The stronger the foundation of your business the more likely your business will succeed through difficult challenges. By Gary Shotton #000424

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Building A Strong Foundation

By Gary Shotton

          Hello my name is Gary Shotton, and in this lesson, I’m going to talk about building a strong foundation. You know, the Word of God is my guide for my major decisions in my life, and I am very open about that, and I discovered that there’s a lot of good lessons in the Word of God. That applies to business and we have to look a little bit closer than it just doesn’t say business and money, business and money all the time. It really refers to life, life the way we live in, and life has many aspects but almost all parts of life include finances and monies. We’re not trying to make everyone that’s listening here to be a business owner with 50 employees and, and, and, kind of the that unique called a business but everyone is responsible for making money for their own household, and maybe they have a list an individual has a job and it’s not quite meeting enough money, or maybe you can’t find a job in many countries, they’re just jobs are not very readily available.

So, you might have to step out enough that to create what’s called a lifestyle business, a business made with your hands in your mind that will create enough money that you have a way to live. And there’s actually a number of businesses that forever our best stop at just you and your family or a small, small number of employees and there’s nothing wrong with that. Well, all of us need to build a strong foundation, if we’re going to build any size business, but I want to talk about those that are going to build a bigger business, a stronger business. Now, my graduation from college put me into an as engineer in mineral processing, and that put me with my first job in heavy construction, where Guess what, I was responsible to design and build strong foundations for a building, and then the mineral processing equipment that was going into that building. And I was responsible to know the building codes.

And then I also was able to determine what the weight was of everything that was going to press down on to the, to the soil onto the foundation, and then we actually calculated what we call the worst case scenario, if everything went wrong and we had these tanks that were full of heavy minerals. And would it would it withstand the test of that overload of minerals. Well, we required a foundation. If there’s going to be a heavy wind that comes from the side we had what’s called 100-year wind load or we had snow, based on the last 100 years what was the heaviest snow that was going to be on the roof. All of this came to determine how to build, first of all, the foundation. Well, in James arm sorry in Matthew chapter seven verse, 2425 and 26. It talks about building a house on a strong foundation. And you can read it, it’s, it’s very understandable. And it says a wise person, a wise man is considered wise, when in considering building a house, they pit and build a create a strong foundation.

Because when the winds come and destructions come and heavy difficult elements of weather come to it in one version I read it must be strong enough to be what’s called an unshakable foundation. Well, that’s true in building your business you know if you want a business of any size and even including a small business, you want to have a strong foundation. I was fortunate to be with my wife in the city of Seattle, Washington and, and I happened to have a second or third floor room at a hotel and I looked out my window just gazing and I looked down I said oh my goodness. That’s one of the biggest holes in the ground that I’ve ever seen. It was square and it went down at least 20 meters, at least 70 feet maybe 90 feet. And you know what, I knew right away there’s going to be a one big building right next to this motel is hosting this motel because it’s, it’s, they’re spending months and months and months, putting in the rebar and the steel and the concrete and pouring 1000s and 1000s of dollars to make this foundation is strong, and it would take time before even they get back up the ground level.

Well, that’s true in your business. If you’re going to have a bigger business, or you’re any phase don’t expect it to produce right away because, building the foundation is going to take some time and when you build the structure. The foundation is stronger and stronger at each level, then you’re able to go higher in your business, while the rest of Matthew seven in that section, talks about a foolish person, a foolish man doesn’t build on the solid foundation, but the rock, but builds on sand and when the elements come, the winds come, the, the, the forces of nature come against that house, guess what, it collapses. Well, let me give you some example of businesses that collapse. People that built their business on sand. They didn’t take the time to build a good foundation, but here comes pandemic. No one expected pandemic.

No one anticipated that, but those that had a strong foundation are abler to make it through that in good in a good condition, but those that built too fast expanded too fast, caused had too many loans and didn’t know the other elements of God’s way to do business, they’re in trouble. That was a strong wind that is a strong wind right now, or there’s other things, maybe, maybe just the economy drops for any other reason, or maybe you have someone that’s working for you that. Now, if the person embezzled some money from you and they try to affect your other workers in the way they leave with your money and then saying bad things about you how rotten you are, or maybe, maybe you had the biggest and best customer, and that customer went away. Wow, there’s some storms, there’s some difficulties there’s some, some unfortunate things, and is your business. established on an unshakable Foundation, yes what I’ve had all of those things that I just mentioned happen. I can give you details when somebody embezzled to me when I was in my most vulnerable position,

This person stole money went to the bank or wrote checks to themselves and left town and left me holding the bag. I can tell you when I was going well in my current business and, and the year 2009 came which was a very bad year for business for most people in manufacturing and I lost all of my three biggest customers, I lost two of them, 100%, not a single job came, and then my third one, gave me what we call a just a few jobs just to keep us alive. I had to do what I had to do to, to make it through that. And guess what, when I came through both of those who came through them a stronger company. I paid through gaining experience we’d like to think that we’re going to get experienced when everything’s going well, I gained more experience more personal knowledge of business when those two things happen.

Because I was able to maneuver the companies in two different times in my life to different companies that I own at different times and I was able to get through that with hard work, seeking the Lord, but I learned lessons. When I was in the tough times. Not when I was in the great, easy to go times, that’s true with all of us. So I encourage you build your foundation, building a strong and deep as you can and you know if you’re, you build a foundation you want to go deeper, you ought to stop a little bit, and then build and expand your foundation first. Don’t just jump into the next phase when you haven’t expanded your foundation, and then go to the next level, you hear us talk about go step by step level by level, a level by level, learn business at every level. Thanks for being a part of inspiring better business.