hello my name is Gary Shotton and today we’re going to talk about solving problems and I consider this as one of the top five six or seven keys to wealth and I could say that because over the years I’ve looked back and I think you know what are the main things if I was going to tell somebody how to become wealthy what would I would be the top on the list what would be number two what would be down the list and you know early on I might have heard things like work hard you know or get an education you know go to college well you know I’ve noticed now that I’m in my 60s that there’s a lot of people that work really hard in their flat broke and there’s a lot of people that went to college and they’re flat broke you know so I don’t know if those two are really keys to wealth I’d have to say that there’s their contributing factors but on this particular teaching solving problems I really think that is one of the keys to wealth and I must tell you that wealth isn’t riches wealth includes money but if you’re thinking wealth is just having money that’s not what I’m talking about there’s a balance that comes with having the ability to handle and control money having a sufficiency of money so that you’re entrusted with more money but money in itself will not be any form of happiness in my opinion now I would contend that solving problems is something that you start working with in your early days and actually if you’re working for somebody else that’s where you want to get your free education if you want to call that you can go to college I did you can work for somebody I did I did for ten years I work for a big oil company and you know I was a problem solver we had lots of problems I was thrust into a situation’s way above my responsibilities realm I was in charge of some construction projects at least that engineering the beginning with and we had a problem we had a concrete company that was cheating us sending out less concrete than we’re paying for I have a problem I have to figure out how to solve that problem now I got help from my boss but I’m the one that had to confront the the local concrete company which is a an established person in town it’s the only concrete company in town and I have to figure this out I have to solve this I was later on about after four or five years I was in charge of the entire operation the construction and we had some young guys that were working for us and they happened to be from deep south and about the first time it got cold they all decided they didn’t want to work any longer and I had to solve the problem that three of my six different carpenters half of my crew gave me notice at 8 o’clock in the morning that they were not going to work that day in fact they’re going to leave by noon and they want their paycheck well I have a problem you know I have to find out and get some more people out there to be carpenters and there are carpenters available and and it was really interesting that that one walked in the door right after these guys gave their notice and and off we went I gained confidence that I could solve problems I had just honestly I can say that one of the keys for my advancement in employment was I always ran towards the problems I worked at not shying away from the problems I wasn’t looking to be a problem I would look to how I could solve the problem and now I am working with employees I have on an average 65 we’re down a little bit right now but with that many employees guess what when I can find somebody that I can just hand a simple situation and say figure it out that that marks that marks in my memory I remember that person and and that person that I have to hold their hand or there’s no way that they can get the job done they couldn’t find the tool I have to go find it for them there’s always a you know there’s always a reason that I couldn’t get the job done you know that doesn’t fit real well with me you know solving problems is is something that that we have to learn now I’ve been in other countries and some other countries have put a lot more emphasis especially some Asian countries on education and so they’re not typically very gifted and I’m generalization I know and I’m not trying to be rude in any way but in one particular country of China there’s a very important test at age 15 either you’re smart enough because you pass the test or you’re not smart enough because you failed the test and based on that one test you can go on to college or you can be a lay part of the labor force well that’s just almost a death sentence for your for your business career because your want to find a good company that work for their well you know that to me is not the issue inside of those are who are the problem solvers who who can think outside the box who can come up not just memorize that’s what the test is about memorize and duplicate memorize and duplicate so it’s very important that we we learn how to to solve problems I think of a situation when I was in college and I’m in ROTC that’s reserve officers training school that was a part of our College everybody had to be a part of that and they gave us these as part of being if we went into the army which I didn’t we were leaders of a squad and they gave us like situations problem-solving four of us or five of us in our team and I’d be in charge and they gave us this challenge of getting across this deep ravine and and there’s a the ravine width is like 15 feet but they only gave us one board that’s 12 feet and another board that’s 6 feet and another board that’s 3 feet and there’s just no logical way to get across there without thinking how to solve the problem you know we had all kinds of situations here in our current company we have the problem of a lower economic turndown in 2009 I had to note how to solve the problem I didn’t know how to solve the problem of someone not paying I have to solve the problem of parts that we thought we could do and then we had to figure out how to do them and we didn’t think we could and I would come up with some ideas on that so you know if you’re going to be successful in business this is something in my opinion that nuts meats become second nature to you that you actually enjoy solving problems now last close here currently I own this company and I’m only in the office about 1518 hours a week and I’m gone a full eight weeks out of the year each year and my workers enjoy the fact that I’m gone they laugh about it they say hey don’t you have another trip you need to go on because I’m always stirring the water the tendency is that hey this worked well we’ll do it again yes we want repeatability but I’m always asking how can we do it better how can we actually create not create a problem it’s a kind of a cousin to what we’re talking about here but how can we look at our situation different and solve it so that we can make it faster go make it cheaper make it better we’re always solving problems well if you’re going to own a business I have to believe that you’re going to be a salt problem solving machine you’re going to do it with lots of different avenues and I just hope this video helped if you could share this with others I do appreciate it that’s one of our main meat means of letting other people know we have these free videos to inspire better business thank you