talk about the importance of getting yourself right. So you can either attract and. Or be the correct spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you need to be. You know, I got, you know, married to Karen.

What?

Oh, gosh. Pushing almost seven years ago now, which is kind of crazy. You and Heather just got married not long ago. I had the pleasure of being there and seeing it on a beautiful Tennessee afternoon just before they shut the whole country down, which was amazing.

Yeah, Right. You know, but, you know, but on top of that, you know, one of the things that I've always enjoyed is that when it comes to selecting the partner that you're going to spend your life with or, you know, a lot of us, and this includes me, do it unintentionally rather than do what you've taught me to do and I've seen you do, is be intentional about it, make sure you've got enough time to heal and get yourself together. Talk a little bit about that, a little bit how, you know, communication root system and how that ties together, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

When I was in youth ministry, we would have kids that would have this. You know, they would have. I don't know how it started but they would have this little list in their wallets, right? It had this list of the perfect girl, the perfect woman, the one that they want to marry. And when we found out about it, you know, it was all good intention, right. Man, I wanted to be loving God. I wanted to be, you know.

So make fun of my list now.

Yeah, right. Yeah. I want her to be all of these amazing, Godly. I want this godly woman. And so you'd see it and you'd say, hey, can I see your list? So, yeah, man, that is an amazing woman right there. The problem is, is you're not a guy that that woman would ever date. Yep. What are you talking about? Well, if you want that woman, you have to become the man that that woman would actually be with. And it was a great teachable moment for those teenagers to go, oh, gosh, it's not about what I want. It's about we. How in the world can I be righteous enough? How can I be the right person.

For the woman that I want if I'm not? Guess what I get. I get the woman that matches me. Yeah. Right. So if I want somebody to be, you know, if I want to be somebody, be with somebody who is amazing, then I've got to be somebody who's amazing. There's an old saying that we used to tell guys that a woman should be so focused on God that a man has to go through God to find her.

Yeah.

Right. So listen, if you're looking for a great woman and you're not finding her, spend more time being focused on God. You'll find her there. Right. So for me, if you're going to be incredible in a relationship, you have to. You have to understand this is a covenant that you are making with another person, that you're going to do everything you can to make it the best possible, which means reconciling, even when it's not your fault. Yeah, right. When you're. When. When things are tough, when things are difficult, that you step in and you go, you know what? The pit. The way my stomach feels right now is way worse than anything. So I'm just going to take responsibility even though it's not my fault. And let me tell you, Heather is wrong way more than I am.

Something tells me she's close by.

She's very close by. That's the biggest smile I've seen on her face in a couple of days. There are times that we have to recognize I love her. And so I will say this for men. If a man will recognize that Reconciliation is more important than being right. You will have a much better relationship. Yeah. So even if you're. Even if you're right, reconcile. When you're wrong, you better suck it up and take responsibility. I don't care if you're a man or a woman. Yeah, right. When you're wrong, just be wrong. It's okay. It's funny. I'm the type of person where I'm like, no, I'm right. I'm right. Oh, I'm wrong. Oh, okay, I'm sorry.

Yeah, my bad.

You know, let's take responsibility and move forward. Doesn't matter who it is. Now, the strength of our relationship is that we will talk through, not. You're wrong, I'm right. We will talk through. What are you seeing there? What are you experiencing? How do you see it that way? We're constantly trying to gain perspective and understand.

Why. Is that something that you're feeling right now? What caused that? Is there something I said? What am I doing? We're constantly trying to figure out, what are you seeing? So that we can fix the thing. And amazingly, what we find out is that the sooner we get to that place of caring more about the other person than ourselves, the disagreement is gone. It's just. It's not even. It's nothing. It's like, oh, you're right. Okay, my bad. I screwed that up. I'm over it. And the great thing is, is that we are super fast to forgive.

Which.

Means you can enjoy more days together, like in the enjoyment side of things, rather than the stressful side of things.

You know, it's.

It's been so interesting because, you know, one of the things that has come out of this, our relationship over the last decade is this importance of getting yourself together. Because you. I think it was you that told me a long time ago, you said, look, two half of people don't make a whole people. It's only two holes that make a hole. You know, it's God's way of doing math. It's a little bit different than algebra, right? So. But, man, dude, I'd love hanging out with you. Everybody's getting literally a behind the scenes kind of thing. This is how you and I talk when we either have wine or coffee, either one.

Right? But as we wrap up, obviously tell everybody where they can find out more about you and whatnot. But I also want to give a shout out to Heather. She's got some amazing programs herself, especially in the physical space, specifically there that everybody's got to check out. So if you're all right with it. I wouldn't mind even sharing maybe where they can connect with her as well.

So everything is@chrislicurdo.com the RESTORE program, all that kind of fun stuff. Everything is there.

Or heather.com either way, they both end up at the same spot.

So heatherlacurto.com Chris liquor.com either way. And always the Chris Licurdo show as well is always a great. More information.

Rock on, dude. I love you, man. I can't wait to see you again. I'll be up in Tennessee in the near future, and we definitely got to go hang out again.

You got to come. You got to come see what we're doing.

Yeah, I've been seeing some. Some snippets, mainly of beekeeping, but that gives me an idea that the property is expansive because you have to have enough room for bees.

So, yeah, it's. It's. It's quite large.

Our new event space and everything here, that's what we're working on right now.

So that's awesome, dude, man. Well, I love you to death. Can't wait to see you again, dude.

Same here. Same here. All right. Thanks for. All right. All right, brother.

If you love that interview, make sure you check out this right here.

It's easy to write checks, but it's.

Really difficult to give your time. And when you give your time, that's.

When you realize when you can do the most for people.