Starting your first business with lots of borrowed money may be a mistake. Starting small and with what you have available could be better in the end. By Gary Shotton #000378

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Start With What You Have

By Gary Shotton

This text is in Extreme Rough draft and will be edited in the near future.

Hello, I’m Gary Shotton, and I’m here there’s a part firing better. The year was 1981. And my wife and I were living in the state of Wyoming and I had, frankly a pretty good job. It paid me really well. I was one of the higher paid people in my small town in Wyoming. I had a company vehicle I had medical insurance that pay for all of my children to be born and their care I had pretty what pretty well set up there and there was a downturn. In the economy. And there was opportunity to make a move, but I thought to be temporarily to Broken Arrow Oklahoma to go to Bible school. My wife and I decided to do that. But in my conservative nature, I we made a trip here to check it out. And I talked with my phone and in person, a few potential employers because I knew I didn’t have the money. I had money to get there, but I need to pay my tuition. I have three children. Grant, I have utilities and I kept my little farms that was back in Wyoming. So I needed a job unfortunately, I got here or maybe fortunately, and there was no job. It was one of those dips. If you look at the the fall of 1982 You’ll see that the oil business dropped to the absolute low for a long period had not been any lower. Banks were going bankrupt. Oil companies are going bankrupt. And there was no job for me. What do I do? Well, that’s my lesson for the day. Hi, look with what’s in my hand. I heard that sermon from my my pastor. And I looked and said, You know, I don’t really have anything in my hands. But I have a horse trader set in front of my my house because when I moved, I put all my stuff that I have not all my stuff because I was selling my farm my little ranch back in Wyoming because I was coming back. I put enough stuff for us to live what he taught me for nine months Washer Dryer, Refrigerator, our clothes, some mattresses. I mean, it was there was low budget, but we brought we need it and there was this more straighter out here. And I said you know I got an idea. I think I could move people because I had moved. So almost I guess it’d be at this point. About 1000 miles from the far corner of Wyoming near Yellowstone National Park to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is near Arkansas and Missouri and Kansas up near that corner. And so I’ve come there and and we’re pretty good. I’ve got a car and so I’ll just hook on to my my horse trader with my car which I lived with. And I’ll just put an ad in the paper says Let me help you. Well, from that we got a few calls. And we got $35 For this first job and $50 for the second job. And this is rolling pretty good. We actually moved 44 households in that horse trailer now some of them were pretty good sized houses, not mansions. But we took five trips, six trips back and forth, back and forth. The customers happy the price was right. I’m making money, I’m paying my bills. And from that, after a year and a half or almost two years in 1984 that became my very first business, the business that I owned then from that date on to the year 2000. I call it 17 years I owned the Moving and Storage business. And I learned so many things in that business, so many things the hard way, how to do my accounting how to work with people and I had up to 75 employees regularly in the summertime and always 50 employees in the in the wintertime even though the slow and trucks all over the United States and a warehouse I mean, packers by the ladies would do packing inside we moved household. The lesson was I started with what I had in my hands, and I took that next step that was one step forward. I put the ad in the paper. I had a couple moves. When I had those moves. I kept the ad in the paper. Then I started figuring out how to make some more jobs and some more jobs. And then I bought my first truck and I bought my second step by step you see a lot of people that want to they say they want to own a business they want to start big or they want to start with a full picture. For me it didn’t work that way when you talk to most anyone that I know that started from from nothing that didn’t have someone to finance them and I don’t advise that anyway. They started small and with what they had in their hand. Think about that. Don’t be afraid to start super small, super small with a cake that you make in your oven with your sewing machine, that you sewed something with a tree trimming with a song, something to get started and you’ll think you’ll see that God will step in and make that step go to the next step and the next step and the next step. there’s lessons to be learned. Well, I hope this is good for you. I enjoy this as a part of inspiring better business.