One of the primary reasons new and smaller businesses fail comes from trying to grow in leaps rather than steps. By Gary Shotton #000474

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Steps In Business Growth

By Gary Shotton

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

Hello my name is Gary Shotton, and I’m here as a part of Inspiring Better Business,  IBBTalks.com. Today I want to talk about steps in business growth. And if I was to choose one of the top two or three reasons I think businesses fail, I would put this right up there. I’m one of those top ones, you know, people seem to have this desire to excel and excel at a fast pace, wanted instantaneously grow quickly, and I think that more times than you can imagine, that’s what really caused them, the base problem, they were growing too fast, so let’s talk about some of my story. While I was a young man I had just moved to a new town and I got into the Moving and Storage business, and I made it. I operated out of my house and I could see right away when I was operating in my house with no storage that a lot of my customers were going to need, and I was putting things into storage for them, and they were going to rip up storage space from another person. So I came to conclusion fairly quickly that if I could get some warehouse space, I could then move out of my house because I started inside of my house with my garage was the only storage I had. And so, I decided I can move out of my house. If I could get into a 3000 square foot building, and, and I waited until I had a customer that wanted this pay me money actually more money, he was going to pay me more money sharp short term, month by month than my long term lease was going to be I was taking a long term lease, but I was renting out space and I could realize, oh, I can add more people in more revenue, I could get out out of my house, with all the people around my kitchen table and in the garage, and I could move my foot, my, my trucks over there and I would be much better off, but it was tough. I wasn’t sure if that was going to work. Well the next thing that happened is I could see that I was running out of space and in that same building, it had a pretty high ceiling, and it was 3000, square feet, but I could add 2000 square feet. If I just built a floor at about the eight foot level, I could put storage on the ground floor was concrete, and I could put more stuff into storage on the second floor, so I put boards and plywood and structure, it was solid enough to hold what we need. And I pray to increase my space by 2000 square feet. Well then, I had the land next to me it was another commercial lot and it came for sale and I said oh my goodness I gotta have that it isn’t was I, because I was had trucks and I had equipment and I had parking it wasn’t working well on the street, and I bought that one piece of land next to me. Oh, it was a stretch. The next thing was another step. These were all a couple, a couple of years or 18 months between each one of these, it wasn’t bang bang bang this whole thing happened over seven or eight years, And the next warehouse, next to the this side of my empty lot, which I was using was a warehouse I could rent. Well that came up for me, I can rent it, and then across the street. A few years later, a couple years later, I rented the warehouse across the street, I’m renting and paying three rents, but I’m getting money for all of those, but I wasn’t keeping any of that money because most of what was going to pay the least is somebody else I wanted so bad to own a piece of a warehouse myself. And sure enough, just across the street and down the road a little ways, was very nice building that was going to be auction off, I went to that auction I took a huge risk, but that was a step, because I already had three warehouses, and my plan would be to stop those leases and then rent from myself because I had a pay but on that building. It was close. I almost didn’t make it work, but it worked, and I didn’t even move over there right away I had a customer that took most of that to begin with, and that was a couple years later before I had another 10 15,000, square foot building. Well the first building was 15,000, and I added a very tall 15,000 square feet more now I have 30,000 square feet on a three and a quarter acre piece of land, and guess what, I own that for several more years, even after I sold the business, when I sold the business, my income was mostly because I had that building. That was my stable income for six five or six years where I didn’t have a lot of other income and eventual I sold it for, $1.1 million, and use that money over in my current business to build a building there. I’ve always had to build buildings I like buildings I like to rent check. And so that’s my story about warehouses, growing step by step by step, I’m telling you, I did what I’m telling you it’s not theory for me. Well, there’s a lot of misunderstandings, we think about God being a big God yes he’s a big God, we think about that God doing great big miracles He created the earth yes he caused the flood Yes, he created many that waters this part, so that the, the Israelites could get away and escape the pursuit of Pharaoh. He did all kinds of big things, but guess what, he also has chosen to work through humans, you and I. So if you look at those big things he did those, if you look at what people did, they did small things, they did step by step. And if you notice, these were always people that are already had experience in that realm, take, take, David who killed Goliath. Wow, he did a great big thing he killed Goliath. No but read it in Genesis, he first killed the lion which was a smaller lion. It wasn’t a huge Tiger type Lyman lion, and then he went up to the big bear that was a big bear. And so he had experienced step by step by step and read it. He said I have killed the lion. The lion as a bear, the same way I’ve done that I have those staff, staff, I can kill a Goliath. That’s God’s way. Well, they’re on this earth we’re humans and God wants to use us in this manner. Now, there’s no such thing as a leap of faith, You can’t find that there’s a place where Jesus was encouraged by Satan to jump off the high pinnacle of a high building and the and the and he suggested the angels would would catch him. Well, that’s totally different, and he didn’t believe. So there’s no such thing as a leap of faith. Another way of saying the same thing. There’s no such thing as faith that isn’t just a small step or a appropriate step. So anybody that’s taking a giant leap is taking a leap of risk, outside of God’s protection in my opinion. Now ask yourself this is the thing that you’re talking about in business growth. A leap, or is it a step. You have to decide, and you can determine that safely. Not too conservative because you need to keep moving on in faith, you need to challenge your faith, but it’s step by step, and you can ask yourself another thing have I gained the experience and knowledge I need at my current step, the business knowledge, the knowledge not technical, but the business knowledge, accounting, bookkeeping job costing systems and processes the things we teach, have you learned that and take that to the next level, a solid step, and then readjust and learn the same things at another level. Now their story. I had a chance and I currently own a machine shop, and I had the run this by myself and I did. I said I’m now about to buy a business with 41 employees, and I bought the land and building for a little over three acres again, only 15,000 square feet of building, and this was a big commitment and I consciously thought, Yes, I have had previous experience with 50 to 75 employees in a much tougher environment, because these employees that I had in my first business are on trucks. They’re all over the United States we have I’m not where I can see them or our talk to them either by phone. And so, my new business was all going to be in one proximity in one building, and there’s only 41 employees, so I was only taking a step, that’s what you want to do, I made mistakes, I can tell you somewhere I didn’t take them, take a step, I don’t have time, but I did it I lost $40,000 Because I took a job, I took a leap on something that I shouldn’t have done. So why do that. Save your money. Well, there’s other things that would guarantee that that this is part of God’s plan, you know, as humans, children grow, step by step. They are fed milk. Then, food, then more food, more solid food, and they go through classes in education and step by step our children go from first grade to second grade, the third grade, only after they have actually passed the final exam in the grade that they’re on. That’s the idea. You can look at plant growth you can look at planting a seed that doesn’t just jump into products and and and and harvest, it goes step by step, planet, water it fertilize it, take care of it, cultivate it. And over time, it produces that’s God’s plan. Well I hope you enjoy and are part of this evaluate yourself think clearly before you take these steps don’t stop, you’ve got to keep going, but make solid good steps don’t make a lap around the mountain. A lot of people do a lot of people who call of go into failure, and they actually blame God because they didn’t follow God’s plan. In that period of taking steps. Thank you for being a part of Inspiring Better Business.