Ownership will require you to learn to climb over walls that will try to stop you. There is not just one way to overcome the challenge, there are probably ten. By Gary Shotton #000181

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Passion and Perseverance

By Gary Shotton

Today we’re going to talk about the subject of “Passion and Perseverance”.  Wow those are two words that kind of go together but they’re distinctly different, first of all passion you know if we’re going to accomplish something in life. I don’t know I don’t care what it, is if it’s a marriage you’ve got to be passionate about making your marriage work, if it’s raising children you’ve got to be passionate, you got to have some get up and go, you’ve got to have some confidence that you can make things happen and that comes with passion you’re going to look at situations and that are difficult for you and you’re going to come up against a law. I have a friend that says if you have a wall there isn’t just one way to climb that wall there’s at least 10 and you’ve got to figure out a way to get over the hurdles of maybe raising a family or getting through a marriage problem. I mean these things passion will take over for sometimes when you lack everything else, now you need the tools to do the job, you need the tools to be effective, you need to get training of course all those things but all those things without passion in my opinion are kind be of weak, and not accomplish much and so I’m a one that I want to be not let my emotions rule me and that’s not good. I guide people in their business affairs to not be controlled by their emotions not be not ever letting their emotions show on their face or in their actions, they’re not hiding something but you know you can be disappointed in something somebody’s done and without showing emotion or disappointment you can now train them or encourage them.

I had situations when we had a major downturn in the economy and I had to lay off 41 employees. I had 65 employees and we went down to 24 employees in a matter of just two or three months, and wow what the crew that was left my core that they important part of the team was left with me, and I couldn’t be emotional to them I couldn’t cry. I wanted to came around a table and I our five most core people or office people I said man we are going to make this work there is no option for me I will make this work it will work, I had a passion to make it work. I saw that in my dad he had a passion to initiate things on the farm, in the ranch he was always willing to go outside the box, just a little bit to do not always what everybody else was doing but some of the things that he thought would be helpful or good he took risk that was the passion that he had.

Now on perseverance that a lot of time is just sticking with it, we have any economy of any kind of a business there’s going to be ups and downs highs and lows and when we have everything going fine you got plenty of money coming in, you’ve got plenty of jobs coming in and that’s pretty easy but what happens when it drops down and you have to persevere you cannot quit, I had an attitude when I had the moving and storage business that’s where we move furniture and I owned that for 17 years. I still can’t believe it I owned it that long, I don’t want you to own one I would never recommend it was a tough business but one thing I had was perseverance my bank knew that there was times when I couldn’t pay alone, or that I had talked to my bank and say hey things are not good but they hung with me they didn’t always give me a loan, but they knew I was considered the scrapper ,that means I was willing to get down there and make it happen, and I was going to persevere through the tough times. I can remember again my dad I hope you don’t mind me telling these stories about my family, but my dad was a farmer and a rancher as you well know by now and you know they’re not very emotional, they didn’t like tear up and cry a lot, in fact in all of my life any time I could hear or think of my dad only two times only twice I see a tear come out of his eye, and it came rolling down to about right there and that’s all the tears he had. He wasn’t emotional but he was very sensitive at this point and one of those two times was when he was almost sure that he had come to the end, and was going to lose the farm, he had banked everything on a growing cattle market and it went down, he had no much more options I was in college at the time and this happened when I saw him, when I was home on spring break or Christmas break and we rode out in the pickup and he didn’t sob to me better believe it, but I saw that tear come down I knew this was serious and he told me you better stay in that college, because I don’t even know if there’s going to be a farm based on what I see right now but you know what he persevered he dug down cut expenses he did everything he needed to do refinanced in this case, and he came through on the other side of that wall on the other side of that challenge on the other side of that test stronger than ever before, that’s what happened when we had our turn down in our company, the company right here we came back on the other side because a lot of the other companies that we’re kind of competing with or were in our market they didn’t make it, that was true with my dad, a lot of farmers folded and he made it through, and you know what that makes you stronger than before I’ve always said that, the best place and time to learn lessons that’ll stick with you is in the tough times ,not in the easy times. it’s all kind of weird to think that you want tough times you want difficult times you want to have some tests, I mean just think about going through school, where you know you don’t want to take the sixth grade over and over and over again three or four times you want to get at the end of the year, and sixth grade you want to take that exam and pass that dude and go on to the seventh grade, well that’s what’s happening in the business world you’ve got to have passion and perseverance. In my opinion – maybe not the only – but two key ingredients that you’re going to need to make it through, the thick and the thin the good and the bad, and come out on the other side stronger, and you know during this whole thing it won’t be very glamorous, there’s going to be people wondering why are you doing this, why didn’t you just go get a job so somebody could pay you well, you know what those jobs are not all that great either sometimes they get laid off and you don’t have control of your future, Sometimes when you have working for someone else so at least I have control of my future, and the reality is in many cases the only reason I’m sitting right here now with a large company that’s successful, and I’m able to travel all the way around the world many times over, and sometimes more than once and in the same year is because I did not quit that’s it, that’s the simple secret I didn’t quit that’s as simple as you can get a knife refused to quit. Well I hope these are helpful I hope you enjoy them I hope you can benefit from them I hope you will realize our desires to help you in your business endeavors and this model of Inspiring Better Business, Thank you very much.