Your emotions can fool you and should not be a basis for critical decisions in your business.  #000089

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Emotions

By Gary Shotton

          Hello, my name is Gary Shotton and I’m going to talk on the subject today of emotions and how they play a part in your business process and your business decisions.

First, I must tell you that emotions can trick you a lot. In my opinion you cannot rely on emotions. We all have emotions, and nothing is wrong about having them but when they become the deciding factor or have a strong influence in your decisions, you are probably setting yourself up for a little bit of a negative situation. And you know whatever you are just going to be side on because emotions are not reliable now.

For me I come from a background of my dad a farmer and rancher and you know much about that occupation most of these people are stoic.  They are not overly emotional; they have worked hard long days don’t show a hot large extremes in their emotional behaviors. My dad was in that category only a couple times in my entire life that I have never seen a small tear come down from his eye, I never saw him cry.

I am not saying it’s right or wrong. I am just saying my personal background doesn’t have me full of a lot of emotions, like that one case I had a loved one, a brother that left home aged 15 and that was a tough time. At one point he needed to come back and get his dad’s permission and my dad was not vindictive at age 15. He would not let my brother to play baseball which was what my brother wanted.  A person could only do it if you had a signed permission slip.  My dad signed that flip and I saw tear come down his eye and he told my brother how much he loved him. But he held his ground, my dad was not going to back off and it all turned around to good another time.

When I was just finishing up College, I had thought about coming down back to the farm and working for dad.  Even though that I had a college degree at that point that said you know you better keep on because we have had some terrible swings in the economy.  He had to refinance the entire farm deep and with a small tear coming out of his eyes he told me ” I am not sure if I’m going to make this thing turn around and work, we might not even have a bar.”

Those are the only two times and so I’m giving you that as background. I am not what I would consider an emotional person. I have a lot of joy in my life I am an upbeat person, so you know there are emotions.  But there are emotions that could cause you to decide and that’s where it is not reliable.  I believe most very successful people can control their emotions.  You know a lot of times you are pulled into something.  You are pulled into someone else’s emotions because they have had a catastrophe in their life and they are out of money and if you don’t loan them some money or give them an employee advance right now, you know they’re going to be evicted from their house and just a lot of times overstated. You know frankly we have a little saying that just because you have an extremely difficult situation, you are going in a tailspin with out of control.

I am not jumping in the airplane with you and diving down into that. I want to keep my emotions in check. We have all kinds of emotions that we’re going to be pulled into.  I am going to talk about some of mine on the good side.

You know you land a good contractor you want to celebrate a little bit; you get you make a good sale you want to celebrate a little bit.  But you do not really quick that’s you go on to the next event.  Emotions are not going to carry you through.  It is okay but it’s not something that is powerful enough.  It is your solid day-to-day business practices that are going to take you through, it is your good business decisions that are going to take you.  It is your maturing the process of you getting through things one step at a time that you become confident.  You have a lot of self-confidence that is what you want to rely on when you are making these decisions.

I can think of some good times certainly when we had a good month or a good year we do not, want to overstate that we had a bonus system that process.  For a while and everybody knew what our sales were, everybody knew for a while what their bonus would be based on sales and part of the reason list, we had not been able to give employee raises worth that spot. Right now, we haven’t given raises for almost two full years, and I explained that to our people’s lists I am not able to give a raise right now. So, you will know what is coming because we are going to start giving bonuses based on sales way above what your raise would have been.  For a while and then we are going to do a review and take over, so I am not moved like somebody’s need.

I have had situations where somebody came in they have to have a couple thousand dollars to buy a car, well in one case I said,” you know I am not in a position to do that.” I know I could, but it is not healthy here’s two hundred dollars I gave it to them as a gift.  This as many years ago you use those two hundred dollars as a seed towards you getting the rest of your money to get that car.

I have helped in different ways but not moved on emotion you are going to be pulled from a negative way into other people’s situations. You are going to have to refer to my travels overseas. We are going to get emails and situations when grandma is in the hospital she is about to die and unless you send two thousand dollars, you know we got to get that for the medical bills, or we got a crop that’s about to fail.  Send five hundred dollars or five thousand dollars you know I am not going to get that pulled into that because I cannot send money because somebody was in a jam, and they needed help. I do not know what they have done, how they spent their money.  So, I am actually doing them a disservice, I think when I said certainly if there is a catastrophe or immediate need you make the judgment but those kinds of things are reoccurring on a real regular basis.

You know I found in another good thing when you have a opportunity for a while a great deal, you could be moved into an emotion on that I have a little policy that says,” if somebody gives me an ultimatum says you know this is your last chance to buy this you don’t buy it today by four o’clock it’s not going to be available and they asked me what my answer is , when they throw that card of fear that is an emotion fear that you will and get it tomorrow the answers always no I don’t want that, I don’t need it now.”

If I have done my research and I am on top of it and I know exactly what I am doing, then I am making my decisions based on the reality of the facts not on the emotions. Not only the situation, but not only randomness of something also happening unexpectedly. I have bought it further believe me I am not perfect in this realm, but I have some control.

I think if you are going to operate a business with any size and volume where you even have the appearance of having money, you are going to have to deal with other people’s emotions. That means you are going to have to keep your emotions in check under control.  You know you can have all the love for your children and grandchildren and show affection there I am not talking about that, I am talking about in making business decisions be the solid rock well.

I hope these help you I hope you would share these with other people this is the only and main way to be spread the word thank you for being with me.