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Don’t Quit

By Gary Shotton

Hello!  my name is Gary Shotton and am here as a part of Inspiring better business, and today we are going to talk about “Don’t Quit”. You know all of us in life and in business especially are going to face things that are challenging and difficult they are almost beyond measure sometimes the difficulties we can have and there is going to be a tendency to just want to quit and go back to your old way. And I have got to encourage you if that is something you are facing now or in the near future, really think it through don’t quit and give in easily.

I think of a friend of mine back when I were just in my early 20s and he was telling this story about his mom and he told the story where this young man was in college like between sophomore and junior year of college, and he signed up to sell encyclopedias which nobody would do that now. But he was selling those and they had kind of a pressure tactic and he had to do all summer long go through and knock on doors and convinced typically in the house somebody to buy this big set of books that was very expensive, and after a couple weeks he told me he said that was horrible he did not want to do that and his mom said no since you committed. You have got to not quit and all of us need that inside of us you know there’s got to be somebody prodding us on to say ourselves that you know I’m not going to quit. Just because it got tough that is not me I’m going to quit or change chapters in my life when things are on the top, or at least towards the top or going well I saw that when I was watching a way back in the 70s.

When at that time his name was Cassius Clay it’s Muhammad Ali who’s deceased now and he had already won the World Championship in boxing for a heavyweight two times and then he got beat and I watched him and they are interviewed and they said what next, he says I am not going out of my boxing career. Unless I go out on top that’s how you got to think of this that’s not a godly man necessarily in that lesson though I stuck with me. I’m not going to quit now you know there’s offenses or difficulties come to all of us I can use the examples of when I had my trucking company and I’m telling you what there was lots of times I wanted to quit in that it was not going well, for years and I was stuck I couldn’t quit there’s no easy way out I wasn’t at bankrupt .It was just so hard but you know ,I look back and I learned all my financial skills how to read and understand financial statements ,that is  how I learned how to deal with people in very difficult situations when they are in a difficult situation. Maybe they are moving we move furniture households so somebody is living in one house and they move to another house and we move people that pre-planned never to pay us. They let us work all day or a couple days long and owed us three or four thousand dollars and we are convinced they never once ever plan to pay us, they let us do that and then pulled some strings to make sure they did not pay us. I can tell you of damage that we caused that I had to go out and learn how to repair furniture, I can tell you of when somebody was blind up for to be a driver I bought a truck and they quit me right when I was busy I needed the busiest time I could get my examples of wanting to quit go on and on and, but you know I think God looked down on Gary and said you know this guy he is not going to quit is he and I’m not going to quit. I didn’t quit in those Saint cases you know I’m not going to lay you a plan to say you never quit.

I mean but it is very seldom should you quit as a businessperson you should work it out to make the steps of course the first thing to do is don’t grow too fast and to get too big and then you are not going to find any that like these things so big, I did not know that all the time and then you are. They are called setbacks but you can work through a setback and so basically you have got to become convinced well, here let’s talk about Africa where we are talking to some people about raising chickens and raising eggs and you know we talked to them and they said well we tried that what do you mean you tried that well they tried it once and it did not work well nobody  had that .I know of but work perfect when they first tried it you have got to understand that it is part of the process of learning ,through your mistakes. Learning through your situation learning the best way maybe it was marginally good and you could have done better, but it is the next year this is a race this is not a sprint this is like a long term endurance race that’s what both owning a business is like it is not a sprint, it is not something you finish in one week or five weeks or one year. I have heard that mistake, I have heard people say well I’m become successful in one year and I will sell that business and get another one that is not real at reality.

You will have time and it will take time for you to become successful how long? well I don’t know I work for the other oil company for nine and a half years, I was successful but I did not own the place. I had my moving and storage business for 17 years and I sold it modestly successful and now I have a machine shop for 13 years I don’t know it does not have to have that long, but it did not come overnight I hope you understand we are here to help you we want to encourage you to not quit what it just gets a little difficult thank you.