Honesty is a character quality that will gain you favor in the long-run of life and business, even if you are competing with others who are not honest.  By Gary Shotton #000434

Click Here to download in audio (.mp3 format); right click on link and select “save as”

Click Here to download in video (.mp4 format); right click on link and select “save as”

http://www.ibbtalks.org/share/audio/

http://www.ibbtalks.org/share/videos/

Honesty

By Gary Shotton

Hello my name is Gary Shotton, and I’m here as a part of Inspiring Better Business. And today, today we’re going to talk about the subject of “Honesty” are being totally honest, are being totally truthful in all of our actions, so that we’re honored to God. Well today in our household, we’re doing a addition to part of our house and involves some constructions with wood, and I was last week at the lumber company where we buy the wood and I paid for, the items that I wanted to purchase it was a list of things and then they give us a ticket and I gave the ticket to the person in the yard and they’re proceeding to load these items onto my trailer and so I can pull it away and bring it back to our construction site. And when they were loading some of the wood, I  had ordered and paid for 40 of this one particular board, a wood board. And when they put it on my trailer as my habit would be, I counted, what was on my Trader, whether it was accurate, or whether it was right. And I noticed, they gave me nine extra boards that I didn’t pay for the order was for 40 and he gave me 49 And I’m embarrassed to tell you that just for a few minutes I’m thinking in my mind. Well, they probably won’t miss those nine boards. I mean, they probably made a mistake, another time and didn’t give me everything so I could just maybe keep these boards, these extra that I didn’t pay for and, and it would be okay. And then I thought for just a little longer, I said, What am I thinking, why would I do that, why would I steal nine boards, when I could easily pay for them. So I’m telling you, I have to always be on guard that I’m not thinking in a way that’s dishonest. It isn’t that I’m always thinking, dishonest trying to cheat somebody, but this was just a mistake they made and I needed to bring it to their attention to tell them to hold it, you gave me too many.

This happened way back 25 years ago when I was just going to the bible school and I was with my family in this new town and my wife and we were together going to Bible school and we had lots of expenses and we didn’t have any income I hadn’t gotten a job yet and we had three small children and you know we have lots of things going on. And the same thing kind of thing happened I was at the store, and I was there checking out and registering the things I had purchased and they gave me the change for the cash that I’d given them, they gave me an extra $10 It was a mistake. And I looked at it, and I walked away and I said no,  immediately I gave that $10 back and said, this is money is not mine. This was a mistake. I didn’t make them feel bad I didn’t make them announced that to anyone I didn’t act in pride, I’m just telling you that I have settled in my mind that I will be honest, I’m not perfect. I’m not saying that I don’t have bad thoughts about this from time to time because I’ve already told you I’m not telling you that I’m perfect, I’m just telling you that we have to be on guard all the time that we don’t drop our guard, not to drop our standard and do something that’s dishonest. You see, why would I handle God’s money that’s the objective is never to get rich, I’m not seeking money, the objective in my life is to be trustworthy, so God can trust me with his money. I’m not going to take any money with me when I die, And I’m not expecting that my children are going to be poor and have to have money, they’re doing fine. So, what am I going to do. Why would I be dishonest and try to gain wealth, when I would be thinking of handling it’s God’s money it’s not even mine, but the temptation can be there.

You see I’m in a business now, where we make metal parts for our customers we make a lot of metal parts, we make a big orders of these parts, and our quality department is very critical that we send out parts that are 100%. Inside the dimensional tolerances of every dimension on any single part. This is pretty challenging, because we have a system of our workers are checking every part depending on how close to town tolerances are, we have a quality department that rejects them again, and we have another place that we check them again we some parts are checked three times before they leave our facility, to be sure that the customer is getting a part that they ordered. Every dimension correct and the dimensions are what we call tight dimensions. In other words, they’re less than 0.001 of an inch, that’s like, thinner than by far than the hair on my head or a piece of paper, and that means if the parts, plus or minus 0.001″.   That part cannot be shipped to the customer without a special approval, and we could probably slip in some of those parts and we know that the customer would probably never ever find that, but we’ll not do that. Our customers know that we’ll never send a knowingly sing, a bad part to them, a bad part could get to them, but we didn’t know about it, because we’re doing our very best to make sure everything’s on track and  everything’s perfect. According to the dimensions on the drawings that we’ve been submitted, that have been given to us. So, basically, this is an endeavor, not on making machines but on being honest, be 100% Honest 100% of the time, and God will help you. I want to be honest with my wife, honest to wherever I’m at all times she’s never has to doubt that I’m doing something immoral or improper, because I can be tempted because I’m human, but then  I don’t drop my guard down and follow that temptation, and a lot of times it’s helpful that  I’m, openly honest in situations that I’m honest to all of our vendors that’s people that supply us with goods like I did for that customer,

I’m going to be honest with them, I’m going to pay them in an honest way, to the best of my ability. I’m going to be certainly honest to my customers, and all this brings attention not to me, but I think eventually it brings attention to God. You see those young people that were loading  my lumber back on my first story. I was there again, and I could see a level of respect. They made comment that I was a nice person. Well, I’m not trying to be a nice person, I’m trying to be a reflection of God’s plan for their life and for my life and I want them to know that there’s people on this earth that are looking to God honoring God, and they’re there, that we’re creating a society of honesty. Now, I know enough about developing nations that this may be abnormal, that there are few people really trying to be honest but there could be a culture that you’re kind of like fighting a battle because there’s so many other people that are dishonest. Well, you cannot rest on just because everybody else is doing it, you’ve got to set a standard, and I do believe that at first it looks like you’re going to get behind maybe, maybe you’re refusing, I know this happened I’ve had it has told me many times that you’re refusing to pay a bribe, that’s another whole subject, but you’ve decided I’m not going to pay a bribe in order to get the business, and I know a case when in Mexico City where somebody had that great had developed a great line of product a great service. And then they said, somebody else got that job. Got that business took away their biggest customer and they knew because the buyer  that they were supplying to ask them how much money would you get, give me for a bribe a personal payment, and my Christian friend says I’m not I can’t give any because that’s against my standard. Well, I don’t know what all happened but I know God saw that, and he will make up the difference in the long run, we’re in this for a long run, not the short run, we’re in it for honoring God, thank you for the blessing of being a part of this inspiring better business we hope this is helpful to you