My name is Gary Shotton and on this video I’m gonna talk about the subject Is the view worth the climb? That’s a question. What do I mean by that? Well let me give a story to start with. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma and about a year ago 16 men from our city decided to climb the tallest mountain in Africa called Mt. Kilimanjaro and I didn’t know about it. I just saw that they were gonna give us a one hour video of like a movie of their trip and then be there to answer questions and it was at a public meeting place and so I only knew a couple of these people. I only knew about it after they made the climb. But I had been in, this is in Kenya in Arusha, part of Kenya. I’m sorry that’s not correct. It’s in the Arusha part of Tanzania very next to Kenya. In Africa. And I had been very close to this from a distance and I could see how tall this mountain is. And in fact it goes up to I believe 19,500 feet. Guess what, airplanes fly that high. That’s pretty common flight. So guess what the oxygen is pretty thin at that elevation. So this was a wonderful explanation of just 16 guys I think 14 of them made it. It took five days of hard climbing. Not like rock climbing but climbing, walking lower oxygen in the air and with a guide. And it was just really grueling. Point was they were only at the top maybe 15 to 30 minutes. They got to the top for the view and turned around and came back. Was the climb was the view worth the climb? You see what I’m saying. Was it worth it? To them it was. It was not just to get there. They accomplished something that they never had ever attempted. Never would have attempted if it wasn’t the 16 of them going together and kind of challenging each other together to make this climb. I thought it was wonderful. We all face this sometimes with ourselves or with our kids. You know do I go to college. Do I go to college to get a degree. Is the view, the college degree, worth the climb to get there. Four to five years of my life in order to get that degree. Cranks up a little bit when you get somebody in the medical field. Are they willing to go 12 years to college in order to become a doctor. Is the view, the degree, the result of that climb, worth the climb. Is the view worth the climb? Well I’ll share one a little closer to home. And maybe you’ll have something that will be pretty major to decide in your life. I’m not talking about which car to buy or what kind of, what pair of shoes to purchase. These are totally unrelated to this. I’m talking about pretty major decisions. So I’m sitting in my late 40s and I have been 17 years now owning a moving and storage business and I had big aspirations to own and operate 50 mini storages. 50 independent mini storages all owned by me. All surrounding my overall plan. I could go into detail. It’s still a good plan where we would call it Move Mart. That would be the name. We had secured the name. And each one of these would have a home base in multiple cities where there’d be seven mini storages surrounding my headquarters or main operations. And we would do any kind of moving that anybody wanted. Full service moving. Self moving. Packing, storage, anything to do with that. Man I got excited about it. I had plans drawn. I had architects prints on it. I’m looking at that I’m thinking, man this is gonna be cool. Cause, I’m not a greedy person but I’m telling you I can make a lot of money with 50 mini storages and I was starting this in about 1995 when mini storages are not popular. They’re not prevalent, it’s a new industry. Locations were available all over the place. But I had to ask myself. Is the view worth the climb? And I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to do that. I don’t know today if I ever would have made it. I think I would have but I changed courses because the view wasn’t worth the climb for two reasons. Number one, I could see that being a goal of being the richest guy that I could possibly be even though my goal was for giving away money was a little self serving. A little bit of attention to me look what I’ve done and all the challenges that would come with me being the hub for lots of money and then let’s try to figure out how to disperse that into the world to do good for the Christian faith. Well that’s pretty noble but never know if it’s gonna happen. Number two, I realized it was gonna take 15 years if I was gonna make that course. It would be 15 years. But the main thing was I realized that rising to that level of business kind of took me out of my effective ability to share with start ups and how to get started. How to plant seeds of business. And so I averted that. We went a different direction. I sold that that business. I sat out of active business for six years and then I, it’s another story why and how I own this machine shop. We have about 50 employees right now. Give or take a few. And it’s my perfect match for me. For me, the view, owning 50 mini storages, was not worth the climb of 15 years to get there. It would have took me out of, I think, God’s plan for my life. Well I’m not drawing attention to me. I just wanna help you to say ask yourself what realistically is this gonna take to get to that goal. And is it worth it. Is this where you wanna end up? I know of a lot of people that went down a path and when they got there it wasn’t nearly what they though it would be and they weren’t excited that they spent that much time getting to that point in life that was almost a mistake. Not an actual mistake but sort of. Hey, hope these help. Please share these if you would. I do appreciate it. Thank you.