It is important that God will send us ideas but if we do not act on these ideas through experimenting, we may be passing by some opportunities. Being willing to take some action and experiment with ideas can easily be a part of God’s plan for your success. By Gary Shotton #000390

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Experiment

By Gary Shotton

        Hello my name is Gary Shotton and I’m here as a part of inspiring better business and today we’re going to talk about experimenting, or more clearly the value of experimenting. While I was about 31 years old and married with three small children, my wife and I decided we’re going to live, move from our fairly comfortable job fairly comfortable city situation, and take a risk and move to a new city, some 600 miles away and attend Bible school. In the process, I was expecting to get a nice job because I had a college degree and 10 years’ experience in my field of engineering and it didn’t happen that way. I arrived in town and the economy dropped, there was no job and I was up against the wall. I had some spare cash but I knew I couldn’t hold out for two years on the cash so I was at the point that I needed other income now. Having a nice degree it didn’t allow people to hire me for bass labor jobs like working at the restaurant because they knew I wouldn’t stay there,

So I decided to launch out with. You may have heard this story with my borrowed horse trailer and hook behind my family car and I started moving people meaning furniture meaning their beds their dressers their boxes, somebody moved from one town, one house in our town to another house. A lot of times they didn’t have the physical labor, the power or any way to do that and we would call me, call me on my home phone, I didn’t have a business I didn’t have a store I didn’t have anything but a borrowed Craver in my family car, and I was able to proceed on this basis but the key to this was I was willing to experiment. Now I become a little disappointed even at work now when somebody uses the excuse, well nobody showed me how to do that if they had shown me how to do that I would do it. And even in our assistance overseas, a lot of times we get the attitude that if we would somebody would show me step one step two, step three, then I would learn what to do, well being an entrepreneur is not typically like that nobody showed me how to have a moving business. And so I just experimented. I experienced as a part of starting small, starting growing step by step that we sometimes forget the avenue of experimenting and it’s a real thing. It’s something that you’re going to do all of your life as an entrepreneur. I’ll just take my friend, Noel in Guadalajara, Mexico. I know her from visiting there seven or eight years ago I got to talk to her just yesterday and I know her story that she wanted to have a bread of special made bread that wasn’t full of sugar and chemicals. It’s kind of an artistic artesian type bread and I know what she did, she started by experimenting. She didn’t find somebody else’s recipe as much she probably read up on it and did research. And so she experimented until she found the recipe that she likes and she’s constantly experimenting.

Well, back to my Moving and Storage business I had my car I put in the newspaper that said, “Let me help you move” I have a 5 feet by 16 foot trailer, I didn’t put the word horse in there it was actually a horse trainer, a trainer used all the horses, and people called me, so everything I did was experimenting, I experimented on how to get customers, and I realized I could call people if I could figure out that they were going to move and I called them. I experimented on how to move. I experimented on how to load things and how to get them tight, I had learned how to fix furniture because occasionally we had a scratch. Almost everything I did for that first two or three years was experimenting. I mean they’ll say same situation now. Two years ago I decided to buy a piece of land and go into the gardening business and to specialize in vine right tomatoes. Well, I could read some books, I did a little reading, reading on it I did find, currently, my friend and only employee is Josh and he’s very gifted and things I wouldn’t even know about in  plants and bugs and things like that. But at the end of the day, I’m the guy that says let’s do it, let’s experiment let’s don’t get so big that we’re going to call it a failure, and we planted the first year I planted it wasn’t quite as good as I wanted. And so now we’re continuing to experiment to experiment to experiment.

Now in each of these cases I will grant you that I had some kind of reserve cash. I had some kind of income, and I see this as a regular problem when people are starting up in their businesses, especially the first business they’ve had. And they’re overseas, and they expect or not necessarily overseas, but a lot of times there, and there, they’re completely broke they have no money at all for even the next meal, and then they somehow expect the business to be instantly successful so they can pay all their bills, that’s not realistic. So, a lot of businesses get stopped to begin with because it said I tried it and it didn’t work, well Part of it was they didn’t have any reserves to start with. I like what my pastor talked about, and he taught from the pop, he called the Six Day business and several businesses got started Once a six day construction company Once a six day snack foods, and they had their own job and they had their business they had their basic expenses covered and, rather than just work those five days for somebody else, they opted on what would be considered their six day, which some people consider that to be their vacation day their holiday, they invested that time in experimenting and they started they started they started. Sometimes you just got to start. Now I’m not discrediting research please understand that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do your research, but you can just research and research and research and never start. Do your research, and then try something, do your search, and then experiment.

I had another opportunity with my friend Jim, and he and I were able to do a class out at our local library on how to write a business plan. We did that, believe it or not, monthly, every month on Tuesday at seven o’clock the second Tuesday of every month for 10 years, we announced and they had a room set aside because we were volunteers and we would help people start and mainly draw up their business plan for starting their business. Well, I regret it but I didn’t concentrate enough but this group, I noticed after a while, that they came in and they’re really at loss, how to write their business plan, they’re like looking at a piece of paper and going, what in the world I’m going to write down, I don’t, well you know what the problem was they haven’t experimented anything. You’re not really ready to write your business plan, in my opinion, until you’ve got your hands dirty a little bit, you’ve gone out there and you’ve tried a few things. And now you’ve charted to formulate your plan or kind of get your idea okay, I kind of see how this works. And now I can kind of see how the income would come and now I can kind of see what my experiences are. And now I can get started. If I had to do over again, the first thing I would tell everybody in that class for all those years would start experimenting right now. If you’re a cook, and you want to be have a restaurant. Experiment with some food on your on your on your oven at your house and give it away or invite your friends and neighbors over and test it in this tried selling some of that, if you want to be a hairdresser like ladies or a man either one, you want to fix hair, start experimenting on other people’s hair volunteer for a while, charge half price do something experiment. If you want to be a carpenter, and you have a hammer and a saw, experiment by making something, if you want to be anything that you can think of you want to be a farmer or gardener find a small plot experiment if you want to raise chickens for eggs experiment just get a few chickens call it an experiment, you’re not actually started in business yet because you’re probably not going to make a profit, but it’s the part of the process that you, you need to go through and your life long endeavor will be continued research and continued experience, experimenting with in every business you have. I love it because I’m in a garden we go, specializing and buying ripe tomatoes but guess what, we’re experimenting on how to raise beets. Experimental how to raise, onions, we’re experimenting almost every time we plant some experiment. Well I hope this is helpful. I’m glad to be a part of inspiring better business. We hope these helps Thank you.