hello my name is Gary Shotton and we’re glad to have you here as a part of Inspiring Better Business today we’re going to talk about the subject of funding and emergency now we have discussions with small groups or small clubs in East Africa and this topic comes as a result of some of the tough questions that they ask us and we try to give them honest answers and some help and I think it’ll be helpful to anyone listening the question was posed like this we have a lot of small businesses getting started and inevitably they’re setting aside a little spare cash a little extra money and some emergency comes and then it wipes out their cash and they’re starting all over they’re very discouraged that could happen anywhere and so after a brief discussion we presented these ideas and we hope they’ll be helpful to you as well first of all the right thing to do is start saving a little money putting aside a little extra making sure you’re putting away something for those hiccups or those setbacks or those issues and you know that’s going to be hard at first we know that I owned a small business I started a horse with a horse trader it pulled behind my car moving furniture and man would that happen we would be going along fine and then something little would happen and it wipe out my little extra that’s probably going to happen but let’s make sure we learn a lesson from it let’s learn how to deal with that first of all I’d like to separate the emergencies into two groups one is my emergencies the emergencies that I have control on the emergencies that are directly affecting me in my business and number two those emergencies that come from other people they come knocking on your door they come approach you and say I have an emergency and I need some money can you help me out let’s deal with number one first well as you’re rolling along in life you’re pretty well committed and these audios and these teachings are committed to help you teach how to get and operate a business from a small basis and grow it into something substantial and along the way we’re going to talk about all kinds of things that are related to doing good business so the first step you’ve got to be able and be committed to doing good business and a part of that like I said is to set aside some savings something in the reserve something that’s intangible something that you’re not going to be pulling out of all the time in banking terms they call it a line of credit that you have a line of credit and and that credit is there to handle those emergencies and the emergencies can go up and down and you should see that line of credit go up and down in other words you might have it a little emergency and you draw from that but then you better put it back a banker doesn’t want to see an individual in America to get a line of credit and it caps to the top and then it never changes it never comes down that’s not a line emerge of of credit that’s actually a loan and they want you to put that into a package so that you’re gonna pay that off over time on regular payments well when the emergencies come I suggest this it’s going to be tough you’re gonna have to decide inside your own you’re probably going to have to pull that money out if it’s your own emergency and the reality is you need to look deeper than just the emergency don’t get into a cycle into a system of just going through this over and over again because if you look deep you’re gonna have to ask yourself why did I have the emergency what caused the emergency what what am I gonna learn from this so that if I have to pull my funds out one time bail myself out and go on then I don’t want to do that again here’s some things that could happen you could have started too large and now you’ve gotten so big and so growing so fast it inevitably will come create a cash flow emergency and there’s the lesson learned when you’re in that spot and you see that don’t get bigger sometimes people even think I’ll I’ll grow out of this that’s not gonna happen step back trim back cut something in the stock market people know that when a company’s in trouble they have to cut back they don’t get bigger they combine themselves with somebody else they cut back so cut back if that’s your problem if you tried to grow too fast though which is a good principle is grow slow step by step cut back so in other words the emergency taught you a lesson and the lesson was there and you better learn the lesson by paying the tuition that you pin to learn that lesson that you didn’t learn from this from the start you might have other emergencies that face you and and as those emergencies come you’ve got to be honest with yourself maybe the emergency is along the line of a product failed you you you you introduce something new or you experimented in something in something new well did you do your research there’s the issue root out the issue you didn’t do your research on that new line you thought it was good but you got you got moved on something that wasn’t good for you and so again you might have to cut that off you might have to go admit it say I made a mistake drop that idea but for sure the next time don’t be so quick to to branch off into something else maybe the emergency is is a maintenance on your vehicles you have an engine go bad and the engine went bad and it was because you weren’t checking the oil you weren’t maintaining the equipment well so I hope you see that you could go back and say I made a mistake there I need to do better maintenance on my vehicle almost every emergency has a source cause and if you’ll go down to that source cause and figure out what really caused the problem then I think you’ll have less emergencies you might have emergencies but you’ll have less emergencies and you’ll be able to overcome them more quickly well let’s move to point number two that ever-so present especially in East Africa requests for funds you have a business and somebody knows you have a business and they hear you are doing well and pretty soon there’s a path way to your door asking for money asking for money and the same thing applies you can help these people that are asking for money many times by saying no no I’m not going to help you in this you needed to have done something different to start with you need to do what I’m doing and you need to be learning what’s causing this emergency and dealing with it you see a lot of people they hope they’ll waste their money or do things with money of foolishly knowing that hey uncle’s uncle Gary will help me out I had that happen I had a worker in my in my shop that that he asked for a loan we gave it a loan to him and and then here comes Christmas and and he asked for a loan again I said our loans aren’t for Christmas our loans are very limited for things that are really critical and then they’re only limited one or two times and I said no and no he was really upset with me and he’s words were well I thought you had my back no I’m trying to help you you need to do something’s different with your funds in order to not find yourself in that spot and again if you become known that the one that’s always going to bail people out you don’t have enough money to bail everybody out that has a problem and the problems will grow bigger and they’ll take more risk teach them that they need to go back and look at what caused the problem and fix that now just a little tip there’s a times that I’ve had people really asked me for a loan see I’m not a loan giver see if I’m a loan Giver then I’m actually a banker I never actually opened a new business and I don’t know much much much about banking I’m not a good banker because I’m not very good at looking at the numbers and collecting when I’m late on a payment my banker calls me the next morning and well I’m not good at that that’s what a banker does so basically you do not want to become a banker and I suggest you don’t loan money when you do your take that taking a rig big risk of losing a friend I have done this somebody needed something for like a purchase of something and they need like two thousand dollars to make this purchase I know I can’t loan you two thousand dollars well what I can do is write you a check or give you fifty or a hundred dollars and say this is not alone this is a gift I want you to know I’m behind you 100% do not pay it back and consider this seed money for you and the needs that you have and you’ll figure out a way see I’m not God I’m not your supply I’m not your source you need to be searching and seeking God’s help in this one last one it seems that East Africa has a culture of rolling out lots of money for a wedding and it seems that everybody expects that when Joe it when when whoever has a wedding especially the man then all the people give him money for the wedding well I think that’s kind of a foolish foolish culture I think that might need to be changed now that’s just my opinion I’m not in that culture but you know if I have the attitude that I gave my little bit of money to help somebody else with their wedding then when I’m gonna have my wedding I want a really big wedding I want a good wedding I want a lot of people to give me a lot of money man think about it that’s money going down the tube the only person gaining there is the people supplying the supplies for the weddings well think about it maybe that wedding doesn’t need to be that expensive I’m not trying to be a Scrooge here but maybe you could cut back on the wedding and maybe you could get by it’s just one day okay I’m off on my little tangent there but I hope these things help you I hope this is a benefit to you I hope you’ll be blessed by these lessons on Inspiring Better Business how do you fund an emergency I think you can