my name is Gary Shotton and today we’re going to talk about the spirit of faith you know when you say faith it doesn’t have to be Bible based you have faith every day that the Sun is going to rise you have to have faith in business or you’re going to be a tough shape because not everything else is lined out for you every day to be perfect you’re going to have to step into the do to the ground of uncertainty if you own a business and you’re going to do it on a pretty regular basis so you ought to develop an attitude of faith in your conversation and your actions and the way you deal with situations you see the opposite side of this would be the attitude or the spirit of fear and fear can just tear you apart it can demote everything all your efforts that your you’re working towards and so you’ve got to develop some kind of a balance between I have a positive attitude attitude for the future yet I’m not lying to you I’m not misleading you I’m not I’m not I’m being positive but truthful at the same time let me give some examples back when I had my small kids at all my kids are now many years out of the house but when they were younger you know we were had a pretty tight financial situation you know we didn’t just spend a lot of extra money for a lot of extra things we ate at home a lot we had a we could feed our family a lot cheaper at home than going out to eat so it was a treat to go out to eat and we had certain things our kids were involved with in sports and pretty well all these things required some kind of set of cleats or a new glove or something to do with that and and at times it was pretty tough to come up with the money for that and so but I I never tried to and I don’t think I conveyed an attitude of lack I had a little saying that says you know I got money that you don’t even know of I didn’t know where it was either right at the time but I knew I could figure it out I know it could find it if it was something we needed and I was something that is appropriate III they joke with me I shopped at the thrift store sometimes I actually shopped at the day-old bread store sometimes hey when I lived on the farm every loaf of bread we ever had was a day old what’s the difference one day old loaf of bread okay so I they knew that I was thrifty they knew as I was conservative but I didn’t have the attitude of perpetually lack of attitude of no no you can’t have that no you don’t we don’t have enough money for that no you’ll never get that we always made way for it to work out because we had an attitude of faith in our household I was it was helpful now again we were not we were ridiculous on it a lot of times I would say hey you know right now we need to put that on hold because we have other priorities and here’s our other priorities and now they can understand that it isn’t that we don’t have it it’s just not that high of priority and so let’s go on with our business you know I’ve had situations here particularly in 2009 we had a horrible hit to our economy we went from 65 employees down to 24 in about two months and I had no choice but to do that I didn’t want to lay off that many people but there’s no there’s no way we’re going to play God and just be Paycheck upon paycheck until we’re all broke I had to make sure this company made it through but I didn’t maintain and didn’t develop a spirit of poverty we pulled the core our core 24 people really other core six people that were in the office the others were machinist and shipping and things and I just asked everybody so hey we’re going to make this through together frankly I have no other option because I have my whole future tied up in this company so are you with me yes everybody is with me then I said are is everyone here willing to do whatever it takes to get through this everybody’s here willing to do it I said I will deliver parts I’ll sweep the floor everybody pitched in and we made it through that time and good good fashion it really was just one year later 13 things turned up in a marvelously good way and so we maintain an attitude of faith now as we go on here we’re always conscious of what we spend money for but I ask people you know if they have an idea have we thought it through do we really need this is it something a piece of equipment how often will we use it when would it when would it wear out and and then do we have any other options and then the big one if we bought it what’s the return on that investment in other words I bought and I have purchased typically 500 is $700,000 of equipment every year in most years I didn’t last year the economy was down but if it ramps back up I may well do that plan to do that in this year so we are always looking to improve our systems always looking to improve our processes and so we always have money or tend to have money if it’s going to speed up things or make it more efficient so I’m not just an automatic node everything you can you can talk call our number talk to any of our people I think that he was surprised sometimes because we needed a new welding unit that would make things better we bought it we needed for the first time a robot a robot that would help our welding process we bought it we needed a new saw it wasn’t that expensive the old ones worn out beyond the pair repair we have three saws they set cut metal see this metal behind us part of that metal was was made from a piece of tubing that we cut off about a four inch piece of metal off a tube and it’s thick so we had sock and we had a saw that’s really obsolete not not working well I bought a new saw these are not high-dollar items I actually maintain our quality equipment is actually a little better than our big companies that we work for I’m always interested in new equipment that makes things better we have our suppliers that bring in our new technology on cutting device I see we’re in the metal cutting business and when there’s more than just a drill bit there’s there’s grill tips and and what’s called inserts and inserts and and and basic boring bars and boring tools and and I won’t go into how to best myself up here we try to call too much because I’m not that familiar with it but I know what they do but you know we have the suppliers coming in always bring us new ideas more improvements ways of doing things better and if they can show us it’s going to make an improvement in our bottom line why wouldn’t I invest it I have money for that so I encourage you all to look at your jobs look at your businesses and kind of look at it with the attitude do I have a fear attitude prevailing throughout the company throughout the way I handle things or do I have a faith faith in the future it’s another way of saying hey am i believing for increase if I’m always believing for increase I’ve got to do something better I’ve got to do it more efficiently I’ve got to take a little more risk but there’s a balance we understand that so I hope that this helps you I hope you look at your future with that in mind and I’m sure glad you’re watching these I hope you enjoy my they are all in audio only now in podcast your favorite podcast and if you would share these I’d appreciate it thank you much