hello I’m Gary chaton I’m here as a part of inspiring better business I was raised with some wonderful parents and early on in life they encouraged us to save money wasn’t our idea it was just a pattern we would get an A on our report cards and we’d add up the ACE we’d get a quarter for each a we just a little bit of work and not just chores around the house that was for free but we’d drive tractor for dad get a quarter an hour that was fair we were excited we didn’t mind getting a quarter an hour but we didn’t go to town and spend it and most of it was saved when we had $50 we go to town and my parents would match that with another $50 not always but pretty regularly so I was about 17 years old and I had a hand-me-down car from my big brother my older next older brother and I got wind and understood that man I found out that I had sixty seven hundred dollars in my personal savings account now keep in mind my parent’s car in the early 70s this would be about 76 70 I’m sorry 66 67 right in that time period when they bought an Mercury Marquis was a big family car a monster we called it a boat my kids would call it a boat but that cart was around 3,500 to 4,000 dollars and I had almost enough money to buy two of those but when I went to my dad finding this out and I’m thinking I need to upgrade my car why don’t I just take out some money and I could buy a nice car nope not gonna happen it was in 71 then that the opportunity came there was a large auction it was well revert eyes people came from many counties around from the next States over because there was large sum of land SiC almost thousand acres to be sold and my dad had prepared now he had a ceiling figure but his ceiling figure was $50 per acre and dad purchased that two thousand plus acres for $49 an acre Wow amazing now keep in mind these numbers don’t mean a lot but these this land is worth a lot of money today and in the process that had predetermined didn’t ask us he took my sixty seven hundred dollars at a similar sixty seven hundred dollars from my two brothers of similar age and put up the other twenty thousand so 67 67 67 times three is twenty thousand because he needed 40 thousand dollars of down payment and formed chaton farms incorporated I’m a sixth owner right now I’m a fifth owner of shot and farms incorporated today this happened almost nearly fifty years ago and through the process of time more land was purchased more acreage was purchased out of the revenue from that and the good thing about this sale auction was that if you know about auctions the land rights could have what’s called subsurface rights in other words rights to the minerals the oil potential oil or gas under the ground and the surface rights that would be the wheat that was already planted on the ground and the auction was such that to get the maximum amount of money for the seller who was a family a very large family had lots of property and they decided to sell this with the buyer in it my dad and Shotton Farms Inc getting all the mineral rights that were still with the land and all of the surface rights which would mean the wheat that had been planted in August of the previous year this was in February that the auction was and then the harvest would be in June late June would go with the land the owner that shirt first that purchased the land whoever that might be well advertised rather than with the person that had planted the land the person that was selling it guess what happened we went from a dollar a bushel to two dollars a bushel we did nothing as a family but pay the harvester to cut the Queen and the half that was planted was totally paid for in four months amazing now again the next year almost all of the net other half was totally paid for but by the next wheat harvest because the wheat price went up unexpectedly in that period of time we’ve had that land for 50 years we have sold parcels off of at a time I won’t tell you what the remainder is worth but it’s still worth a pretty chunk but the point of this lesson is not about buying land not about real estate but about being an entrepreneur and being prepared when opportunity comes you see I watched many real offered entrepreneurs and they never back themselves into a corner that they would not have an option to buy a good deal I had a similar thing happened to me now it was pretty tough I was in the moving business it was in the late it was Ireland the business from basically 84 to the year 2000 so this would have been in about 88 89 maybe 90 know it would have been closer to 2 93 or 94 of 1993 or 94 and it was the winter time and it was cold and we had a moving business and so there was not a lot of moving going on and my bills were stacked up pretty high and a realtor wasn’t doing much and he was looking for somebody to buy something so he could get a commission he knocks on my door he knew who we were and I said hey that land that adjoins you is for sale wouldn’t you want to buy it and I looked up in the eyes I said Bob I have no money there’s I can’t see how we could even put a bid down he said well what about if you any made a deal and said well I could scrape up $5,000 and I’ll put them down payment on $5,000 knowing that I’ll try to borrow the rest of the money but I only have 30 days if after 30 days I can’t borrow the money then I would get my money back because I reserved it or put it on hold or was pending financing well 30 days comes up and I still hadn’t gotten my financing the point would be again I scraped up the $5,000 and by the skin of my teeth we bought 17 and a half acres that adjoin my property when I barely made it happen but I made it happen entrepreneurs have that ability to make things happen in the financial world and a lot of times that’s when others have turned away the opportunity or or afraid to take the risk or frankly they’re they’re not geared to take that risk frankly there’s not a criticism here they’re not born entrepreneurs I’m born called of God to handle finances and monies to take risk to take calculated risk that’s what happened when I bought this machine shop it’s another story but one of the keys for anyone that’s wanting to advance themselves in life is to have some kind of reserve some way to get money if a good deal comes you don’t just gamble at it there’s research done you have prepared yourself it needs to be a logical step but in each of those two cases those were pivotal points that projected the ownership of land and the ownership of buildings and that’s part of being an entrepreneur keep some kind of reserve available to take care of opportunities I was at a meeting with some very successful people and I had a fun time for three or four days my wife and I together and one of them stood up the platform and says you know guys they’re all pretty wealthy guys I was there on my I’ll be honest with you and he says you don’t want to let a good recession pass you by because in a recession all kinds of opportunities come to surface and those that have cash can take advantage of those thanks for being a part of inspiring better business