Hello, I’m Gary Shotton and I’m glad to be with you again today. And I’m here with my family and today’s topic is family. And I’m just going to speak to you from the heart and I’m going to ask my family some of them to speak out as they choose. And what I’ve observed in life is that certain occupations, certain career paths, certain jobs, are more stressful on the family than other jobs. I mean there’s just the reality to that. I will mention up front as you’re entering into the concept of owning a business and running your business, that owning a business is probably one of those occupations that is potentially more stressful on the family. It pulls on the family in different ways. And so I’m here with part of my family, my daughter to the far right, her husband and their three children. And of course my wife here to the right, of 43 years we’ve been married. And so I will not give any kind of impression that life has been perfect working and living with Gary Shotton. I will tell you there’s bumps in the road, there’s been bumps in the road. But we made conscious efforts to make sure that our business did not consistently rise to a higher priority than our family. There’s certain times that I had to go do things just out of necessity, but we tried to limit those, or choose those, and again we’re here sitting as part of my family. I have two grown boys. They are married and they each have two children. And that makes up my combined family. I will mention that in my reading in books and information, that I did read a book way back, 20 years ago, that was very inspiring to me. So the second version of that book came out, an additional concept and I was in about the third chapter. And this writer made a statement that I do not agree with. They were talking to young career people, and this writer wrote that at some point in your career path, you may have to choose. Choose between following your career or honoring your family. And this author actually put in writing that his suggestion was to forget your family, follow your career path. Because you can always get another spouse and family. I totally disagree. I put the book down and did not finish the rest of the book based on that comment. Well there’s things that my wife and I have had challenges over, we won’t go into depth. Things like hey, we work side by side. Haven’t we? We worked side by side for 40-some years. Most of those 40-some years working in a business. We had to stop or try to stop our home life and make sure it ended because when we’re home, we’re home; and when we’re at work, we’re at work. Cindy, would you like to just share a few, at least one nugget of truth? Most people say, “I don’t want to be a boss or own my business because I don’t want to solve all the problems that comes with that”. But I have to say, you have to keep your priorities, and have to keep those in order. Put God, which we have honored God, and our family comes second; not church and others and your work. That has to come third, fourth, and fifth. So you have to keep those priorities in order for your family to be in total agreement and work with you. Some children do not want to follow your business. And a lot of parents have that expectation that their children will inherit their business, but that’s not always true and that does not always happen. Thank you Cindy and I sure do appreciate 43 years of marriage with you. Most of them happy, when it wasn’t happy it was usually my fault. Shauna, do you have any comments to make? Yeah, I mean I own my own business, it’s not my parent’s business or anything. I started a consulting business in my late-20s, I was 27, single. And so I think it’s important to know there are seasons of business. So I’m at the beginning, they’re 40 years into business. For me when I was single, I worked a lot, and it was okay to do that. I had nobody to report to. I worked late nights, early mornings, traveled a lot. Now I’m in my late, almost 40, early 40s, late 30s now; with a family and I am still working right now, at the moment more than I want to. And I’ve had to deal with seasons of my business. And I’m at the point actually where I’ve grown my business, 12 years into it, and I’m having to say no. Actually declining business, declining work solely because my family is more important than working non-stop. And I think with any business, you have to go through some seasons. And understand as a husband and wife, there are times you’re going to work a lot, but that it’s not forever. That there isn’t that grind that’s never ending. So we’re at the point, me and my husband, we’ve made some decisions to slim down my work to where I’m now able to be with my family more and more as they’re growing because they won’t be in my house forever. And so the season that I’m in is little kids, little family and I’ve got to make those decisions to say no. No to business, meaning no to my growing company, or no to future projects that might be on the line solely because it’s my decision to be with my family while they’re young. I may choose 20 years from now that to be different because they’re seasons. I think all of our families in our life go, and business goes through seasons also. So that’s what I want to share. Thank you very much. My family is very important to me. Once again, I’ll say it again I am in no way a perfect father, a perfect boss. But these videos are intended to just remind you of a key point and this key point is do not let your family become secondary. Well we wrap it up with that, thank you. Up next AUTOPLAY