my name is Gary Shotton I mean here is a part of inspiring better business today I will talk about wrongfully accused well it was many years ago I was in high school I think maybe even in college and my father is a very quiet type individual quite the opposite of me first of all we lived some 40 miles from a town of 700 if you’re on a farm and ranch you’re not engaging with people on a regular basis dad was very bright very great entrepreneur and he was the type of person that when my dad spoke people listened but he didn’t just talk all the time in the process of time where wheat farmers have to explain this story a bit because dad was wrongfully accused of stealing one truckload of wheat from his neighbor boy that was like throwing a dart dart or a dagger shooting a knife blade in my dad’s gut he would never think of doing that and he never would do it and was just beyond himself to be even accused of this so what happens is we have large farms and large farms don’t always have a harvest and the people that cut the wheat are people that travel from the very south end of the United States to the north as the wheat gets ripe and these custom cutters have multiple con mines multiple trucks so one cutter might have eight combines in other ones six and so we as farmers would engage contract these custom cutters that work their way up as the week it’s ripe to cut our wheat and one person who would we had used many many years was a friend had done it for us and many other of our neighbors many many years we again contract wood with him to cut our wheat along with the other neighbors well as we gets ripe the combine would come in my dad’s field and the person driving the truck with the load of wheat would take it to the elevator where everybody takes it and we just inform the person at the elevator that this is the shot and sweet well the accusation came from a neighbor that my dad and four other farmers conspired to each one steal one load of wheat and by doing that they just he just said that as as the harvester cut off as his land and the truck was destined to the elevator that the driver said this is not the neighbors but it was what was not his but it was my dad’s wheat in other words my dad conspired to steal the wheat this was tough this was unbelievably inaccurate but this individual chose to file a lawsuit and go to court with jury trial and now in a small town five farmers my dad and four others are defending themselves against one neighbor that eventually proved out simply did not want to or did not have the money to pay the harvester and never ever paid the harvester that year he was tricking his way out but at the shame of my parents and these other respectable farmers why would I tell this story now by the way this cost my dad $3,000 and the cost of that one load of wheat was three hundred and fifty dollars so he spent almost ten times the amount of money that he was accused of stealing to defend themselves so it all worked out over time it still is a lesson learned because you’re probably going to be wrongfully accused at some time if you’re in business something you didn’t do someone’s going to say you did and now what do you do about it no first of all if it’s something of character it’s not legal it’s not of the size that that you think that the this should be dealt with I would just ignore it I know that’s hard to do depends on how the person is accusing but a lot of times that person has a problem they want you to fight they want to you to come to battle with them and the understanding is that your character is so strong in the community and your willingness not to fight this individual and let it go away without any words without even responding to this individual will speak very loudly very loudly and it does hinge upon your personal character being strong but that’s normally the case somebody’s attacking you and in fact they may be attacking you because they don’t like your personal character and they want to minimize your character because of their lower character they’re trying to equal the the playing field if you want to say that so it sounds hard but when you start responding you start defending yourself there’s a probably nine out of ten people didn’t even know about the accusation now you brought it to light even more than it was first brought to light that’s hard but you might want to just turn the cheek and go the other way I mean I think that’s biblical just turn the cheek and go the other way and go the extra mile now I like in my dad’s case there had to be a response because if he didn’t respond then legally he’s admitting guilt and of course he responded and it did cost him it did it hurt him more than financially because it he he was he was concerned about his character and so the character speaks so loud that the accusations that are verbal by the way verbal is is as the normal way people do this and you know just the words do not speak as loud as actions and your actions will drown out those those character questions those wrong accusations do good business you know I’m not just saying play dad respond when need to respond but don’t accuse person refused to fight remember this the truth will always come out always it may not come out even while you’re alive it may come out later but the truth of your character the truth of the issue that wasn’t large the truth of maybe a misunderstanding of course when you’re accused you could go to the individual it’s hard to resolve it and Saez or a misunderstanding gotta make sure that we don’t that there’s something wrong that I’ve done will you forgive me if I have done something wrong I mean those are character qualities that you want to have one last word be careful with Facebook don’t just put everything under the Sun on Facebook our social media is so easy to get things out so easy to accuse somebody so easy to make a wrong accusation unintentionally yourself so be very careful thanks for being a part of inspiring better business