Success gained too quickly most likely will not last, it is a process that takes time. #000103

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Overnight Success

By Gary Shotton

          My name is Gary Shotton and today I’m going to talk about overnight successes. First of all, I want to tell you that there’s not very many overnight successes and so it’s a little bit of play on words because my opinion and my attitude towards life and business and your path for you is that you’ve got to continually making progress, just as fast as you can. But there’s probably not going to be a value in having an overnight success because you haven’t learned the lessons that you need for the next plateau that you’re on every plateau you’re on every growth step you have every job you take every boss you work for every difficult situation. Every good situation, it’s building your track record it’s building your history, it’s building who you are and you can’t jump over that you just can’t, in my opinion. In fact, if you weren’t given that opportunity. Then you are going to jump ahead of and not learn some very critical things.

You see, this happens sometimes in the fact that that we have a second or third generation in a, in a company or a business where the persons that were originated the business or the leadership and I’m not thinking of any one particular business but it’s pretty well known that at points and times, that’s turned over the to the next generation. And it isn’t but a year that’s total failure. We had that happen here in the Tulsa metro area, I won’t refer to any particular company names I happen to know this person that was killed in a plane wreck, and he left a very large trucking company to his son and his son had no ability. I mean, at what I heard of it had no ability to manage that company, and unfortunately he had overnight success, but had no skills to manage this. And so it wasn’t about 18 months later right before Christmas.

These truck drivers that were all over the United States, trying to get back for Christmas found out that they had no fuel, no fuel cards they’re stuck everywhere and didn’t get paid, right before Christmas, and it took a year plus, for some of them finally to get paid. You have to pay your bills; this is Christmas time. That was an example of someone getting overly in a higher position than they had earned. Now I’m not talking about you have to drag yourself through the mud for years and years and years, and it’s going to be boring, but every single step you take, can be a learning experience if you’ll take advantage of here in the machine shop. We have about 50 employees right now that means we have about 3435 actual machinists there’s others are in the office and shipping and quality and, and the buyers and myself and so that’s about where we’re at, we’re hiring some new people, and you know, each one of these new people, and some of them are younger, some of them just came out of training, tech training, and we’re here to help them learn as fast, but it’s up to them to learn.

All we can do is put it in front of them, and frankly if they’re not aggressively willing to learn. We don’t have time to mess with them. So you in every single situation you have an opportunity to learn. Now let me tell you, my biggest two biggest opportunities to learn well, I have three parts of my life in the business world, I have the nine years, nine and a half years I work for the big oil company. And that was where I received a nice paycheck. I had a company vehicle, I was responsible for installation and construction of a processing plant, and I was learning like crazy, there’s so much stuff. I didn’t know you could not imagine, just because I had a degree did not give me much knowledge to actually get out there in the field and work with these men, pouring concrete heavy welders welding erecting with a crane dealing with cold weather.

It was a huge learning experience for me. I loved it and hated it at the same time, because I felt like it was over my head, but I was determined to make it through that came to an end. I moved to my town that I’m in now, and I couldn’t find a job I was headed degree I had experience and I started a trucking company so have you heard this before, and I started moving furniture about the lowest grade A thing, a graduate engineer could do is go out and pick up somebody’s sofa and carry it to the third floor and set it and make sure it’s set right and make sure the dishes were right in the house.  This was a pretty low job, but I started learning I can see I’m learning how to deal with people, I’m in a toughest situation I could be for more learning to balance my budget pay my bills, deal with all kinds of endless problems that my workers might have because this was lower pay scale on the workers.

I’ve moved people in they had issues and we caused a few issues and we had some people didn’t want to pay us. I mean, it was a business University on steroids I was, I was in the middle of it. I hated it. But I loved it. It’s weird. I hated it and I loved it because, as much as I hated it at different times. I had no option but to keep going and looking back I loved it because it taught me things, how to deal with people in a tough financial situation, I sell that my wife and I sell that and then to the year 2006 we buy this machine shop. It’s different I’m learning again I constantly learn, and I’m just telling you that that overnight success for me came from watching my dad, with 40 plus years of farm and ranch to me being nine and a half years with a big oil company to being 17 years with the. Moving and Storage company to being now over almost 11 years with owning this business.

I don’t think that’s quite overnight, but I’m telling you I’m building a foundation that’s continuing to be stronger and stronger, I’m doing what I’m called to do. I’m blessed of God and doing it. I’m proud to be doing it. I am I’m really living a dream for my life. This is not your life this is my life, but I’m telling you this to encourage you, don’t try to do micro wave your life. Don’t try to make it instant. Don’t drag it, but make sure you’re continually aggressively learning and every step, pressing yourself. And then when you come to a spot where over a period of time probably months, you can see that this phase ended. You have the right to change. You have to make those changes don’t stay stuck in a rut, be willing to make the changes, be willing to work towards a long term personal development, that’s what it’s about. And to help people. Oh help people. That’s what you’re, you’re not here to get filthy rich there’s no joy in that the joy is in being able to have your needs met with plenty to help others, and be used of God in that way. I hope this helps. I hope we and encouragement to you, and thank you for that into it and please stay tuned. And please pass these on if you would, that’s how we share these lessons. Thank you.